VINOGRAPHY: a wine blog

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2010 Rhone Rangers Tasting: March 27-28, San Francisco

I love watching the green buds burst forth on the trees this time of year, hard on the heels of the cherry blossoms. Yes, it's California, so the barest hint of any season gets me excited, but especially Spring. And with Spring in San Francisco comes lots of wine tasting events, and a few really good ones. The Annual Rhone Rangers Tasting in San Francisco is certainly one of the Spring highlights for wine lovers in the Bay Area. Held at Fort Mason, like all the other big tastings, Rhone Rangers offers the change for wine lovers to taste through... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 18, 2010 11:26 PM

Filed under: Wine Activities

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Brittan Vineyards, Willamette Valley, OR: Inaugural Releases

Expressed briefly, making a great wine is rather quite simple. You find the right piece of ground; you put the right grapes in; you tend them well and harvest them at the right time; and then you smash them together and nudge the product gently away from its tendency towards vinegar. For some people, the most important step is finding the right piece of ground, and for anyone looking to start a winery, it is certainly the first step. It's really important. If you get it wrong, the rest of the stuff doesn't matter. At least, that's the way that... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 17, 2010 11:44 PM

Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews

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San Francisco Vintner's Market: April 10-11, San Francisco

Sometimes you hear an idea and wonder to yourself, exactly why it's taken someone so long to come up with it. And the really good ones make you think, "now why didn't I come up with that?" That's exactly what I thought to myself when I found out about the upcoming San Francisco Vintners Market. It's a farmer's market, but for wine. Simple as that. Walk around, taste a bunch of wines, and buy the ones that you like. So incredibly straightforward it took years for someone to come up with the idea. But now all you gotta do is... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 16, 2010 10:54 PM

Filed under: Wine Activities

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Where Malbec Comes From: Tasting the Wines of Cahors

One of my greatest pleasures as a wine lover (OK wine geek) is learning about a wine region by tasting a lot of wines. While I prefer to taste on location, there's just no way I can possibly get to all the different places I'd like to learn about until I become independently wealthy or permanently retired (and wealthy). Which really means there are a lot of wine regions I'll never get the chance to visit. Luckily a lot of smaller wine regions are realizing that one way to improve the market for their wines internationally is the "wine roadshow"... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 14, 2010 11:24 PM

Filed under: Red Wine , Wine Reviews

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Vinography Images: The Golden Oak

The Golden Oak One of my favorite features of Northern California vineyards are the majestic oaks that shade many of them, breaking the regularity of the vine rows with their grand reaches -- Alder Yarrow INSTRUCTIONS: Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops. To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 12, 2010 10:25 PM

Filed under: Vinography Images

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El Dorado Winery Association Tasting: March 20, San Francisco

One of the trends in the wine industry I'm happiest about involves the increasing initiative that wine regions are taking in making themselves visible to the public. Such activities by individual AVAs, or American Viticultural Areas, produce two important results: increased awareness of the individual region, and increased awareness of the difference between regions for consumers. I'm in full support. Public tasting events are one of the chief ways such wine regions are producing this visibility. These events are not only a lot of fun to go to, they are a wonderful education. While visiting the region is the best... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 11, 2010 9:36 PM

Filed under: Wine Activities

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An Open Letter to Warren Buffett, Wine and Spirits Distributor

Dear Mr. Buffett, Congratulations on your purchase of Empire Distributing, and roughly 25% of the wine and spirits distribution business in Georgia and North Carolina that came with it. And welcome to the wine and spirits world -- we need more enlightened business people in this industry. I can't say that I've followed your career with precision, but I've read a decent amount about you, and try to read the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report every year. After all, I'm one of your shareholders, and I learn a lot from you and Charlie Munger. In everything I've read, you strike me... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 10, 2010 9:44 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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Wine, Health, Science and Journalism: A Study in Headlines

I consume a lot of wine news. When I say a lot, I mean literally almost everything that's published for free on the Internet about wine "passes by my desk" courtesy of Google Alerts, Technorati, a massive collection of RSS feeds, and more. Increasingly I get the opportunity to see how wine stories develop and spread through the Web's news outlets, and it's quite amazing to watch. Recently I've been watching with fascination as the mainstream press does its usual unraveling of some recently released research results focused on wine drinking in women and weight gain. Specifically, I've been giggling... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 9, 2010 10:53 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants , Wine News

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If Your Wine is Organic, Don't Tell Consumers

Apparently, organic wines taste better but consumers don't think they're worth as much money as conventionally produced wines. At least, that's a plausible interpretation of a study conducted by a UCLA professor and her graduate student that was recently published in Business and Society, the official journal of the International Association for Business and Society. Professor Magali Delmas and PhD candidate Laura E. Grant conducted an analysis of 13,426 wines from 1,495 California wineries for eight consecutive vintages from 1998 to 2005. The two tracked correlations between the scores of the wines, their prices, whether they were made from certified... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 7, 2010 5:41 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants , Wine News

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Vinography in the Saveur Blog Awards

I found out earlier this week that Saveur Magazine had quietly launched a set of awards to bring attention to the universe of food blogs. They happen to have a wine blog category and Vinography is one of the nominees. The others are Wine Camp, Lenndevours, Good Wine Under $20, and Enobytes -- all friends, and familiar company. None of us makes a living tapping away in our respective little corners of the internet, so, apart from the enthusiasm of our individual readers, such awards are among the few bits of official validation we receive for our efforts. If you... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 6, 2010 9:49 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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Italy's Best Wines: Tasting the Tre Bicchieri 2010

