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Great Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir from Blair Estate
The land occupied by Blair Estate in the Arroyo Seco area of Monterey County has been in Jeffrey Blair’s family since the 1920s. Only in 2007 did Blair start planting pinot noir vines on the old ranch....
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Weekend Wine Notes: Now That We Don’t Have to Worry about Thanksgiving, Here...
Well, thank goodness all that Thanksgiving hubbub is over and the attendant brouhaha about what wine to drink with the turkey and dressing and sweet potatoes and so on, so now we can focus just on...
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50 Great Wines of 2014
Unbate your breath, My Readers, today I present the annual “50 Great Wines” entry, this edition for 2014. I posted to BiggerThanYourHead 135 times in 2014 and reviewed 582 wines. These 50 Great Wines...
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The Semi-Annual Mea Culpa: 12 Wines I Should Have Reviewed, Oh, Months Ago,...
I have used Wordsworth’s lines so often — “The world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” — that I won’t allude to them on this occasion but merely issue...
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Wine of the Day, No. 23
We don’t drink much merlot in our house because generally merlot wines made in California (and elsewhere in the world except for St. Emilion and Pomerol) tend to be rather uninteresting cadet...
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Wente’s Chardonnays
The name of Wente perhaps has been around so long that it does not conjure cries of joy in American wine consumers, but we have to remember that the family was pioneering in many ways. Now run by the...
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Weekend Wine Notes: It’s Not Too Late to Drink Rosé
Do I have to defend the right or necessity to drink rosé wines all year around? Do I have to man the barricades, go to the wall, belly up to the bar to convince nay-sayers that a shimmering,...
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Dan Lee Does Spain
Dan Morgan Lee and his wife Donna founded Morgan Winery in 1982, the first production being 2,000 cases of chardonnay from Monterey County. In the intervening 34 years, the winery has grown...
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Wine of the Day, No. 214
Just because the country is held firm in the grip of a Polar Vortex or Siberian Express or, as we like to say, “a damned freaking cold deep freeze,” doesn’t mean that My Readers should eschew white...
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30 Great Wine Bargains of 2016
So, My Readers, here is my annual list of the Great Wine Bargains from the previous year, except that, instead of offering you 25 examples, as I usually do, I provide 30, because there are so many...
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California Pinot Noir Catch-Up Day
Little preamble is necessary for this post. As the title implies, I’m catching up with reviewing a clutch — make that a case of 12 — pinot noir wines that I tasted from six weeks to six months ago....
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JFW’s Pinot Noirs: Carmel Road
Part of the portfolio of Jackson Family Wines, Carmel Road was founded in 1997 to exploit the possibilities for pinot noir in Monterey County’s Arroyo Seco AVA in the Salinas Valley, where the 415-acre...
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Weekend Wine notes: Six Sauvignon Blancs from Arroyo Seco, the Musqué Clone
If you’re like me — and I’m certain that in many ways we are alike and in many, probably more important ways we are not — the words “Arroyo Seco” would not burst from your lips if someone asked you,...
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30 Great Wine Bargains of 2017
I suspect that while many readers may find the annual roster of “50 Great Wines” interesting, they don’t necessarily find it essential. Today’s post, however — “30 Great Wine Bargains of 2017” — I hope...
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Sipping SIP-Certified Pinot Noir
What connects these eight pinot noir wines, besides a general geographical position along California’s Central Coast from Monterey County in the north to Santa Barbara County in the south, is that they...
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Pick Your Picpoul
The white picpoul grape is native to France’s Languedoc region, where its high acidity — the name means “lip-stinger” — is an asset in that Mediterranean climate. It is mostly a blending grape, though...
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Alternative Reds: Not Cab., Mer., or P.N.
No, friends, there’s not a darned thing wrong with cabernet sauvignon, merlot or pinot noir wines — unless they’re made in an overwrought, obtrusive manner — but they tend to dominate the discussion...
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Weekend Wine Notes: An Eclectic Array
Well, this one was fun. I offer 12 wines, mostly red but some interesting whites, deriving from regions and vineyards all over the place. The roster includes two California merlots of different but...
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The Third Day of Christmas with American Sparkling Wine & Cider: Bonny Doon...
The imagination and ability of Randall Grahm, owner and winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyards, are famously irrepressible. Those qualities reveal themselves delightfully in his Bonny Doon Sparkling...
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50 Great Wines of 2019
The annual “50 Great Wines” of the just completed previous year is a project I look forward to each January. It gives me the opportunity to share with My Readers the favorite wines I tasted or rather...
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