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Wine Ebooks:
| | The Complete Grape Growers Guide. |  | | A Complete Guide For Growing Grapes. Converts Very Well At A Reasonable Price! Growing Grapes And Making Wine Is A Very Popular Topic Right Now.
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| | Fool-Proof Wine Values. | | | Learn How To Easily Find Wines Of $50 Quality For $10 Or Less. Impress Friends With Your Expanded Wine Knowledge. Eliminate Your Dependence On Wine Salespeople. And Take The Hassle Out Of Buying Wine.
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| | Making Wine From Home. | | | A Fun And Very Informative Book On Home Wine Making. The De Facto Standard For All Home Wine Enthusiasts With Recipes, Advice And Tricks.
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Blogs & Sites:
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| [08/11/2006, 06:59] | Hook and Ladder - The Tillerman White | | | The best kinds of cheap wines are the kinds that have a rich story behind them. Well, The Tillerman White wine brought to you by the Hook & Ladder Winery certainly fits the bill. At first glance this wine label made no sense to me… Hook & Ladder? The Tillerman? After doing some research, I feel enlightened knowing the origins of this fine cheap wine, so I’ll share: The owner of the family-run Hook & Ladder, Cecil De Loach used to be a firefighter! “Hook and Ladder” is just another name for a firetruck. And The Tillerman is guy who drives the back end of a firetruck. A firefighter and a wine-maker! What a life! 
I sampled several bottles of The Tillerman White, and I am glad I did. Not being a fan of white blends with a lot of oak, I enjoyed everything about this wine. The peach/apricot aroma was the most prominent feature of this wine as it approached my nose. The wine was very dry, tasty, had an awesome finish. Just a perfect all-around table wine. For about 16 bucks or less, this Sonoma County wine is a steal. If you see it in your supermarket, snatch it up! I look forward to trying some of their many other varietals. This same vineyard, the Russian River Valley produces Chardonay, Gewurztraminer, White Zin, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the “Third Alarm” Reserve Chardonnay. Oh, how I would love to visit the vineyard one day.
Rating: 9/10 - Excellent! The only reason I’m not giving it 10 is because I promised my readers “cheap wines less than 15 dollars” and this wine retails for 16. Look around though, I’m sure you can find a good deal! Even if you can’t, it is worth the extra dollar. Extra Info: Hook & Ladder - Founded in 2004
2027 Olivet Road
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
phone: 707-546-5712 pH: 3.3
Acidity: .73
Alcohol: 13.8%
Winemaker: Cecil De Loach
Cases Produced: 2,400 | | | |
| [05/12/2008, 17:45] | Music and wine | | There was a time, when as a teen, I listened to music for hours each day. Then came children whose sleep took precedence. Music became something peripheral and half volume. The quieter it became, the less I listened.
For years I begrudgingly consumed commercial radio (on my way to and from work). It made music even less enjoyable. Predictable and bland. A filler and a distraction rather than anything substantive or enjoyable.
I've grown more particular with age, harder to please and less tolerant of formula and packaging. Despite this, I find that again I'm listening to and enjoying music, mesmerised by the beauty, frailty and power of some songs.
I imagine it's the same with wine. I have friends who once had a passion, but for whatever reason (health, children, money, spouse) they have lost interest. If they do drink it's the routine and mundane that passes their lips. A sure way to extinguish any remaining spark. Soon all wine becomes the same, an agreeable liquid that no longer excites. . .
Recommended reading: Mr A Bathgate. | | | |
| [01/01/1970, 02:00] | 2008 Spark & Napa Valley Vintners ?Nightlife Napa Valley? | | | On Thursday night 03/13/08, international womens charity organization Spark and the Napa Valley Vintners lit up the Rotunda and accompanying floors of San Francisco City Hall and provided quite a night of charity, wine and beats. "Nightlife Napa Valley," hosted by the Napa Valley Vintners to benefit Spark was ... | | | |
| [12/20/2005, 19:09] | FishEye Merlot 2003 | | | 
FishEye Merlot caught my eye at the supermarket yesterday when trying to find a good cheap wine to pair with my pasta and chicken dinner.
Nice and fruity, I think the strongest aroma was plum. This wine was a good match to my dinner, and a good value for $5.89. I’d like to try their Cab one of these days. Also, be sure to check out the Fisheye Winery website. Lots of fun! 
