VINOGRAPHY: a wine blog
Wine and food adventures in San Francisco and around the world
~ Recently in Undiscovered Wines Category ~
Cooper-Garrod Vineyards, Santa Cruz Mountains: Current Releases
One of the greatest joys in my life remains the feeling I get when stumbling upon a small winery whose name rings no bells, but who produces excellent wines. I don't know why this is, exactly, but it has replaced the childish joy I used to experience as a young boy when finding a small crystal on a hike, or setting a new personal record for stone skipping on a pond. Little wineries with high quality wines are like buried treasure, I guess, but these days my goal is not to hoard but to share as widely as possible. Which... continue reading 
- Posted by: Alder on March 15, 2008 7:15 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2003 Meyer Family Cellars Syrah, Mendocino
There are some California appellations that need no introduction, others that will ring a bell for experienced wine lovers, and only a select few that nine out of ten people will likely never have heard of. Up until a few years ago, the Yorkville Highlands was one such appellation. These days, it's hard to tell whether it still languishes in obscurity or is gradually making its name known to lovers of California wine. Every time I meet a winemaker or winery marketing person from the area, however, after telling me where their grapes are grown, they always briefly pause,... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on November 3, 2007 5:39 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2005 Kindred Wines "Amber Ridge Vineyard" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley
The Northern California wine scene is like a giant spreading metropolis. I think I read a few days ago that a building over 20 stories is completed in Shanghai every 12 days or something crazy like that. Northern California wine country is experiencing its own boom of expansion, and wineries big and small are popping up all over. One of my greatest joys is looking through the nooks, crannies, and back-alleyways of this boomtown for brand new wines that have a great future ahead of them. While the search is fun, finding them can be exhilarating -- an adjective that... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on October 5, 2007 10:50 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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The Best of Brazilian Wine: My First Taste and Impressions
Call me curious, or just call me a big geek, but I get really excited when I get the opportunity to taste the wines from somewhere I've never tasted before. So when the invitation came in to attend an event focused on the wines of Brazil, I jiggled some appointments around and snuck out of work for an hour last week and spent some time on my "other job" -- the intrepid global wine explorer. My experience with and knowledge of Brazilian wine before this tasting amounted to a big fat zilch -- never tasted it, never talked about it,... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on September 22, 2007 7:51 PM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2005 Toucan Wines Zinfandel, Arroyo Grande, California
I find out about the wines I review here on Vinography in a lot of different ways. Most common are the large tastings that I attend regularly. I also try to go tasting in wine country whenever I can, making special efforts to stop by new wineries or those to which I've never been. Of course, I also get sent a lot of wine in the mail, from people known and unknown, and I do my share of reading wine magazines. This particular wine, however, I discovered long before it was even harvested and bottled for the first time.... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on April 14, 2007 1:16 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Farella Vineyards: Current Releases
To say there are "undiscovered" areas of Napa Valley may be overstating the case a bit, but there are certainly a few areas of California's most famous wine valley that most wine lovers have never heard of, let alone visited, no matter how many times they've been to Napa. The small, shallow valley of Coombsville is one such place. Literally off the beaten path, this area of Napa Valley that lies east of the city of Napa cannot be found by traversing Highway 29 or the Silverado Trail, the two main arteries of Napa. Instead one must strike out east... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on April 7, 2007 5:29 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2005 Baker Lane "Hurst Vineyard" Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
Some people seem to get into the wine business through sheer determination. After years of saving, scraping, dreaming and planning, vineyard or winery ownership is the fulfillment of many people's long held (if not hard earned) fantasies. And then there are those people who somehow seem destined for it -- people whose stories you hear and you think, how on Earth did you manage not to do this earlier? If Stephen Singer was going to fall into one of these categories it would most certainly be the latter. In 2003 he became the proprietor of a small winery called Baker... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on March 4, 2007 8:41 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2005 Segue Cellars "Segue" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Sonoma
People have asked me many times if I ever think about making wine. Its something that I would love to do eventually, if only for the opportunity to learn a lot of things about wine that just can't be learned from books or purchased bottles. I'm sure I'd also appreciate good wine even more after struggling to make something passably mediocre in my first attempt. Eventually I know I will need to make wine because, honestly, how can I sit here and criticize the efforts of winemakers without knowing what they go through? This lack of hands-on knowledge must... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on January 16, 2007 10:35 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Cameron Hughes Wines, San Francisco: Current Releases
The continued evolution of the global wine marketplace has made many things possible for many people. Small regional wineries that couldn't survive, let alone exist twenty years ago are now thriving because there are folks out there like me and you that are looking for just the type of wines they are producing. Likewise, the proliferation of estateless wineries (bonded, licensed wineries that own no land and may even rent their winemaking facilities) has exploded in California in particular. Finally, a relatively recent phenomenon for California and the US (though old news to the negociants in France) has surfaced in... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on July 30, 2006 5:36 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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2004 Arista Winery "Harper's Rest" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, CA
