June means June Gloom, the start of summer, school’s out, grads and dads, lots of festivals, concerts in the park and wineries!
In the vineyard, because California received an unusual amount of rain and had so much cloud cover and May Gray and June Gloom this spring, this means grape vines reaching toward the unavailable sun grew elongated and weak. What at first might seem like vigorous growth is not always the case.
When vines stretch like this toward the sun, it means etiolation.
With fresh salmon in season, what should you pair with it?
Whether it is Copper River, sockeye salmon, or King, when in doubt, get the Pinot Noir out!
But maybe you’ve been there and done that too many times and you want to venture beyond the tried and true and do something different.
Which is exactly what we did the other night: we tried two Italian RED wines, Italian wines that aren’t pinot noir (aka pinot nero). In fact, these are Italian wines that you may never have heard of but are interpretations of ones that might be more familiar than at first it seems! Continue reading
I bet I’m not the only one who comes running if someone so much as whispers “French Wine and Cheese”!
You could simply say brie, but you’d have me doing a 400 yard dash for
Major AOC cheeses: the size of the symbol equates to the size of production (from Wikipedia)
Do you know that wine is grown and made commercially in every state in the union? Many of these wineries are small and local, and some rely on grape juice that’s shipped in from more prolific areas, like California.
Throughout the Unites States, farmers are converting their pastures, fields, and orchards into vineyards — and growing grapes in some unexpected places. Continue reading
As the days get longer and sunnier in the northern hemisphere here, it’s time to think about wines for summer. We’ve got three suggestions for you from South Africa — where it is actually winter there!
And because #RoseDay is TODAY, June 8, two of our summer suggestions are — you guessed it — ROSE!
And because #CheninBlancDay is June 15, we have a Chenin blanc!
The previous time we focused on South African wine was in August of 2016 we learned the cuisine focuses on: Continue reading
With the Rosé Revolution still going strong after five years, you can find great rosé just about anywhere you look, and clearly the fascination with rosé is not temporary! (Note: this is an extended version of my rosé article published in the June 6, 2019 print and online editions of the VC Reporter about three local rosé ).
As rosé finds a permanent place in people’s palates Continue reading
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 