Wine and Wineries
Recent coverage of the wine industry.
March 11, 2010
When is a Zin not a Zin?
Zinfandel is often called California's indigenous wine, but its story is not that simple. Some of the best Zinfandel-based wines from the state's best and most historic vineyards can't use the grape name on their labels.
March 19, 2010
Fess Parker dies at 85; actor played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on TV
Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85.
January 31, 2010
Brides could be walking down the vineyard aisle
More wedding bells could ring at Napa Valley wineries after a tough economic year that has some saying yes to a proposal to revise rules banning most vineyard vows.
March 18, 2010
After the fall: The stories of three niche wine makers
To paraphrase Tolstoy (poorly): All happy wineries resemble one another; each unhappy winery is unhappy in its own way.
March 11, 2010
Zinfandel wine tasting in Newport Beach
There will be a special tasting of Zinfandels on April 18 in Newport Beach, sponsored by Zinfandel Advocates and Producers. About 40 wineries will be pouring at the event, which will be held at the Palm Garden at the Island Hotel, 660 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach. Tickets are $49 for the general public and $39 for ZAP members. Tickets can be purchased at http://www.zinfandel.orghttp://www.zinfandel.org. For more information, call (530) 274-4900.
ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA
So many wineries, so little time
Even if you spit, hire a designated driver and plan your route with the efficiency of a mom navigating Costco, there are only so many wineries you can visit in a day. Which is a problem in California, home to nearly 3,000 wineries. Most of them make terrific wine. And most of them are willing to pour you a taste.
August 26, 2009
WINE
Albariño: Spain's hidden wine treasure
Albariño is a wine with a story it has waited centuries to tell us.
August 5, 2009
BOOKS
'When the Rivers Ran Red' recalls Prohibition's effect on wine country
Rivers and creeks overflowing with wine -- was it a biblical sign of the end of the world or time for a free drink?
July 8, 2009
Good deals go fast on wine websites
New Jersey wine retailer Joe Arking was in the Napa Valley last month, drumming up business. Arking is hardly a typical retailer in the bricks-and-mortar sense or, for that matter, in the normal Web-commerce sense. His website, winestilsoldout.com, sells just one wine at a time and at an incredibly steep discount until it's gone without a trace -- usually within eight hours. While Arking doesn't like to use the word "liquidation," the wine's swift and mostly silent evacuation is the website's greatest virtue.
June 28, 2009
OBITUARIES
Robert Young dies at 90; pioneering Sonoma County grape grower
Robert Young, a pioneering Sonoma County farmer who changed his crop from prunes to grapes and helped produce some of the first vineyard-designated wines in California, has died. He was 90.
December 24, 2008
A Champagne (or sparkling wine) for every occasion
Let's agree to set aside the grim recessionary landscape for the moment: The time has come for bubbles. There is simply nothing like a glass of sparkling wine to set this season apart. Welcoming, smile-inducing, instantly festive, bubbles give every holiday occasion a lift.
October 22, 2008
Walla Walla wineries: a place for exciting reds
Last summer, local winemaker David "Merf" Merfeld, of Northstar Winery threw a party at his home here in the southeastern quadrant of Washington state. It's fair to say that close to half of the town's young winemakers were crowded into Merfeld's kitchen and onto his patio that night, uncorking just-bottled Syrahs, pouring newly completed blends into each other's glasses, eagerly seeking opinions from their fellows, sniffing and swirling and spitting into sinks and buckets and nosing around for a taste of something else.
July 30, 2008
The Artisan
West Coast brewers pick up the distilling spirit
The half-dozen visitors gathered in Ballast Point Brewing's tasting room bar are sipping Wahoo Wheat and Black Marlin Porter and dunking pretzels into a crock of bubbling house-made beer cheese.
July 9, 2008
WINE
Greece is the word in white wines for summer
A few months ago, a wine made its way into my glass that was so far outside my wheelhouse it haunted me long after the bottle was empty. It was a Greek wine, a terse, piney Roditis called Petra made by Kir-Yianni winery from a region called Florina, in the mountains near the Greek border with Albania and Macedonia -- which is to say somewhere between anywhere and nowhere. I savored this enigmatic wine, its scents of lime and pine frond, its flavors of fennel and quince, its brisk, almost salty, acidity.
June 1, 2008
CALIFORNIA
In wine country, boccie and wine make a nice pairing
Here's the downside of visiting the Northern California wine country: There are too many wineries. Without expending any real effort, a semi-dedicated wine enthusiast could consume enough wine in a day or two to drive Bacchus into rehab.
May 28, 2008
WINE
Sauvignon Republic: a Sauvignon Blanc specialist
AS HE stands before his Sensory Evaluation of Wine class at UC Davis Extension, John Buechsenstein, winemaker, professor and commercial vineyard location scout, sticks his nose into the tilted wine glass and breathes in deeply. Ah, Sauvignon Blanc: the chameleon of the wine world.
