This first weekend of March World Of Pinot Noir returns to the exclusive Bacara Resort located on the coast just north of Santa Barbara.

Along with flowing pinot filling dump buckets will be buckets of rain and mud, so bring your umbrella and prepare for possible road closures!

That’s right, due to the extensive damage to the hillsides caused by the Thomas and other recent fires and predictions of a serious winter storm, this year’s World of Pinot Noir requires a bit more than a light jacket for cool evenings: bring an umbrella and a rain jacket — and you should consider some mud boots as well as planning on possible road closures, detours, and worse. Seriously: be sure to have cold weather clothes in your car along with snacks and plenty of water so you don’t indulge in that bottle of Pinot Noir I know you have tucked in there somewhere! Continue reading →

We’re with WALT! WALT wines, that is, with winemaker Winemaker Megan Gunderson Paredes and owner Kathryn Walt Hall for this month’s Wine Pairing Weekend Tribute to Women Owned Wineries and Women Who Make Wine in advance of Women’s History Month and World of Pinot Noir events in March AND  in recognition of Amy Bess Cook’s new venture that lists wineries owned by women using Sonoma County fruit (including Merry Edwards who we featured last March following a media tasting of her wines at World Of Pinot Noir in Santa Barbara). Continue reading →

photo of Breathless Sparkling Wine by Gina Shay #WineStudio

Cheers to Women Owned Wineries and Women Who Make Wine!

This February 10, here on Wine Predator, I’m hosting the Wine Pairing Weekend crew as we showcase some of our sweethearts who are women who own wineries or make wine — and food that pairs well with these wines.  Continue reading →

Okay wine friends, how long did it take you to realize that the Crocodile Dundee trailer during the Super Bowl WAS NO TRAILER?

You know the ad where it seems like it’s a trailer for Son of Dundee or some such and it’s actually a showcase for Australian tourism featuring a scene at a winery and starring Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride drinking Australian wine?

According to Andreas Clark, CEO of Wine Australia, in a press release dated Feb. 5, “The Super Bowl has the largest reach of any advertising platform in the USA, with more than 100 million Americans tuning in across the USA and many millions more people globally.” Continue reading →

Did you know:

1. 30% of Israeli wine brands are certified kosher, but they produce over 90% of the Israel wine industry’s output.
2. Wineries around the world craft special runs of kosher wine that meet the specifications.
3. All kosher California wine is made by fully kosher wineries such as Herzog Wine Cellars, Covenant and Hagafen with one exception:  Marciano Estate’s “Terra Gratia.”
4. Passover dinners feature red wine because that’s what Jews used during their Seders after they escaped Egypt.
5. Kosher wines range in price from $5- $500 with the average price at $25.
6. Bartenura produces the largest selling imported Italian Moscato in the U.S. — and while it is kosher, only a small fraction of the 5,000,000 blue bottles go to the kosher market.
7. Founded in 1848, Royal Wine Corp. has been owned and operated in the United States by the Herzog family, whose winemaking roots go back eight generations to its origin in Czechoslovakia; Sue and I visited Herzog last summer and wrote about it here.

As the Kosher world of wine expands with increased demands, exports and enthusiasm, you may be wondering: Continue reading →

What went down in January 2018?

In January we obsessed over Occitanie French wines and cassoulet as well as all things Fetzer via the January #WineStudio Program where we tasted three from the Fetzer label the first week, followed by their 1000 Stories wine aged in bourbon barrels, then Bonterra’s organic and biodynamic wines which we paired with recipes from their website, and finally, their new label Adorada, a wine that stimulates all of the senses. We also showcased Sonoma wines for #WinePW and continued the conversation about the wildfires that struck both ends of the state. Altogether I published five posts and about 7500 words on wine which is a good start on my goal of 108 for the year 2018!

What’s up for February 2018? Continue reading →