I first learned about Arista Winery late last year when I had the opportunity to taste what the winery called it's "first commercial release." They had made some wines before, under different ownership and with different fruit, but the winery had recently been revamped, and its owners were aiming for a fresh start. And quite a start they got. Their initial wines were excellent across the board, and their new tasting room, set back among the oaks and rock outcroppings in the rolling hills near Healdsburg, was stunning. The winery has just released its "second" vintage under the new ownership... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on July 16, 2006 9:28 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Rivers-Marie Winery, Sonoma: Current Releases
The creation of a new winery is always an exciting thing, especially when it is founded with the goal of being small, conscientious, and expressive of a particular place and grape. By exciting, I mean especially exciting to me. Like turning the corner in a new neighborhood and discovering a tiny shop that sells exquisite crafts, or finding a hole in the wall restaurant that serves the perfect version of a favorite dish, tasting a great wine from a recently begun boutique winery is one of my favorite experiences in the world. We hear a lot (and I certainly write... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on June 27, 2006 10:22 PM
- Filed under: Boutique Wines , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Harrington Wines, San Francisco: Current Releases
Our mental images of the single-minded winemaker who long ago forsook all but one grape in the pursuit of something nearly spiritual in wine, tend to be sepia colored and involve the backdrops of small villages in the European countryside. These men (and women) who work, often alone, in both the vineyards and the cellar to master the equation of one grape + one barrel + one vineyard on a personal level seem decidedly Old World. Over time, I have found a few new world examples of such winemakers, holed up in small towns or in the far reaches of... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on May 25, 2006 9:29 PM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2003 Puccioni "Old Vine" Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma
On our recent trip to Mendoza, Argentina, we visited and tasted wines at a number of wineries that the locals referred to as "renovated." I've forgotten the specific term in Spanish, but they were referring to the increasingly common practice of new owners re-opening long shuttered wineries in the area. New owners (occasionally descendents of the original founders) were reviving old vineyards, remodeling or rebuilding old winery facilities, and generally building on the shoulders of a huge, vibrant wine industry that dried up around the same time that Prohibition was putting the final nail in the coffin of a similarly... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on May 21, 2006 5:20 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2002 Holdredge Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, CA
There is a whole class of wines in Napa and Sonoma that represent dreams in the process of being realized. These small efforts are usually what I like to call "estateless" wineries. Such wineries are the work usually of one or two individuals (surprisingly often a husband and wife team) who have made tentative but substantial steps towards a goal of becoming winemakers. Often, these people are doing this work in addition to their day jobs -- sourcing fruit after hours and on the weekends, taking classes in winemaking in the evenings, requesting a couple of extra days off work... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on February 14, 2006 7:50 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2003 Parallel Wines Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
Even though it's the middle of January, and the rest of the country, and much of the Northern Hemisphere is still coated with snow (the ski season is probably at its peak right now) it is Spring in Northern California. The hills are greening, some species of Magnolia are blossoming, and mushrooms are popping up on the forest floors as the rains become more intermittent and we start to get days of sunshine. Mushrooms aren't the only things popping up, seemingly out of nowhere. So are new wine labels. Many are new ventures by new people, but occasionally a label... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on January 18, 2006 5:23 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Arista Winery, Healdsburg, CA: Current Releases
It's always exciting for me to try new wines from brand new wineries, and its doubly exciting when the wines are actually good. Lots of people spend an awful lot of time and money creating wineries in Napa or Sonoma and end up with wines that are barely noticeable in the sea of average wines available from the region. If the inaugural release of wines from Arista Winery weren't noticed, it certainly wasn't because they were average. I guarantee that while you might not have heard of this Sonoma winery, if you enjoy Pinot Noir you will hear about them... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on January 11, 2006 9:59 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Cameron Hughes Wines, San Francisco: Current Releases
The continued evolution of the global wine marketplace has made many things possible for many people. Small regional wineries that couldn't survive, let alone exist twenty years ago are now thriving because there are folks out there like me and you that are looking for just the type of wines they are producing. Likewise, the proliferation of estateless wineries (bonded, licensed wineries that own no land and may even rent their winemaking facilities) has exploded in California in particular. Finally, a relatively recent phenomenon for California and the US (though old news to the negociants in France) has surfaced in... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on November 28, 2005 10:11 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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2002 Match Vineyards "Butterdragon Hill" Cabernet, St. Helena, Napa
The more young winery owners I meet, the more I keep hearing the line "If you had asked me six years ago if I were going to be making wine right now, I would have laughed in your face." It's amazing how many people seem to accidentally fall into making wine. And I say that without any trace of sarcasm. I really do keep meeting people who tell me stories that make it clear that they've just sort of found their way there. The journeys that they relay seem to to have an aspect in common, that I have a... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on November 17, 2005 7:32 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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Halleck Vineyards, Sonoma: Current Releases
