Know how to get a cavalcade of seasoned (read: potentially jaded) wine writers, winemakers, wine growers, and wine industry insiders to go as quiet as mice (I’m talking pin-drop-sounds-like-a-jet-engine-on-fire quiet), and as stupefied as deer in the headlights? I do. I saw Robert Mondavi Winery pull it off a few weeks ago in Napa Valley….
Category: California wine
Working Hard To Change Nothing (Williams Selyem Recent Releases)
There was so much that I didn’t want to like about Sonoma’s storied Williams Selyem. The too-cool-for-school exclusivity of their mailing list. The imposing fortress-like facade of their “barrel-evoking” tasting room and its “wall of bottles.” The fact that they used terms like “barrel-evoking.” That current owners John and Kathe Dyson were former mailing list…
Mama Don’t Take No Mess (Livermore Valley, Reconsidered at Palate Press)
One of my media tours this year had me returning to California’s perennially underrated Livermore Valley, where I’d not been for a few years, and reconnecting with the likes of local vintners Karl Wente and Steve Mirassou, neither of whom I’d seen (or, more importantly, tasted with) lately. The tour was very well executed, with…
Can Terroir Be Bootstrapped? (Dude’s Take On Ventura County For Palate Press)
“Stay out of Malibu, deadbeat!!!” As a stunning display just how behind I am on everything, my take on the upstart, bootstrapping wineries of Southern California’s Ventura County was recently published over at PalatePress.com. Yeah, that’s the one I talked about back in January when we featured the recent releases of Ventura’s Four Brix Winery…