May 21, 2008
ANALYSIS
After Mondavi, who will lead Napa winemaking?
NAPA Valley lost a charismatic leader when Robert Mondavi died on Friday. Has the Napa Valley that fostered such a maverick passed as well?
May 14, 2008
WINE & SPIRITS
Memoirs by recent wine authors
Three recently published books suggest that an emerging literary form, the wine memoir, is gathering momentum. Each book -- Alice Feiring's "The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World From Parkerization," Neal I. Rosenthal's "Reflections of a Wine Merchant" and Sergio Esposito's "Passion on the Vine" -- recounts a life or a wine-soaked slice of a life, and in each case wine is more than just a leitmotif.
May 7, 2008
Wine and spirits
Malibu's backyard vintners
CALLUSED palms and bandaged fingers; broken fingernails stained black with dirt -- Hollywood actor and director Emilio Estevez proudly shows off his vineyard worker hands as he walks the vine rows.
April 30, 2008
WINE
Cabernet Franc wines from France, Napa and Columbia Valley
SOMETIMES the gallery of Bordeaux varieties resembles a dynamic trio of comic-book heroes: Cabernet Sauvignon is the beefy, muscle-bound brute -- Lord of the Medoc, as well as of Napa Valley and points beyond. Merlot is rather willowy by comparison but pleasingly so, a relative lightweight that gets by on finesse, sometimes at the expense of character. Somewhere between Cabernet Sauvignon's intestinal fortitude and Merlot's all-purpose weeniness a third variety lurks, a tween called Cabernet Franc.
April 9, 2008
WINE RULES
A wine label overhaul: Meet the man who'd change your AVA
IN a small, windowless laboratory -- far removed from romantic vineyard vistas -- scientists at the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) are attempting what most wine lovers would say is impossible. They are developing a test for terroir, the seemingly indescribable site-specific character attributed to fine wines (and named for the French word for soil).
March 12, 2008
WINE
Young Winos: The Millennial generation is a thirsty one
WHAT do you call a weekly wine tasting group made up of 21- to 29-year-olds? They call themselves the Young Winos of Los Angeles. The wine industry calls them its future.
February 20, 2008
WINE
Meltdown in your wineglass?
THE "post-classic" era of winemaking is dawning, according to experts at the second Climate Change & Wine conference in Barcelona, Spain, at the end of last week. And it's going to be full of nasty surprises.
February 6, 2008
WINE
Oregon Pinot Gris puts flash in the glass
IN the glass, Pinot Gris is anything but "gray" -- it's sort of a golden green, pea-tendril-shot-with-sunlight color -- but when you bring it to your nose, you might feel a little lost at first. In the best Pinot Gris there is often an evocative, between-the-cracks quality to the aromatics that makes them hard to grasp.
January 16, 2008
WINE & SPIRITS
Pinot Noir: Spreading the wealth
SOMETIMES it seems as if Pinot Noir isn't so much a beverage as an exclusive private club. Scan the pages of wine magazines and you'll find glowing reviews on a bewildering array of Pinots from unfamiliar wineries, each with tiny, hundred-case productions, lovingly extracted from tiny, single vineyards, even from tiny blocks of tiny, single vineyards.
October 28, 2007
CALIFORNIA | WINE COUNTRY
In Glen Ellen, savoring Sonoma beyond the wine
Glen Ellen, Calif.
September 19, 2007
THE 2007 HARVEST
In Napa, deus ex machina?
Napa Valley vintners had already started buzzing about a promising 2007 vintage when Aug. 27 dawned and pandemonium broke loose. Temperatures soared above 95 degrees and stayed there for 10 days. Irrigation systems across the valley were cranked up high to pump water into grapes that otherwise would have turned to raisins. Harvesting whatever was ripe as fast as they could, every available crew worked from midnight to noon without a day off.
September 5, 2007
SANTA BARBARA HARVEST
William Foley's winery shopping spree
The Santa Barbara wine world is buzzing about the recent sale of Firestone Vineyards to William Foley of Foley Estates Vineyard & Winery. The deal, part of a plan by Foley to build a wine producing and distribution empire, has fueled speculation about what the founder and chairman of Fidelity National Financial Corp., a multibillion-dollar title insurance and claims-management services company based in Jacksonville, Fla., will buy next.
September 5, 2007
SANTA BARBARA HARVEST
Five great Santa Barbara vineyards to watch
Pick up a bottle of Santa Barbara County wine and, if it costs more than $25, it's likely to have the name of a vineyard on the label -- a designation that tells you where the grapes were grown. Since almost all the region's better wines designate the vineyard source of their grapes, you've probably seen Bien Nacido Vineyard or maybe Clos Pepe or Melville on labels. Lately, some truly exceptional wines have been carrying a few new names: White Hawk, Purisima Mountain, Larner, Cargasacchi and Westerly. These are the exciting young vineyards to watch.