One of the things that I love about Sonoma County and its wines are the little nooks and crannies that seem to exist, more so, I think, than in its more famous neighbor to the east. While there are small bits of Napa Valley that play host to little vineyards, most of the real estate, at least the vineyard covered real estate, is well known. In Sonoma County and its appellations on the other hand, there exists much more of a patchwork of wine growing, with little hidden vineyards here and there, and new ones sprouting up all the time,... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on November 5, 2005 7:35 PM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2003 Baldassari Family Winery Syrah, Bennett Valley, Sonoma
I've said more than once how energized I am by the new wineries that seem to be popping up every month or so throughout the state. Like mushrooms on the forest floor after a nice rain, they seem to appear out of nowhere. Many of them are small family operations or even estateless wineries, but regardless of the form, they are usually the result of someone's dream, and so I'm always excited to hear about them. It's hard to get any more brand new than Baldassari Family Vineyards and this Syrah. They are a brand new winery, this is their... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on November 2, 2005 11:17 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2004 Quinta do Alqueve Fernão Pires, Ribetejano, Portugal
Perhaps we can make this week be about fantastic wine bargains. Earlier in the week I blogged about a great New Zealand Pinot Noir for about twelve bucks, now I'm telling about what might just be the best white wine I've ever had at the $11 price range. Let's start off by asking the most obvious question: Who was Fernão Pires anyway, and why is there an obscure Mediterranean Grape named after him? Well the first answer is that Fernao Pires is the same grape as one called Maria Gomes elsewhere in Portugal, which is where this grape makes its... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on October 7, 2005 5:29 PM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , White Wine , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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1999 Királyudvar "Lapis" Late Harvest Tokaji Furmint, Tokaj, Hungary
Let me get down on my knees and pray to the gods of wine drinking. "Please, oh gods who bestow blessings upon those who call themselves wine drinkers, let me continue to be surprised and delighted by random wines that I stumble across in my life. I don't need to taste the vintage of the century, and I probably can't afford it, but I really want to still be finding out about wines like this when I'm eighty-five." Of course, this is where the fantasy of being a sommelier comes along. Imagine spending your days actually hunting down these wines.... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on September 14, 2005 7:54 PM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , White Wine , Wines under $20
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2003 CrauforD "The Highlander" Sauvignon Blanc, Napa
The CrauforD Wine Company began as a conversation over dinner. Marilyn "Mama" Crawford Anderson sat at the dinner table and looked around at her daughter, a working winemaker, and her daughter-in-law, an accomplished viticultralist and vineyard manager. "There's just too much talent at this table for us girls not to be making our own wines," she said. She would know -- she and her husband were the founder and owners of Monticello Vineyards for years. Apparently a little encouragement and support from Mama Crawford was hard to ignore, especially when it came with a bit of start-up financing. So by... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on September 3, 2005 8:04 AM
- Filed under: Undiscovered Wines , White Wine , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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2002 Nicolette Christopher "Daniela" Pinot Noir, Carneros, CA
Hand-crafted is a term that has been abused by wine marketers and copywriters for a long time, but it still means something, and there are still winemakers who live up to its humble promise. There are a lot of small wineries that could qualify for the use of this descriptor, all at varying sizes, but you don't get much closer to hand crafted than a man, his wife, a friend, 5 barrels and 2186 pounds of Pinot Noir. Nicolette Christopher is a tiny winery started in 2001 by Chris and Nicolette Demetre. Like many small wineries, it represents the realization... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on August 12, 2005 11:14 AM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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2001 Strata Vineyards Estate Merlot, Oak Knoll District, Napa
While it's rare to find a winery dedicated to producing wines from a single varietal, it's even more rare to find one that produces a single varietal that ISN'T Pinot Noir. For some reason that grape seems to inspire the cultish, obsessive compulsive instinct in winemakers like none other. How refreshing, then, to encounter the little known wines of Strata Vineyards. Strata is one of those small projects that is becoming more and more common in the Napa valley: a labor of love by highly experienced, talented wine professionals who decided that retirement was boring and there's nothing better... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on June 14, 2005 5:23 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2001 Piña Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Howell Mountain, Napa
If one were to speculate on the wine market as a savvy investor might in the small-cap stock market, the game would be the same: follow people you know with good track records. In the wine world, we'd also have to include a corollary about betting on great vineyard sites, but that's beside my point. What I'm getting at is that good wines don't happen by accident. They're made by talented people, great vineyards sites or a combination of both. So my theory is that most of the time it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to stumble across... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on June 2, 2005 3:06 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews
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2003 Olson & Ogden "Sonoma Valley" Syrah, Sonoma
As regular readers know, I am very interested in small, family-run wineries. These come in several flavors in the industry, and one of the most interesting to me is the estate-less label -- those wineries who have no permanent physical presence. These types of operations have no vineyards, own no buildings, and sometimes don't even own any equipment. Such wineries are most often the result of someone taking small steps towards their personal dream of being in the wine business, and are often sources for great wines at reasonable prices. Olson & Ogden winery is a perfect example of such... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on April 21, 2005 10:24 PM
- Filed under: Red Wine , Undiscovered Wines , Wine Reviews , Wines under $20
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