Winervana Blog Posts

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Carmel Winery

Carmel Winery Private Collection
Carmel Winery Private Collection. Click here for tasting notes.

Carmel Winery Private Collection

The first mention of wine in the Bible appears in Genesis, chapter 9, verse 20, “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard.” The story goes on to recount some unpleasantness after Noah over imbibes, but there is no reason to go into that here. The point is, wine is as old as history itself, with some of its earliest beginnings in the Middle East. Indeed, references to wine appear hundreds of times in Scripture, through both the Old and New Testaments.
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Hook and Ladder Winery

Hook & Ladder The Tillerman 2005 and Hook & Ladder Chardonnay 2006
Hook & Ladder The Tillerman 2005 and Hook & Ladder Chardonnay 2006. Click here for tasting notes.

Hook and Ladder Winery

Looking toward his eventual retirement, in 1970 San Francisco firefighter Cecil De Loach bought 24 acres of old-vine Zinfandel in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County. For six years De Loach worked the acreage part time, selling grapes to other producers, as neophyte winemakers often do. In 1976 De Loach released his first wine, 1,000 cases of a vintage 1975 Zinfandel, and in so doing became one of the first Russian River wineries.

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Craggy Range Winery

Craggy Range Winery
Craggy Range Winery. Click here for tasting notes.

Craggy Range Winery

Although wine production started in New Zealand as early as 1819, that nation of beer drinkers didn’t really start to get serious about it until the mid 1960s, time-wise much like California. Real success didn’t come until the early ‘80s, however, with the varietal New Zealand has become famous for, sauvignon blanc. The first release to get wide attention was the 1979 from Montana Wines (New Zealand’s biggest wine maker) and an even more compelling product followed from Cloudy Bay Vineyards in 1985, finally putting “the land of the long white cloud” on the world’s wine-making map.

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Sonoma Vineyards

Sonoma Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot
Sonoma Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot

Sonoma Vineyards

Tom Klein graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1979, and established a career as a management consultant. In 1985, Klein received an assignment to evaluate the business of Rodney Strong Vineyards. He liked what he saw, and in 1989 he and his family purchased the winery.

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Migration Wines

Migration Wines
Click here for tasting notes.

Migration Russian River Valley Chardonnay and Anderson Valley Pinot Noir

Duckhorn Portfolio is the umbrella corporation of an expanding wine mini-empire. First came the flagship Duckhorn Vineyards, established in 1976 by Dan and Margaret Duckhorn to pioneer and feature premium Napa Merlot. (Duckhorn has a “second growth” label named Decoy, as well.) Next came Paraduxx in 1994, specializing in Zinfandel-based blends. This was followed by Goldeneye, which began making Pinot Noir in 1996.  Migration was established in 2001 to focus first on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

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Kourtaki Retsina of Attiki

Kourtaki Retsina of Attiki.
Kourtaki Retsina of Attiki. Click here for tasting notes.
Kourtaki Retsina

The Greek wine even Greeks won’t drink. At least, all of the Greek-Americans I know won’t.  And my local Greek restaurant recently quit carrying Kourtaki Retsina of Attiki (the only retsina they had), citing a total lack of demand from their customers. Quite a bold move, considering Retsina is routinely called the “iconic wine of Greece” and is ingrained in the food and drink culture of the nation. Continue reading “Kourtaki Retsina of Attiki”