Category Archives{Wine of the Week}

Wine of the Week

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Ring in the New Year with Sparkling Korbel Champagne

by jamesknight4 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

Many times I’ve been an advocate for the go-for-broke approach to New Year’s Eve festivities, but after the holiday shopping has been done, many of us find ourselves, well, broke. Fortunately, few people sweat the bubbly, as long as it goes “pop,” and a cheap bottle grabbed on the way to the party usually does the trick. But is there {…}

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Gloria Ferrer Royal Cuvée 2004

by jamesknight4 months ago in Wine of the Week.1 Comment

Pop the Sparkling Wine Before New Year’s Eve You’ll notice that wine scribes everywhere are keen to advocate the wider use of sparkling wine, and perennially decry the narrow notion that it’s only a once-a-year kind of treat. You’ll also notice that at year’s end, they suck it up and churn out the obligatory “sparkling wine for New Year’s Eve!” {…}

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Truett Hurst Winery shows off Biodynamic roots

by jamesknight5 months ago in Tasting Rooms, Wine of the Week.0 Comments

While organic and Biodynamic farming is still perceived by some as a risky endeavor, who would have thought that the challenges would include belligerent sheep? When one of Truett Hurst Winery’s sheep – normally a docile sort – went errant in the parking lot, and decided that a visitor’s Lexus was its blood enemy, it went on the attack. Presumably {…}

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Open a Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Riesling for Thanksgiving

by jamesknight5 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

You know the holidays have arrived when San Francisco’s public radio station KQED announces that “This hour of news has been sponsored by Martinelli’s sparkling cider (no relation to Sonoma County’s makers of fine wine, Martinelli Winery).” The plug promises all the bubbles of champagne, but without the alcohol. That’s a fine, sweet and refreshing non-alcoholic compliment to the traditional {…}

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Freestone Vineyards 2009 Fogdog Sonoma Coast Chardonnay

by jamesknight6 months ago in Wine of the Week.1 Comment

It’s tempting sometimes to describe a wine more by what it isn’t than what it is, a pitfall that I often stumble into. It might be dismayingly unhelpful to the makers of wine, for one, and it’s a kind of backhanded smear on the other, nameless wines, entirely undeserved. I could say, for instance, that this isn’t a big, butterball {…}

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De Loach 2009 Russian River Valley Pinot

by jamesknight6 months ago in Wine of the Week.2 Comments

If you enjoy Pinot Noir without a thought or care for swirling controversy about alcohol percentages and tiffs over terroir, then bully for you. You must not be of that persnickety ilk, the wine writer—or heaven forbid, blogger. Concurrent with the rise of big, ripe Pinot that is fashioned from long hang-times and cellar practices both real and imagined, has {…}

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Wine Guerrilla 2009 Adel’s Vineyard Zinfandel

by jamesknight7 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

Why not Zin Guerrilla? Good question, because winemaker Bruce Patch created this brand with a single-minded focus on Zinfandel grown in Sonoma County. But when this label first appeared on local shelves, it was hard to know what to make of it. Each release bears novel artwork, at first depicting a cadre of lithe and wan revolutionaries, vaguely in the {…}

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Lynmar 2010 Rosé of Pinot Noir

by jamesknight7 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

Years ago, I was making own little batches of wine in the garage behind a big old rented house that I shared with three housemates. One day, the girlfriend of one of my housemates, a psychology major and a serious type not given to breezy chit-chat, asked me about the wine. Then she told me levelly, “You must have a {…}

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Claypool Cellars 2008 Purple Pachyderm Pinot Noir

by jamesknight8 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

Da-da da-da dunt. Da-da da-da dunt. Remember that? It’s a sound from long ago, when the long hairs were once again ascendant—and I had just cut my hair short—before the close-cropped late ’90s—I grew it out again, damn!—and a full two decades before our current era of long-locked musicians (better not push my luck). It was an age before Pandora, {…}

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Personal Service at Eric Ross Winery

by jamesknight8 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

It’s just as well that Dennis Mitchell isn’t behind the bar when I drop by this afternoon, because I’m empty-handed. The low-key, affable Mitchell, who manages the tasting room with wife Diane, won’t ask for a bottle of homemade wine from everyone who walks in the door, but if I’ve recently corked a new vintage, I’d do better to stay {…}