You never know who you will meet and what you’ll talk about during the 7-15 minute ride up on the mountain in the icy wind while in the confined space of a ski lift. Generally there are greetings and pleasantries about the weather and the ski conditions, where you’re from and where you usually ski. Topics are usually lightweight, often playful, always friendly. Over New Year’s we skied two days at Snow Summit at Big Bear in Southern California, then two days at our “home” mountain of Mammoth, then three days at Lake Tahoe.
It was on a lift at Squaw Valley about 10,000 feet in elevation that I recognized that the woman I was squeezed next to had a French accent. She and her husband grew up skiing at Chaminix in the French Alps, she told us, then she revealed that she grew up in Jura and her husband in Savoie.
Delighted, I asked her about the wines of the region and the cuisine they paired with them. Cheese, they said, and potatoes, especially cheese fondue, but what they loved with the wines most was chicken bresse, made with mushrooms and cream which she says she cooks in a dutch oven for 2-3 hours.
Did you know that last Tuesday, the final Tuesday of January, is National Plan Your Vacation Day?
If you didn’t, now you do!
But what we REALLY need is a National Plan Your WINE Vacation Day!
That’s when you open a glass of bottle of wine with a few friends, take out your calendars, and compare notes to plan to attend as many wine festivals and other wine country events in the coming year that you possibly can schedule! Whether you want small producers, Kosher wine, or pinot pinot and more pinot, there is a festival for you!
Today, here’s a focus on four festivals in California that celebrate “garagiste” winemakers, next up will be four Kosher wine festivals taking place around the world in the coming weeks, and finally, three festivals that are all about pinot noir Continue reading →
When you look at a bottle of wine, what do you see on the label?
You’ll see information on who made it, the country and region where it came from, the amount of alcohol in it, and usually you’ll find the vintage as well as a bit of misc info like whether or not it is certified as organic or biodynamic.
What you’re not likely to find is whether or not the wine is made by a cooperative a number of smaller producers band together to pool their resource in order to make a more affordable product.
Flagship wines from Flora Springs with a special dinner of filet mignon, cracked crab, and ceasar salad
This Saturday, February 1, is the annual Flora Springs “Trilogy” release party where guests experience the generous hospitality of Flora Springs when they pull out all the stops to celebrate the newest vintage of Trilogy, the 2017. Along with wine, enjoy food, live music and dancing from 11 am – 2 pm at The Estate located at 1978 West Zinfandel Lane, St. Helena.
But with the sale of the Komes Ranch, how much will change at Flora Springs? Will there be more Trilogy? What about Soliloquy, their flagship white wine? Continue reading →
That’s what we’ve been pruning in the Mitchell Vineyard in Saticoy, just east of the city of Ventura and only a few miles away from my home by the ocean in southern California. Continue reading →
As a lifelong Californian, I have experienced my share of fires. Growing up I remember my dad commuting from LA through fires in Malibu, and how scary that was. When I was very little, there was a fire on the hill above our Ventura house, and for the rest of my life when the sun sets at the right angle in the fall, the glint of the sun on the windows of the houses makes me wonder whether a fire is there or not.
In 2017, the Thomas Fire roared through my town taking out 300 homes, and the devastating mudflows in Montecito followed. In 2018, the Woolsey Fire took out a huge swath not far from home , and again in 2019, fire hit close by on South Mountain near Clos des Amis and where my son was at a slumber party, and other fires hit Ventura County too. If you add in the other devastating fires of the past few years — Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Tubbs, Atlas and more — Californians have lost a lot.
But this is nothing compared to what is happening inAustralia where over 46 million acres have burned. According to a recent article in the New York Times,
The area of 2019-2020 bushfires in Australia is larger than the country of Switzerland.
The area of the 2019-2020 fires in Australia is larger than the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
If the fires in Australia were in California, they’d cover 1/10 of the state.
In addition to vineyards being burned to the ground, smoke taint threatens the crop Continue reading →
What can make French wine confusing to newcomers is that often the name of the grape inside the bottle is nowhere to be found on the outside of the bottle.
That means to know what grapes are inside the bottle you have to know what is grown in the region named on the bottle.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 