Hey there! Yes that’s me sporting a chocolate mustache from Dellorees’s Confections in Placerville CA! We’re on a post International Food Bloggers Conference with a stop at the Farm and Table for some special bites (pictured) paired with wines from two El Dorado County wineries, Holly’s Hill and Lava Cap.
And now I am writing to you from a beautiful cottage at Lucinda’s Country Inn near Fair Play in the heart of El Dorado wine country.
I’m surrounded by the sweet lulling sounds of crickets, I can easily start a cozy fire in the gas fireplace when it cools off, I’m sipping on a Holly’s Hill red blend (pictured above), and soon I’m going to take a bath!
I’ve had an inspiring weekend at IFBC, and I’m looking forward to exploring El Dorado County more tomorrow before I drive home. But first here’s a few more fun people sporting chocolate mustaches!
Seems like California Wine Month this September sped by: somehow tomorrow is the final day of a month’s worth of festivities up and down the state! Continue reading →
This wine and foodie is very excited to be once again attending the International Food Bloggers Conference in Sacramento — America’s Farm to Fork Capital– which starts today, September 28 and continues through October 1, 2017. I’m bringing some great California wine for the end of California Wine Month– who wants to do dinner on Friday or Saturday?
Continuing our celebration of California Wine Month, Sue and I decided to compare and contrast two wines from Rock Wall Wine Company, both Petite Sirah: 2014 from Sonoma (SRP $35 on sale now for $28) and Napa (SRP $60). We tasted them as a TGIF and paired them with happy hour fare, and then later my husband grilled up a filet mignon with blue cheese for me. What a great way to end the work week! Continue reading →
If you went just about anywhere last Thursday Sept. 21 on the last day of summer, you would have likely seen a lot of harvest activity, and in wine country, you’d see grapes getting picked and hauled along windy roads to crush pads where they will go from being grapes to a fermented beverage — wine — in your glass.
September is California Wine Month, and for California Wineries, it’s definitely harvest time, especially after the late August/early September heat spike, which means everyone is BUSY BUSY BUSY!
It’s wonderful to get out into the vineyards if you can to see the vines plump with fruit, or to visit a winery and see the process in action.
But as I mentioned in the earlier post, for Kosher wine giant Herzog, Jewish Holy Days during harvest means they close down several times and for several days during the busiest time of the year.
In addition to closing on Fridays at sunset and all day on Saturday, Herzog shuts down for the major Jewish holidays even during harvest: for Rosh Hashanah (last week’s New Year’s celebration), then closure for Erev Sukkot on October 4, then closed for Sukkot October 5 – October 6. The restaurant and tasting room are also closed, and on these dates as well: for Hosanna Raba on October 11, for Shemini Atzeret on October 12, and Simchat Torah on October 13.
Yom Kippur, meaning the ‘Day of Atonement,’ is the holiest day of the year, and this year occurs when Herzog closes on Friday and Saturday. Yom Kippur 2017 begins in the evening of Friday September 29 and ends in the evening of Saturday September 30. To mark the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’, Jews fast for 25 hours and pray devoutly for most of the day, with five different sessions – Maariv, Shacharit, Musaf, Minchah and Neilah.
In July, well before harvest, Sue and I visited Herzog. With head winemaker Joe Hurliman as our guide, we toured the facility, saw the bottling line, learned the history, and tasted through a number of California wines. Continue reading →
Right NOW is the middle of harvest season in California: after months of preparation, it is finally time to pick the grapes and start them on the next step in their journey to become wine. Grapes have been coming in since August and now it is in full swing.
In wine country, it is hectic. Often wine grapes are picked in the middle of the night to early morning to get the right amount of sugar in the grapes.
Knowing how crazy it is and how hard everyone works this time of year, I was shocked to learn that Herzog and other Jewish wine-making facilities completely shut down for four days during harvest because the religious holiday of Rosh Hashanah comes first.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 