Just in time for the holiday season, today we celebrate that quintessential California wine, Zinfandel, on Zinfandel Day which is held the third Wednesday of each November.
The fifth most popular wine in the U.S., Zinfandel places around fourth in California in terms of production of fruit.
Today’s the third Thursday of November which means it’s Beaujolais Day, the day that the Beaujolais Nouveau is released.
Beaujolais Nouveau is a wine that was picked just a few weeks before, fermented, and bottled. It’s bright and fresh and meant to drink young. This was the first wine of the vintage but also, if you’d run out of wine, the first wine available. It’s a moment to reflect on the past year — and our hopes for the future!
Beaujolais Day is the perfect time to celebrate all wine from Beaujolais — and Gamay Beaujolais the grape too — as well as this year’s harvest.
A little less than a year ago, on Monday December 4. the Thomas Fire erupted near Thomas Aquinas College between Santa Paula and Ojai off highway 150. In spoken word performance piece that I co-created with Rasika Mathur and performed with her at the Lobero Theater, I point out that the Thomas Fire was started by “Thomas” Edison and I ask whether it will convince Doubting Thomas of climate change. At the event, Rob Write also performed the song featured in the video below.
As I write this, Ventura County is under fire once again. And that includes the Malibu AVA located near the ridge by the Mulholland Highway between the Pacific Coast Highway and the 101 freeway, which is under siege from the Woolsey Fire which started near the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks where 12 people were killed at a College Night by a man who also killed himself a few hours before on Weds. Nov. 7, 2018. Read more about Thousand Oaks in this personal essay here by Suzanne Roberts.
In addition to evacuation of people and pets, exotic animals are on the run also: Malibu Wines desperately needs help evacuating their giraffes that are part of the wild animal safari jeep safari they offer among the vines.
I imagine the zebras and other animals from the Malibu Wines Safari fit fine in the horse trailers but how do you move a giraffe — especially when the LA Zoo was also having to evacuate their animals because of a fire in the hills above Griffith Park.
UPDATE: THE ANIMALS ARE ALL SAFE.
UPDATE: Malibu Wine Safaris lied– they left animals behind.
Last year, as we were finalizing our Wine Pairing Weekend Calendar for 2018, it made sense to do Carmenere for November — what with Carmenere Day Nov. 24 and all.
But then we in California were hit with fire after fire, and that, added to the fires in Portugal and Spain as well as earlier in Chile made me think that we should focus on wines from fire struck regions; it’s an easy way to support them their time of need and to reflect ton all that we have to be grateful for. Continue reading →
In 2017, Duckhorn’s 2014 Merlot from their Three Palms Vineyard was named Wine Spectator’s #1 Wine of the Year. While Renée Ary has been a winemaker at Duckhorn in 2003, 2014 was her inaugural solo vintage.
November 7 is the day set aside each year to celebrate one of the most widely planted red wine grapes in the world —
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 