Rating: 7/10
Price: $5.89
Winery Info:
Fisheye Winery
Ripon, CA | | | |
| [05/04/2008, 01:20] | Japan's Coco Farm and Winery | | 
Compassion and California wine-making skills have combined to create a home for 90 mentally disabled "students" of all ages and to craft some surprisingly good wine. Coco Farm, founded in the 1950s, has been making wine since the 1980s, using mentally-challenged students to tend the vines, harvest the grapes, and perform a range of responsibilities from labeling to scraring crows away from the vines. In 1989, the winery brought in Sonoma wine-maker, Bruce Gutlove and the quality of the wine has been improving. So much, in fact, that Coco Winery's sparkling wine, "Novo," was served at the recent G-7 Summit of world leaders.
Coco Farm and Winery is located about one hour north of Tokyo. Because of its small production-just 150,000 to 180,000 bottles annually-Coco wines are not available in the United States. However, the winery welcomes visitors and has a tasting room and cafe.
(photo © istockphoto) See full article.
Related Entries:
Winery Goes Green - 28 June 2006 Australian Winery inSouth Africa - 22 February 2007 Big Winery Forces Little Winery Into New Label - 27 February 2007 Wollersheim Winery Ruby Nouveau - 06 November 2007 
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| [02/11/2008, 09:28] | Sauternes and Barsac | | I helped out at a trade event in London devoted to Sauternes and Barsac the other week. Entitled ?Sweeties with Savouries? it set out to show how both Sauternes and Barsac can be drunk not only with the usual foie gras and desserts but also with all the courses of a complete meal. With courses ranging from roquefort crème brulee with figs (see picture) through roast Moroccan quail with sweet potato mash to blue cheese cheesecake, the food was absolutely wonderful.  Attendees were then asked to vote for which wine made the best match with which course. There was quite a lot of agreement about which of the 16 wines went with which of the 5 courses but there were also many individual opinions. As with wine tasting there is no definitive answer in the area of food and wine matching. Tasting through the 16 wines was an education in itself. Considering they were all the recently bottled 2005 vintage, there was a range of aromas from honey, peach, minerals and smoke to flavours on the palate of marmalade, peach, citrus and honey. There were also subtle but significant differences in the weight and texture on the palate. The differences can be understood when looking at the percentages of grapes with everything from 90% semillon and 10% sauvignon of the premier cru classe Chateau Clos Haut-Peyraguey through to the 70% semillon, 25% sauvignon and 5% muscadelle of Chateau d’Armajan des Ormes.  The aging process whilst broadly similar in length of between 18 and 24 months, varies according to the percentage of new barrels used. The key to good Sauternes and Barsac, apart from the terrroir, is the botrytis that is required to shrivel up the grapes and concentrate the sugar in the grapes. From talking to several of the producers the 2007 vintage was going to be a worry as the summer was cool. However the autumn was as hoped with cool misty mornings followed by sunny afternoons, the perfect environment for the ?mushroom? spores of botrytis cinerea to develop. There is a much history associated with the ownership of the chateau in Sauternes with many of them having been in the same family for generations. Check out the web site of Chateau Dudon if you want some history of a typical family owned Sauternes producing chateau. | | | |
| [01/01/1970, 02:00] | Cellar Troubles | | | It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. And right now I'm in between. About two years ago we decided to build a wine cellar in our house. I spent a lot of time with my wife choosing the various designs for the cellar, the ... | | | |
| [04/18/2008, 18:45] | Newsworthy Wine Stuff: Catavino?s Rioja Report, EWBC 2008, AAWE and Blog de Vinos de Argentina | | It?s been a very busy week, but after my nice catching up session with Google Reader, here are some treasures worth noting from the RSS pileup: 1) Catavino?s Rioja Report and EWBC 2008: Gabriella and Ryan over at Catavino have made a labor of love?an ambitious sort of compendium that is all things Rioja. From regional gastronomy to what else? Los vinos! You can find maps, profiles of wineries, beautiful photography and even a comprehensive explanation of Rioja labeling practices. I also found their buying guide particularly valuable and look forward to bringing it along on some shopping trips in the near future. This kind of stuff is a privilege to be able to look at when you consider other ?regional reports? published by people with a sense of entitlement to wine travel and $60+ annual subscription fees. Ryan and Gabriella are accountable for their material, actively and genuinely elicit and value readers? opinions, suggestions and evince passion for this stuff, so go ahead and bookmark them. 2) Speaking of La Rioja, check out the page for this summer?s inaugural European Wine Bloggers Conference. 3) Remember Mr. Show?s Worthington Law applied to wine? Looks like the research findings from that CalTech/Stanford study published earlier in the year have been further validated. Working Paper No, 16, published by the American Association of Wine Economists details a new study in which people generally preferred less expensive wines, unless told by researchers of course, that a wine was particularly expensive.
