Searching for "Italy"


May
2017

Cooper Vineyards 2013 Estate Barbera

categories: Booze, Wine

The Cooper family has been farming in Amador County since 1919, when “Grandpa Cooper” left his San Francisco medical practice to tend a walnut orchard. Not until current owner Dick Cooper graduated from UC Davis in the 1970s did the Coopers consider grafting grapevines. But they wanted to think outside the Zinfandel box. Friend Darrell Corti, of Sacramento’s famed Corti Brothers grocery store, gave the Coopers a tip. “Mr. Corti pulled his pocketbook out, retrieved a $1 bill and wrote ‘Barbera’ and ‘Nebbiolo’ on it,” remembers Dick Cooper. With no Nebbiolo to be found, the Coopers turned to neighbor Cary Gott of Montevina Winery, who was willing to sell a bit of Barbera rootstock.

Today, Barbera is Cooper Vineyards’s’ flagship wine, the one that customers flock to the tasting room to buy in bulk.

(Read the full Amador County article on SF Chronicle)

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Mar
2017

Lombardi Wines 2014 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay

categories: Booze, Wine

What I love — what I really love about boutique wineries is that “single vineyard” is (often) a norm. And, I don’t want to be a wine snob or anything, but I’ve had the opportunity to taste the difference between an “appellation series,” a “vineyard series,” and “single vineyard series” as it pertains to the same winery and same varietal. And I have to say, the attention to detail given to the single vineyard series — whether from a major player or an up-and-comer — is astronomical. So you can imagine that when a small-lot winery, like Lombardi wines, stakes its whole business on two varietals (PN and Chard) that those vineyards are going to be quality sources and that the winemaker is going to take the utmost care to respect the fruit during production. So then it becomes — what I really love about boutique wineries is the quality of wine.

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Feb
2017

Hearthstone Estate 2013 Montepulciano

categories: Booze, Wine

I’d never heard of Hearthstone Estate until I was approached to taste their wines. Imagine my surprise when, upon opening the package, a bottle of Montepulciano was staring right up at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen, let a lone tasted, a California Montepulciano. I discovered — and fell in love with — the varietal when eating my way through Italy on my honeymoon. I know to those more versed in Italian wines, Montepulciano may seem like an everyday “bulk-buy” type wine, but to me it bottles the beauty I think of when I think of Italian culture — forza, forte, y la bella vita. What I’m saying is that this wine had a lot to live up to…

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Jan
2017

Book Review: Corkscrew by Peter Stafford-Bow

categories: Books

I came across this book when one of my Wine-Tweeps tweeted out that he was reading it. A sucker for anything literary and anything wine, I immediately threw it into my Amazon cart (along with like a 100-pack of k-cups, a pair of SJ Sharks earrings, new cereal bowls, a dishtowel to clean my Riedel stemware, and a kitchen sink…ah Amazon, the Target of internet shopping…). Not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, I highly recommend it — as a lit lover and as a wine lover.

WARNING: I was pre-disposed to British humour as a young child and have an affinity for blunt, tongue-in-cheek dialogue. I’m also not offended by the obscene, vulgar, or grotesque in writing, film, or life in general.

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