I pride myself on my broad tastes in wine. I like wine from everywhere, and don't believe I have a specific bias towards one region or another. However, each year, that claim is shaken a little as I emerge from what is one of the best wine tasting events held in San Francisco, The Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri tasting. For those unfamiliar with the Gambero Rosso, it is essentially an organization focused on the promotion and evaluation of Italian food and wine. Each year the organization publishes a guide by the same name. The Gambero Rosso is the Italian Wine... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 5, 2010 9:27 PM

Filed under: Boutique Wines , Wine Reviews

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Book Review: Continued Surveillance by Jake Lorenzo

Review by Tim Patterson. Wine writers love Jake Lorenzo's stuff; many wish they could write like him, or more precisely, get away with writing like he does. It's not so much the sheer literary quality of Jake's "mostly true stories of the wine business," the book's subtitle; it's the vantage point and the audacity. Jake Lorenzo is the rare wine writer who views the wine world from inside the industry, not as an outside observer dispensing judgments and scores. Better yet, he freely admits that he and his friends love to get hammered--common enough among wine writers, but rarely the... continue reading

Posted by: Tim on March 3, 2010 9:36 PM

Filed under: Book Reviews

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Wine Writers and Social Media: The Panel Video

As some of you know, I spent the week before last at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa. I published a recap of some of the highlights last week, but as some attendees pointed out, there was a glaring omission: the panel that I moderated that dealt with wine writing and social media. I left it out with the hopes that I would be able to get the video I made of (most of) the panel up online. It took me a while to get the 5 gigabytes of HD video online for your viewing pleasure, but I... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on March 2, 2010 9:29 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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2007 TAZ Vineyard Pinot Noir, Santa Barbara County

The good $15 Pinot Noir is the unicorn of the California wine industry. A mythic beast, highly sought after, no one is actually sure whether it exists or not. I'm always on the lookout myself, as it's one of the most frequent questions I get asked when people find out I review wines. Consequently, whenever I do come across something that comes close, I feel almost obligated to share the find. It's been some time since I visited the wines made under the brand TAZ, but a couple of bottles arrived recently and went into the tasting lineup and they... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 27, 2010 6:55 PM

Filed under: Red Wine , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20

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2005 Chateau-Grillet Vin Blanc, Rhone Valley, France

With just a quick glance at the bottle, you might think to yourself, "Oh, it's just some random little white wine from somewhere in France." After all, it's just a Vin Blanc with some unfamiliar name on it. But look a little closer, and you might start to get the idea that this isn't just any wine. For starters, the bottle is somewhat unusual, resembling something you might see in Germany or Austria. Indeed, it would be easy to mistake this wine as coming from the Alsace region of France for that reason. A slightly more studied glance at the... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 24, 2010 10:19 PM

Filed under: Boutique Wines , White Wine

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Napa's Best Cabernet: Tasting at Premiere Napa Valley 2010

One of my favorite events each year involves the opportunity to sample some of the best wines that Napa produces in a given vintage. At Premiere Napa Valley, an auction that serves as the world's most expensive "bake sale" to support the efforts of the non-profit Napa Valley Vintners Association, journalists like me get a chance to sneak a taste of hundreds of unique wines that are purchased by the nation's top wine retailers at staggeringly high prices. This year, as every year, 200 member wineries each crafted a unique auction lot of wine that in most cases represents the... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 23, 2010 10:14 PM

Filed under: Boutique Wines , Wine Activities , Wine Reviews

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Glass Wine Bottles Strike Back. In the Wrong Direction.

It's not every day I get the opportunity to display my inner cynic. But I'm still cackling at the little bit of fear mixed with preemptive aggression that manifested today in the form of a web site called Wine Loves Glass. Those who spend time in wine circles know a lot about the "threat" to posed to natural cork producers by the proliferation of alternative closures. In the face of shrinking market share and demand for their product (read: threat to their income streams) they've been striking back with a multi-pronged offensive, covering every base from carbon footprints to endangered... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 22, 2010 9:22 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants , Wine News

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Highlights From the 2010 Symposium for Professional Wine Writers

I spent most of the week playing hooky from my day job and pretending that the only thing that mattered to me was writing about wine. It was a lot of fun. Every one of the five years that I've attended the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers has been uniquely interesting, largely due to the group of attendees that joins us every time. In past years I've been able to blog a bit more in the course of the event, but this year I found myself using spare time to catch up on other things, so here are some of... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 20, 2010 10:58 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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Vinography Images: Wine Country Sunset

Wine Country Sunset Great sunsets can be found anywhere, but this particular one happens to be from Sonoma County's wine country. Just below the silhouettes of the trees, rows of grape vines lie in shadow. -- Alder Yarrow INSTRUCTIONS: Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops. To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 19, 2010 8:45 PM

Filed under: Vinography Images

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What Wine Writers Talk About

Those of you who also follow my twitter feed (see the little tab on the left hand side of my home page) will know that I'm spending the week at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers. This is my fifth year attending the Symposium, and my fourth year as a speaker. Tomorrow I lead a panel discussion featuring Steve Heimoff, Patrick Comiskey, Doug Cook, and Joe Roberts about the role of New Media in wine writing. But for the past two days I've been experiencing the symposium as a participant, which means hanging out with a lot of people who... continue reading

Posted by: Alder on February 17, 2010 11:13 PM

Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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