Hello, and welcome (back) to your weekly dose of what-I’m-reading, weekly-wine-headlines extravaganza. Not an exhaustive list this week, as I literally decided to (re)start doing this, um, yesterday. 🤷♀️😂
What is up with me, you ask? (Or not, too bad.) Working away on more freelance stuff (yay) that I hope to be sharing soon(ish) and also chipping away and cleaning up this old-lady of a website. No major revamp in the near future, but at least get her up and running again. ie: A wee bit ‘o’ botox, not a full on facelift.
Also contemplating other fun, independent social engagement…things and stuff. I don’t know—how would you all feel about a podcast?
Just throwing it out there.
Anywho…for now please enjoy a few newsy items below. Happy weekending.
Hello—does anyone visit anymore? I know I haven’t in a long while. Hah. Well for those of you that do, thank you. Appreciate you. I’ve written loads of articles since my last post, and I should (will!) update my portfolio soon enough. But, in the meantime, I want to blast out about a podcast I was recently a guest on. If you listen (and I hope you do), let me know how you liked it.
Below is a link to the podcast homepage, but of course you can listen to it on Apple, Spotify or wherever you prefer listening to your casts. Please enjoy and thanks for listening!
Stacy Briscoe, Managing Editor of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, joins Laura this week to share her journey into wine journalism and wine education. She tells us how she got her start and discusses her focus on regenerative agriculture, which she has written about extensively. Laura and Stacy discuss the experience of being a woman in the wine industry and the importance of having a supportive network, and Stacy shares some of her favorite wine recommendations.
Stacy joined Wine Enthusiast in 2022 after freelance writing for the publication for several years. Previous to this role, she was the managing editor for Wine Industry Network, the assistant editor of Wine Business Monthly and staff writer of Wines & Vines magazine. She has also written freelance for numerous publications including SevenFifty Daily, Sonoma Magazine and the SF Chronicle, among many others. Stacy regularly speaks at wine industry events, has completed her WSET Diploma, teaches WSET courses at the Napa Valley Wine Academy and, most recently, has been accepted as a Master of Wine Stage 1 student. Listen here.
Custoza, if you’ve not heard of it, is located Northern Italy in the Provence of Verona—comprised of nine townships, named after village of Custoza, a hamlet of Sommacamapgna. The hills originate from glacial deposts between Verona and Lake Garda – massive amount of deposits created an incredibly complex and variable soil situation. The main soils are calcareous clay, interspersed with gravelly rocks and sand. It is this soil structure that greatly differentiates Custoza from surrounding DOCs. It is the soil that creates a uniqueness to the white wines produced, providing a savoriness that will make any doubter of the reality of ‘minerality’ a true believer.
Maps courtesy of the Consorzio di Tutela del Vino Custoza DOC
I find Santa Barbara wine country so interesting. As a kid, Santa Barbara always meant vacation—hot days, sandy toes, beach water I could actually swim in. (If you grew up along the San Francisco shoreline, you know what I mean when I say Pacific Beach is never that welcoming). So, it’s interesting that a placed perceived as a summertime getaway where board shorts and flip flops are basically the dress code, could produce wines with any kind of delicacy. Let alone the cool-climate grapes for which it’s gained a reputation, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
But as all you fellow wine nerds know, the cool thing (pun not intended, but not deleted either) is that because of tectonic plate-shifting, Santa Barbara’s Transverse Ranges are exactly that—transverse. Whereas most of California’s coastal ranges run from north to south, limiting some inland locations from cool ocean breezes and fog patterns, in Santa Barbara the ranges go from east to west, thereby funneling in that cool ocean air.
The two major AVAs are Santa Maria and Santa Ynez, the latter of which contains four sub-AVAs: Santa Rita Hills, Ballard Canyon, Los Olivos, and Happy Canyon.
But at the end of 2020, Santa Barbara County finalized the approval process for its seventh appellation—Alisos Canyon AVA
