Camins 2 Dreams winemakers Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribó in their Lompoc tasting room.
“Wine adds a smile to friendship and a spark to love,” says Italian novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer Edmondo de Amicis (October 21 1846 – March 11 1908.
Nowhere is this more true than at Camins 2 Dreams, which we learned last weekend on a winery visit “off the beaten path” with wife and wife winemakers Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribó.
Read more about these Oregon wines and pairings here:
I write about food and wine, so it would be expected that my social media has pictures of both, right? And because we’re total cheese whores around here, there’s lot of photos of wine and cheese. Oh and oysters! After that, believe it or not, I take and post a lot of pictures of wine and sushi.
Even on National Wine and Cheese Day there’s pictures of sushi with wine! Continue reading
CA Cab franc
While Cabernet Franc is best known as a Bordeaux blending grape, you’ll find it in France’s Loire Valley on its own, and more and more wineries around the world are showcasing Cabernet Franc alone including these four California wineries: Continue reading
This is my 1000 post on Wine Predator.
“Congratulations on writing 1000 posts on wine predator!” says WordPress.
As such, it seems appropriate to make it about “Local Love, Local Wine” because while I first started going wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma then worked at Ridge Vineyards in the early and mid-80s, in the mid 1990s, I got back into wine as the Art Predator by writing a newspaper column that included “all that engages the whole soul” from art to literature to film to wine to food, all local. I didn’t make a lot of money in that gig, but I did have trade: free food and drink at many area restaurants.
One of the restaurants, the long gone Nora’s of Ojai, featured wines from The Ojai Vineyard Continue reading
Two wines from the JURA, France
Four years ago almost to the day was the first time both my writing partner Sue and I had our first tastes Vin Jaune and Trousseau, from Jura, a mountainous region in Eastern France, near Italy and Switzerland.
In our naiveté, we thought they’d be like other red French wines. Sue researched and developed a menu of classic rich creamy and mushroomy dishes to pair with the split of Vin Jaune and the Trousseau. With six adults, and October being MerlotMe, we figured these dishes would work well with several expensive Napa merlot wines.
But surprise surprise: Continue reading
#MerlotMe with meatloaf! How could it take us so long to try this combination? Continue reading
The Ojai Vineyard’s General Manager Fabien Castel
“To make great wine you can’t be greedy,” says Fabien Castel, General Manager at The Ojai Vineyard.
Sue Hill and I are standing with Fabien Castel and winemaker Adam Tolmach in the The Ojai Vineyard estate experimental vineyard planted in 2017 with special UC Davis Pierce disease resistant hybridized vines — two reds and two whites– that will be blended into an as yet to be named wines. The white was just bottled and I’ve been promised a shiner– no label yet because they don’t know what they will call it.
Although the vineyard was harvested between two intense heat waves– 48 hours before this area of Ojai’s Ventura County reached 120 degrees– there’s still lots of ripe fruit for us to snack on.
And it’s good.
“Don’t you tire of eating grapes?” I ask Adam as he almost greedily enjoys handfuls of purple fruit. Clearly he still relishes this aspect of the business, forty years after he planted his first vineyard here along Creek Road, a route which leads to Ojai proper and The Ojai Vineyard Tasting Room on Montgomery Street which opened in 2010.
The Ojai Vineyard’s Fabien Castel with founder Adam Tolmach; Fabien has worked with Adam for 20 years now.
We’re near the end of a two hour conversation Continue reading
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 