4) If you read Spanish and want to stay up on the latest happenings in the Mendoza wine industry, you may want to bookmark El Blog de Vinos de Argentina. I have been reading their blog for some time now and have found it more and more valuable in terms of getting an inside track on what they?re thinking in Mendoza. As an Argentine, I?ve become a bit tired of receiving my Argentine wine industry news solely from the perspective of English-language consumer magazines. In the Argentine wine-sense, I?m approaching the sort of frustration many over here are feeling with news sources like CNN and FOX?it?s unfortunately limited for my needs. I may not be alone in wanting something like this?I really feel that things would get interesting if insiders from many wine regions only generally covered by shiny-cover magazines began communicating their perspectives directly to readers in a couple of other languages.
5) I would like to issue a preliminary warning before checking out this final note...it is cringe-inducing. I caught this on an Argentine website related to wine news. You'll click on the link and notice the article is written in Spanish, but that won't deter you from making the appropriate inference...Madonna will be contracting some local producer to lovingly craft her own label of Malbec. My comments? Oh hell no. Truthfully though, the nausea actually set in when I read that the label will reportedly be named after "Evita." Whether you are a foreigner and think Evita was a great person or an Argentine who may have the courage to speak up and express a more balanced perspective for the legacy of this famous political figure, one thing's for sure, Madonna could have chosen ANY OTHER variety cultivated in ANY OTHER country. Why us, oh God why us? | | | |
| [05/11/2008, 17:38] | Egon Müller Scharzhof Qualitätswein 2005 | |  Sadly no bottle shot worth posting, so instead a picture looking out to the Swan River from the Claisebrook cove bridge. This is metres away from where I consumed the wine in question.
For an entry level wine, this is extremely delicious. Crystalline and pure, this smells of a sticky childhood afternoon (with mustard fruit and toffee apple). Vibrant, juicy and precise, this should carry a dental warning and come in a bigger bottle. . .
Very very good.
92.
Now - 2012.
technorati tags: wine | | WorldWine Tags: wine, | | | |
| [09/29/2006, 21:51] | Short pours | | It's official. Millennials are a major force in wine. Why we needed a study to tell us this, I'm not sure. We millennials are hip, sophisticated and reliably swayed by marketing. Sigh. At least we have the good sense to like wine.
Who doesn't like SPAM with their greens? Vineyard Spam Salad.
Quotable: "Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
 Caberiffic: Delectus 2001 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Stanton Vineyard Oakville ($50). Tobacco, mushroom, black cherry, plum. Decant, my friends, decant.
Splurge worthy: Philip Togni Vineyard 2003 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (online prices vary widely, between $80 and $150). Blackberry, dusty chocolate, plum, great acid on the back end.
Tags: wine, marketing, quotes, cabernet sauvignon, recipes | | WorldWine Tags: wine, marketing, quotes, cabernet sauvignon, recipes, | | | |
| [05/01/2008, 18:38] | May Wine Events | | 
May is filled with wine festivals and other wine events as the weather warms around the United States. Here is just a sampling:
- San Luis Obispo, CA - May 1-4 - Roll out the Barrels
- Cleveland, OH - May 2-3 - Cleveland International Wine Show
- Orange Beach, AL - May 2-4 - Southern Breeze Wine & Culinary Festival
- Livermore, CA - May 3-4 - Downtown Livermore Wine Festival
- Charlotte, NC - Mary 7-10 - Charlotte Wine & Food Weekend
- Anderson Valley, CA - May 16-18 - Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival
- Paso Robles, CA - May 16-18 - Paso Robles Wine Festival
- Sonoma Valley, CA - May 17-18 - Passport to Sonoma Vally
- Keuka Wine Trail, NY - May 17-18 - Keuka in Bloom
- New Orleans, LA - May 21-25 - New Orleans Wine & Food Experience
- Newport Beach, CA - May 23-25 - Newport Beach Food & Wine Festival
- Banff Springs, Canada - May 31 - Banff Rocky Mountain Wine & Food Festival
- Santa Cruz Mtns, CA - May 31 - Santa Cruz Mtns Vintners Festival
(photo courtesy of the Charlotte Wine & Food Weekend) See full article.
Related Entries:
Napa Valley Nabbing Wine Drinkers? - 10 September 2006 April & Easter Wine Events - 05 April 2007 Hudson Valley Wine & Food Festival - 30 August 2007 March Wine Events - 25 February 2008 
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| [05/08/2008, 22:34] | Making the Best of Appellations | |  The assumption of the American Viticultural Area (appellation) program is that there is something unique about those areas that are granted AVA status?that there is something about Oakville, Anderson Valley, Finger Lakes and Green Valley that make them distinct.
