Mendocino County, in Northern California, is a land of great natural beauty, with small towns and meandering country roads. As a wine region, Mendocino is less pretentious than say Napa or even Paso Robles, having maintained some of its hippie vibe. It’s a wonderful place to grow vines, as I discovered during a visit to …
One of the lesser-known wine regions of Italy is called Marches, or Le Marche in Italian. Not a super-well-known region outside of Italy to most people, it is nonetheless home to one of my favorite Italian white wines called Verdicchio. To my delight, more and more people are appreciating these sea-influenced, crisp and minerally whites, which …
Victor Abascal of Vines on the Marycrest with his song-title labels. Early February on the Central Coast of California is not high season for tourism, but for my husband’s birthday this year the entire family wanted a place to relax, sit by a fire, watch the Superbowl, and just chill and be with each other. …
In my first post on Mudgee, I focused on Day 1 of my excursion with the Wine Media Conference to this gorgeous wine region and town. On Day 2, I visited several more wineries, and below are my notes on each. Logan Vineyard’s unique winery and tasting room Logan Wines Logan Wines is the site of one of …
I love wine, and I love a good mystery novel. Put the two of these together and I’m ready to curl up with my cat and dog on my couch for a good long read. I recently came upon a copy of Steven Laine’s Root Cause, a “wine-soaked” mystery, according to Kirkus Reviews. This lengthy …
The beautiful skies of Mudgee I post this in the midst of the horrible destruction of human and animal life as well as property caused by the catastrophic bush fires in Australia. In October 2019 when I visited, the drought concerns expressed by the vintners in the Hunter Valley and Mudgee wine regions caused me …
This year’s Wine Media Conference took me to Australia’s Hunter Valley, for the first-ever overseas version of this yearly event. This gorgeous region, which is little known outside of Australia, produces some of the world’s best Semillon wines. Both youthful versions and aged versions have been thrilling wine aficionados for decades, and I was thrilled to …
Almost every day at The Wine House I get a customer saying they want to stock up on white wines because they keep running out of them. Their daily choice when reaching into their wine refrigerator tends to be whites, not reds, leaving the reds for either cooler weather or a more “serious” occasion. I …
Being invited to the Oregon Pinot Camp is like being handed a golden ticket. Just imagine, a camp for adults in the wine country of Oregon, dedicated to the wines, wineries, and wine makers of this beautiful state. What could be more fun? When I got the good news that I got into camp this …
Dubbed the ‘Napa Valley of Mexico’ by Forbes Magazine, Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, Mexico, is located about 215 miles south of Los Angeles, an area not generally known for its wine regions. But with global climate change and the right combination of soils, sunlight, fog, ocean breezes, and modern wine-making techniques, the wine world seems …