This Thanksgiving, we’re grateful for old vine zinfandel from Lodi!
With Zinfandel Day today, and with Thanksgiving coming up, my thoughts turn to zinfandel, my go to wine when it comes to holiday ham, turkey, or prime rib. It’s a wine that works well with many of the sides too.
While many know zinfandel as an inexpensive, fruit forward wine that pairs well with pizza or burgers, some people are making top shelf zinfandel, often from old or ancient vines, a red wine that is elegant as well as rich, spicy, and complex and worthy of sharing with friends and family on special occasions. They taste and feel like a high quality wine. People often dismiss Zinfandel possibly because they haven’t tasted the really good ones, so they don’t know how very nice a really good Zin can be.
A selection of old and ancient vine Zinfandel from Lodi: some of these vines are over 100 years old!
You are invited to join us for an old-vine Zinfandel virtual tasting on National Zinfandel Day November 15th at 3 pm PST. The virtual tasting will be presented LIVE on Lodi’s Facebook page with wine grower Keven Phillips of Michael-David Vineyards, owner and winemaker Kyle Lerner of Harney Lane Winery and Stuart Spencer winemaker of St. Amant Winery and the program director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission.
In anticipation of this event, Sue and I opened two high end Old Vine Zinfandel Continue reading →
Every year the Wine Bloggers Conference features live blogging where wineries have five minutes to pour and present their wines to a table of bloggers who then do their best to tweet and take notes. This year there were around 25. or 30 tables with 6-8 people at each. For wineries, it’s a great chance to meet with an engaged group. For bloggers, it tests you to see how well you can taste and find a story to share in five minutes. In the past, I tried to do tasting notes. These days, I am using my camera to take notes and I am more interested in capturing the story and noting whether the wine or the wine’s story caught my interest enough to investigate further.
This year the red wines ranged from Pinot noir to petite sirah and in price from around $20 to around $70. I was able to get 10 tweets up, one about each wine. Continue reading →
But for these meal we loved the idea of pairing duck with Duckhorn — and as the Wine Pairing Weekend group is exploring American Wines for an American Meal with an eye on Thanksgiving, we thought this would fit right in. Continue reading →
Yes that’s what happened today November 10, 2017 at the Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa: Live Wine Blogging that included a range of white, rose, sparkling and even non-alcoholic pot infused wine!
In live wine blogging, a winery rep, often the wine maker or someone else very close to and knowledgeable about the wine, presents the wine in five minutes to a team of 6-10 avid bloggers who hang on every work and instragram and tweet every moment. Many of us, myself included, used to live blog it, sometimes producing a series of posts about each wine in five minutes or publishing one post about all of the wines. I was always impressed by Chris Watkins formerly of Ridge Vineyards who would tweet his notes in haiku!
These days most of us focus on tweets or instagram posts. For myself, I find that campaign the moment in photos and a few choice words is more valuable but it is different than taking notes. I’ve found I just can’t do them all at the same time: take photos, tweet, and blog.
Also the first year, back in 2008, we tried to live blog white, rose, sparkling and reds and that was just way too crazy making!
These days it is broken up into two sessions, white/sparkling/rose and red. Red wines are up tomorrow!
Regardless of how it is done, it is very intense and you want to get your best game on! For me that also means remembering to bring in crackers to refresh my palate.
Happy wine writers flash their Petite Sirah stained teeth at Dark and Delicious hosted by PS I Love You
If you are in the wine industry, you need to listen up, because we are going to talk teeth today on Wine Predator.
Talk teeth? Yes, talk teeth RIGHT NOW because over 400 or so industry professionals are gathered in Santa Rosa for the Wine Marketing and Tourism Conference followed by the Wine Bloggers Conference.
And what does that mean? A LOT OF WINE IS GOING DOWN!
Now don’t whine: I’d rather talk about WINE!
Don’t ask: Who wants to talk about teeth except a dentist or an orthodontist?
Being in the wine industry can be hard on your health. I know– it’s the price we pay for this awesome lifestyle and opportunities to taste amazing wines paired with stunning food!
I mean just look at this recent BRUNCH from Skinner in El Dorado County Continue reading →
When your team is in the World Series or another BIG GAME , you need to watch it on a really nice screen. Better yet with good friends, good food, and good wine!
Because we don’t have TV, we hit up Myr and Charles and they were happy to host us especially since my husband offers to do most of the cooking! He roasted brussels sprouts, seasoned and BBQ’d a tritip and two slabs of salmon, Myr roasted pumpkins and cooked lentils for a salad, and we all contributed to a cheese tray.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 