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Recommended Wine Books for the Holidays

Fall and winter are two seasons that truly lend themselves to reading. I know there are always “summer reading lists” composed during vacation season, but I love to crack open a book when it’s cold or rainy outside and I have a bit of leisure time and solitude on my side. It helps if one is sipping a good vintage port and sitting beside a fire during these contemplative moments.

A Tour through Winemaker Daryl Sattui’s Napa Valley Ch•teau

About 14 years ago, rumors started to spread across the Napa Valley that long-time resident and vintner Daryl Sattui (owner of the famed V. Sattui Winery and tourist destination) was building himself a castle. I was living in the Napa Valley at the time, and many of the locals gossiped about how the castle would be gaudy, tacky, and would lead to the “Disneyland-ification” of the Napa Valley. Well, rumors be damned.

Tres Hermanas Vineyard & Winery

Luke Lindquist has winemaking in his blood. His father, Bob, is one of the most celebrated winemakers in the United States, having produced syrahs of great character, year in and year out, for more than 15 years under his iconic Qupe label. His brother, Ethan, has established a loyal following with his Ethan brand of wines. Now Luke, 32 years old and boyishly handsome, has joined forces with Santa Maria Valley’s esteemed Teixeira family, a well-respected agricultural family who farms row crops successfully and runs large herds of cattle.

Artist Bob Dickey’s de-Wine Inspiration

I met Bob Dickey a few years ago and identified him immediately as an artist. Dickey can be in a room full of people, all of them milling about, all immersed in their conversations about what it is they do for a living, or where they plan to vacation, and there will be Dickey : entranced by a certain slant of light coming through a living room window and illuminating a vase.

The Web’s Gift to Wine Lovers

It was bound to happen. All its old-world charm-visions of sun-ripened clusters hanging on the vine; cool, dark, fragrant cellars lined with oak barrels; teams of harvest workers picking pinot clusters by hand-doesn’t seem to lend itself to the computer age. But, in fact, many wine lovers these days discover wines, meet fellow wine lovers, and, yes, buy wine, all via the Internet.

Cellar-Worthy Discoveries

Like many die-hard, smitten, obsessed wine lovers, I am always on the lookout for new wines with which to fall in love. In order to become an object of my adoration, a wine must hold my interest, it must captivate my senses, it must make me want to return to it again and again by virtue of its complexity and charm, and, finally, it must have personality. When you talk about a wine’s personality, you enter the realm of the ineffable.

The Art of Wine Tasting without Getting Drunk

When I first started visiting wineries and tasting wine in earnest about 20 years ago, I was too embarrassed to spit out my wine. Besides, dump buckets are gross and the last thing I wanted to look into after tasting a nice wine was somebody else’s spit. Yuck. So, I’d go wine tasting (at that time, up and down Highway 29 in the Napa Valley) practically every weekend just to educate my palate, but, truth be told, there were numerous occasions upon which I really shouldn’t have been driving toward the end of a day of wine tasting.

Santa Maria Wine Country

Santa Maria Valley, long considered one of the premiere wine growing regions along California’s southern Central Coast for pinot noir, chardonnay, and cool-climate syrah, has formed its own vintners association. The association is following in the footsteps of associations founded in recent years in other county appellations, including the Santa Rita Hills Winegrowers Alliance and the Santa Ynez Valley Wine Trail.

A Matter of Taste

It turns out that talking about balance in a wine becomes a subjective undertaking pretty quickly. Some winemakers consider their wines balanced if they prove to taste integrated in their youth; if there is an ample amount of fruit, oak, and spice in a given wine, then it is, in their eyes, balanced. Other winemakers consider a wine to be balanced if it adheres to certain principles, such as if it is varietally correct. Does it possess a reasonable, but not high, amount of alcohol?

Warm Weather White Wines

I’m often asked to list my favorite wines, and my answer is always the same: It depends upon my mood, the food being served, and/or the weather at the time. I may love big, bold reds, but on a hot day, I crave a crisp white wine or a cold beer. I’m not saying you can’t have red wines during the spring or summer. In fact, I love a bold zinfandel with a backyard barbecued hamburger on a warm summer night, after the sun has gone down and the warm breezes mingle with cool ones coming off our coastline.

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