Fourteen years ago, this little boy arrived and made me a mom.

Today is Mother’s Day in the United States, and so the perfect time to raise a toast to all the Mothers and Others who serve as MOMS and who mother and nurture small and large humans, plants, and other beings on this planet!

To all the moms out there:

thank you for all the love and compassion you show and you shower on this world.

Thank you for being a strong, beautiful person who stands up for what’s right.

And when times get tough, remember there are millions of powerful and creative women standing with you, ready to help.

Cheers! And I’ve got two lovely wines to toast you with! Continue reading →

Eight bottles of wine and eight of my favorite friends gathered at Drummer Diane’s to celebrate Malbec on Malbec Day last month — and what a celebration we had! What else would I expect when the gathering included many of my chosen family of friends from high school and/or Burning Man?

As I had a number of different Malbec in my sample collection, I thought it would be fun to choose two from each country: Argentina, Chile, France, and the United States (California and Washington) .

This also meant we had wine from three continents — North and South America plus Europe — and we had a range of price points: do you really get what you pay for? Then we could compare and contrast them to see if we could make any general observations.  Continue reading →

For this month’s Italian Food Wine and Travel investigation into Vermentino, a crisp, acidic, white wine commonly found in the Italian regions of Liguria, Sardinia and Tuscany, we focused on two from Tuscany and discovered that while the same grape and region they had two equally pleasant and completely different flavor profiles yet both paired wonderfully with our meal of oysters, lemony caesar salad  chockfull of salty anchovies and parmesan, fried calamari, and pasta carbonara. And they offer a great value!  Scroll on down to see what others drank and ate! Continue reading →

Today is Star Wars Day AND Sauvignon Blanc Day! Two of my favorite things!

To make it extra special, I’m in Lake County staying in a cabin in a hillside vineyard (more photos below) where I’m attending the Sauvignon Blanc Experience Continue reading →

As Earth Month 2018 draws to a close, we want to draw YOUR attention to the 2016 American Winery of the Year Bonterra, an organic and biodynamic winery based in Mendocino County California that I visited in November on a press trip before the Wine Bloggers Conference and which #Winestudio featured in January 2018.

Continue reading →

Fans of Oregon wine at The Line Hotel in Koreatown, Los Angeles

At Tuesday’s Oregon Wine Trail in LA, it was remarkable how many comments we overheard from people talking about how great the event was!  While some 330 people gathered in LA at the Line Hotel on Wilshire in Koreatown to get a taste of Portland and Oregon wine and culture, it never felt too crowded at the 50 wine tasting tables and there was plenty of amazing food to fuel us from Olympia Provisions, Salt & Straw Ice Cream, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, and the Oregon Cheese Guild. Continue reading →