Speaking of local wines and wineries that will be attending and pouring at today’s “A Taste of VC”, on last week’s Grenache Day Friday Sept 16, the wine samples of Garnacha from Spain that I was expecting didn’t arrive leaving me free to taste whatever I wanted! I was planning on opening one from The Ojai Vineyard or Twisted Oak from my cellar, but as I was at an afternoon meeting in Camarillo, on my way home I stopped by both Cantara Cellars in Camarillo and Plan B Wine Cellars in Ventura for a spur of the moment locally made Grenache!
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) November 28, 2015
So I must apologize for my absence here on Wine Predator. You see, I broke my wrist. My left wrist. At Thanksgiving. At a parking lot at Mammoth Mountain. I slipped on some black ice in my ski boots and went down HARD.
Which meant that during the final three weeks of the semester at Ventura College and three weeks of winter break I had a broken wrist.
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) December 11, 2015
Which meant that I couldn’t even open a bottle of wine. Unless it had a screwtop. And fortunately for me, I had a few from Tercero to enjoy, like this grenache on Dec. 21 for winter solstice:
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) December 22, 2015
Which meant that while I could lift a wine glass with my right arm, and get people to help with notes, and participate in plenty of twitter tastings, Continue reading →
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) October 28, 2015
Chocolate is a food of the Gods. So thought the Maya about chocolate and I bet you may agree.
You may not, however, know how time consuming the production of chocolate is: it takes 400 or so cocoa beans to make a single pound of chocolate. Those cocoa beans go through an intense process to go from raw bean to roasted and fermented to ground cocoa to a bar with sweeteners that you want to consume; this process takes from two to four days to make one bar of chocolate.
Wine also is a food of the Gods and very time consuming, especially if you want a wine to go with CHOCOLATE like a port or port style dessert wine.
Only fortified wine produced in the Douro Demarcated Region which conforms to the technical characteristics defined by the IVDP is Port
The maker must be registered and authorised by the IVDP to produce Port
The label must be approved by the IVDP
The bottle must bear the IVDP issued and numbered seal of guarantee
For Chocolate Day, I splurged and bought some chocolates and opened one bottle of Port and three dessert wines, and we tasted them together. While not all dessert wines are fortified with port, the ones I tasted are.
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) October 28, 2015
Oh yeah baby.
The chocolates: Marich chocolate strawberries, blueberries, and salted cashews; Divine dark chocolate with hazelnuts and cranberries. We also combined the chocolates with Lancaster caramels.
The dessert wines: Sandeman Founders Reserve Porto, Kachina Port Sonoma County CA, Cantara X Lodi CA, Silver Fifty Cask Santa Barbara County. Continue reading →
If you are in the mood for beautiful weather (70s and 80s) and gorgeous sunsets at the beach this Valentine’s Day with a generous helping of great wine and good food, then you should head to Ventura County for the Valentine n Wine 5 day event starting tomorrow Th. Feb. 12, continuing Friday the 13th, Valentine’s Day, Sunday, and all the way to President’s Day, February 16th.
balmy Ventura beach sunset Tuesday February 10
In addition to tasting at 11 area wineries plus several more wineries at the Custom Crush facility in Camarillo, with your passport you’ll experience: Continue reading →
If you’re not attending ZAP this weekend in SF, and if you’ve ever wondered how wine gets into the bottle, or if you’ve ever wanted to be involved in bottling wine or experience the workings of a winery, tomorrow is your chance Continue reading →
What’s my favorite wine for Thanksgiving? ZINFANDEL! It’s magical with turkey and ham, and it can stand up to all those crazy rich side dishes.
So what better time to celebrate zinfandel day but in November as we’re preparing for Thanksgiving and figuring out the wines we want to enjoy on this special day?
Today I’m heading over to Cantara Cellars in Camarillo CA where we will taste zinfandel from the Lodi region as well as other wines from Lodi that you might want to consider sharing with your friends and family on Thanksgiving, or other special occasions. We’ll be posting pictures and tasting notes with the hashtag #lodiwine if you want to follow along.
These are the wines that were sent to me as samples for the twitter tasting that we will be opening today from 5-6pm:
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 