However, the subtext of this quasi-appellation program administered by the federal government and completely embraced by the American wine industry is that the wines the emerge from specifically designated American Viticultural Areas are themselves unique because they somehow contain identifiable characteristics that can be traced to the uniqueness of the AVAs in which the grapes were grown. This is the assumption that Appellation America has always embraced and promoted in its fantastic journalistic efforts and its the proposition that it hopes to bring real clarity to with its recently announced "Best of Appellation Evaluation Program". As described, the Best of Appellation Evaluation Program "obliges the [program's] assessors to systematically evaluate the wines, individually and collectively, for place characteristics." Appellation America's publisher, Roger Dial, goes on to explain, "In the days, months, and years going forward we will be doing what our readers continually ask us to do. We?re going to look at every appellation in North America, building an on-going, ever-developing picture of the mosaic of regional character and diversity that we hope will enrich our wine culture."
This is a monumental task that strikes me as being the kind of effort that will bring as much criticism as it does praise. However, the praise will be deserved and the criticism will simply be sour grapes. What happens when the regional characteristics of Oakville Merlot are defined in a way that identifies one famous Oakville producer's Merlot as uncharacteristic of the appellation? This won't make the Oakville Merlot producer very happy. But I think this unhappiness is a natural result of winemaking philosophies that treasure style over regional characteristics. Now, I don't want to suggest that focusing on producing a specific style of wine rather than achieving regional reflection is a bad thing. It's just a thing. It's just not a very interesting thing. Others have previously used the evaluation processes to focus on regional characteristics. For example, Dan Berger, who runs the respected Riverside International Wine Competition, recently announced that Anderson Valley's Navarro Vineyards won that competition's Terroir Award trophy, given to the winery that displays the best regional character in its wine. It should be no surprise that Appellation America sponsors this trophy. Down the road, if Appellation America is successful, I expect we'll be able to go to their website and read something along these lines: "Carneros Syrah is a wine that typically displays X,Y and Z aromas with flavors of A, B, and C. These characteristics are best found in the Syrahs of X Vineyard, Y Cellars and Z Estate." I, for one, hope they succeed in their quest. I'm not positive it will lead to more interest in wine or greater sales of wine or more exploration of different wines from America's many AVA's. But I am positive that it will make the wine world much more interesting.    | | | |
| [10/13/2007, 18:17] | October 13, 2007 - Pouilly Fuisse | | Pouilly Fuisse should not really be mixed up with Pouilly Fume although it happens. While both are white wines Pouilly Fuisse is rightfully Chardonnay and Burgundian. The other Pouilly is from the Loire Valley and is made from Sauvignon Blanc ( to be covered someday!).
While Pouilly-Fuisse is an appelation on to itself it would be a shame not to give the individual terroirs recognition also. There are 4 villages in the appelation: Vergisson, Solutre-Pouilly, Fuisse and Chaintre and arguably 5 terroirs as Solutre and Pouilly are distinctive.
From a distance the twin rocks of Vergisson and Solutre are a clear giveaway that you have arrived. The certain soil zones around these rocks are limestone and give the wines that mineral taste which is lacking or more subdued in the other communes outside of Vergisson, Solutre and Pouilly.
The 5 terroirs within Pouilly-Fuisse are :
Vergisson - mineral driven, punchy with acidic backbone.
Solutre - mineral driven but softer with pronounced acidity.
Pouilly - Good harmony of mineral and fruit - most balanced.
Fuisse - More fruity, does not have the minerality of previous 3.
Chaintre - Fruit dominant.
The next time you try a Pouilly-Fuisse take a closer look at the label and see where it comes from - there should be a difference. Personally my favorite is Pouilly proper. It seems to have the right balance of fruit, minerality and lively acidity. The other all have their unique characteristics but not in the harmonious balance I get in a benchmark Pouilly.
Not a comprehensive list by any measure but the wines I liked were made by:
Domaine Carrette
Domaine Nadine Ferrand
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| [05/26/2006, 12:36] | Wine Woot - One Week, One Wine | | | What am I doing around 1:00 am EST almost every night? Checking woot.com for the latest woot item, of course!
Being a computer/tech junkie, I am always finding random good deals on woot. Now, they have made my life complete, with Wine Woot.
 Every week they will be featuring a single deal on wine. Take it or leave it, but when they are out of stock, you are out of luck. If this turns out anything like the regular Woot.com, a good deal will be sold out in minutes. The wine deal they have up there right now looks pretty good: St. Supéry 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot Sampler. Seeing as how these would fit the Cheap Wine Reviews rule of 15 bucks or less, I might give this wine a try. | | | |
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