September 5, 2007
SANTA BARBARA HARVEST
A Santa Barbara wine country picnic
The dusky leaves of the gnarled live oaks undulate in the breeze, and acres of Syrah and Grenache and Sangiovese vines stretch out before you. A couple of cows make slow progress down the golden hills in the distance; there's the faint music of a fountain, a clink of glasses, a rustle of leaves. You break crusty bread, slice into a softly collapsing cheese. A plate of figs, a bunch of grapes, a glass of wine.
April 1, 2007
That's Right, Lodi
James Cameron couldn't have scripted it better, the way 76-year-old Wanda Woock, grande dame of the Lodi wine country, pointed a finger at her gold brooch and then at a photograph of the very same brooch a hundred years back, glinting like pure Hollywood magic on a young woman's lace collar. Peering out from a gilt frame on the wall of the rustic tasting room at Jessie's Grove Winery, the young woman looked familiar. So I asked: "Is that you, by any chance?"
April 1, 2007
One Wild Ride: Exploring Santa Cruz's wine country
On the continuum of things that make no sense to me, spitting good wine into a tin bucket falls somewhere between intelligent design and every David Lynch film I have ever seen. And so, even though "spitters" would crucify me for it during my eight-hour speed-tasting tour of Santa Cruz Mountains wineries, I was determined to drink up. A rising blood alcohol level would help me deal with my friend Rod, who had yet to apologize for abruptly blowing off my East Coast wedding three years earlier.
April 1, 2007
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA | WEEKEND GETAWAYS
Wineries fill the lodging gap with style in Paso Robles
On one corner of Paso Robles' main square—a charming place with a park and gazebo at its heart and a sweet mix of historic buildings, wine-tasting rooms and boutiques at its edges—is a clock tower shaped like an acorn. It is meant as a tribute to the oak trees that give the area its high visual drama. And although Paso Robles without its oaks would be, well, pretty boring, you would think someone would have the good sense to monumentalize the grape, at the very least, and maybe even the olive, depending on whether this artisanal olive thing has legs.
April 1, 2007
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA | ANDERSON VALLEY | WEEKEND GETAWAYS
In the Anderson Valley, slow is beautiful
Even the silence is different here. Despite a woodpecker working furiously on the eaves of a not-too-distant water tower and the buzz of tractors trolling, the quiet—like the canopy of fog—settles around you, pulls you in and ultimately disorients you. I wake early to a dense, poetic mist on the vineyards and the local folk and bluegrass show "Humble Pie." I make some coffee and toast and watch the tractors and men in dungarees, at first startled by the activity; the view looks like a watercolor in motion. The fog gradually trails off, and when I check the clock it's already past noon. It would be enough to stay right here—as I'm sure many do—making a journey of simply this pastoral view, sitting on this wraparound porch for hours, drifting.
February 25, 2007
Napa Valley medieval: Castello di Amorosa
A castle is rising south of this small resort town that promises to be Napa Valley's most lavish tourist draw.
October 2, 2005
NEW ZEALAND
Maggie Barnett: Gardens, wineries and more
RAMBLE through the gardens, vineyards and parks of New Zealand on a three-week tour that begins Jan. 7.
June 5, 2005
DESTINATION: GREECE
A sunny view on Santorini
There we stood, on the side of a highway on this Aegean island's wine country. We were stranded. Darkness was about to fall.
May 8, 2005
WEEKEND ESCAPE
A wine region whose roads are less traveled
The approach to Thomas Fogarty Winery was just this side of too bucolic. Lupine and poppies lined the driveway, trellised wisteria hung over the picnic tables and swans (swans!) glided around a pond filled with lily pads. Inside the tasting room, a wall of windows faced steep vine-covered hills.
January 9, 2005
DESTINATION: CHILE
Garden of Eden, uncorked
My wife, Rosemarie, and I were riding in a horse-drawn wagon through one of the oldest vineyards in Chile. It was March, late summer here in the Maipo Valley south of Santiago. Snow was melting in the Andes, and in the fields of Viña Santa Rita, the vines were heavy with clusters of grapes.
November 28, 2004
Walla Walla: A little Napa in 'nowhere'
Native Americans named it Walla Walla, "place of many waters," but it's wine that's bringing the visitors to this town of about 30,000, once best known for its funny name and for a tear-free variety of onion.
April 8, 2004
ENTERTAINING
Bonding: $400 a bottle
Consider it more than a coincidence. Two identical silver Mercedes SL 55 AMGs sit side by side in the Zen-inspired courtyard of Jefery Levy's glass and steel 1960s house in Laurel Canyon. One belongs to Levy, a collector of rare wines, the other to Japanese chef Kazu, the proprietor of an eponymous gem of a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard. Great connoisseurs think alike.
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
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