Tag Archives: Wine of the Week

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Iron Horse Vineyards 2006 Ocean Reserve

by jamesknight1 month ago in Wine, Wine of the Week.0 Comments

I AM GIVING. I AM SPARKLING. I AM LIMITED. I AM THE OCEAN. No, it isn’t the new menu from embattled raw food chain Café Gratitude, whose options from side salad to smoothie are famously upbeat and first-person: “I AM THRIVING, and, “I AM SUCCULENT.” Somewhat anomalously appearing on the label of Iron Horse Vineyards’ Ocean Reserve cuvée, this would {…}

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Hawley 2005 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

by jamesknight3 months ago in Wine of the Week.0 Comments

Sonoma County wineries are not special in at least this one detail: Every other tasting room has a “Winery Dogs” book for sale or on display, featuring a big portrait of their faithful pooch in coffee-table style. There’s Wine Dogs (including Robert Parker winery dog rating system), Winery Dogs of Sonoma, and Winery Dogs Gone Wild. Just kidding on that {…}

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Jack London Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

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

The Jack London Vineyard is a beautiful property perched on the foot of Sonoma Mountain. It’s easy to imagine the author surveying the rolling green waves of grapevines as he wrote the following salute in 1913, as reproduced on the back label of Jack London Vineyard wines: “I ride over my beautiful ranch. Between my legs is a beautiful horse. {…}

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Gloria Ferrer Royal Cuvée 2004

by jamesknight5 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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Open a Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Riesling for Thanksgiving

by jamesknight6 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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‘Wine’ down and eat up at D’Argenzio Winery

by tina6 months ago in Insiders Guide.0 Comments

If you want to start the weekend off right, head out tonight to Santa Rosa Vintners Square. From 5 to 9 p.m., celebrate Wine Down Thursdays. Through Dec. 15, this block party features wine from D’Argenzio, Sheldon, Krutz, and Squires. Food options include Street-eatz Flavors of the World, Matchbox,  Charlie Bruno’s Chuck Wagon, Karma Indian, and Ultra Crepes. The party {…}

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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, {…}