White Burgundy on a budget. That’s what you get with wines from Saint-Veran. And as an added bonus here we have a bottle from one of our favorite producers, Joseph Drouhin. Saint-Veran is Burgundy’s southernmost appellation and slightly overlaps with the northern part of Beaujolais. Wines from this area are 100% Chardonnay, and as you […]

Trester Goetting, Winemaker at Monte Bello [©drwinkler] Located in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, Ridge Vineyards is one of America’s most historic and unique wine estates. It sits at 2600’ near the top of Monte Bello Ridge overlooking Silicon Valley with limestone soils, a rarity in California.  A San Francisco doctor discovered the site in [&helli

From America to Tuscany’s Chianti makes sense. From Franciacorta to Sangiovese makes… maybe less sense? Thus is the tale of Vecchie Terre di Montefili, a producer situated on the Monte Fili hill in Greve in Chianti, which is a spot that is actually as gorgeous as it sounds from the name. Montefili was founded by […]

An interesting trend we’re seeing is more of the Kirkland bottles arriving earlier in the year than they have in prior vintages. This is another example of a wine where we reviewed the prior vintage just 7 months ago. The new (and very delicious) Kirkland Brunello came in a few months early. Toscana a little […]

I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format. They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read […]

As the saying goes, hell is the absence of reason. But for 9diDANTE founder Alex Ouziel, hell was the absence of quality wine in Vermouth. Ouziel is a 20+ year alcohol industry veteran, originally from Barcelona, who moved to Moscow in the mid-1990s working for an importer of Spanish wines. This stint was followed by […]

Everybody loves to see the special limited time discount signs in the Costco wine aisle, and here’s a new one we found on a tasty little Australian GSM blend. It was particularly fitting as we just concluded a trip to Australia and enjoyed some wonderful wines, both red and white, from all over the country. […]

Last week I met and tasted with Zurab Topuridze, owner and winemaker of Iberieli Winery, at the Vino Underground wine bar, located near Freedom Square in Tbilisi.  Zurab’s winery and vineyards are in Guria, a province of Georgia bordering the Black Sea. He makes natural wines using winemaking practices traditional to Guria and principally uses [&he

This is a little $6 sleeper hanging out in the cheap seats (the aisles of wine, not the wooden boxes). We’ve written before about the hidden wines you can find slated in between stacks of Meiomi Pinot and Kirkland Malbec. While this bottle did pull down a 90 point score from Wine Enthusiast, it’s not […]

The Peterson Family at Harvest Time Winemaker Jamie Peterson grew up in wine country, born in the Santa Cruz Mountains where his father, Fred, was vineyard manager at Mount Eden Winery and later Ridge Vineyards. Later, the family moved to Sonoma County where Jamie joined his father in the vineyards of Sonoma County. In the […]

It’s never a bad day when you get to taste through samples with the remote/virtual help of Tenuta Carretta, whose 550+ years of history have seen them craft some of finest wines that you can get your grubby hands on from northwestern Italy. Which is exactly the good fortune that I had a few months […]

We’re back in the cheap seats again, and we found another one that is pretty good, very drinkable, and of course, inexpensive. Just a few posts ago, we highlighted this $5.99 Bordeaux find that we rated 87 points. This Bordeaux Superieur is right in that same ballpark. And once again a good bottle to serve […]

Giovanni Manetti [credit drw] Giovanni Manetti, President of the Chianti Classico Consorzio, is known internationally for his stellar wine and for guiding the Consorzio through a major change, the establishment of communal appellations, UGAs. However, the family is also known in Tuscany for manufacturing terra cotta tiles, which the Manettis have b

Here’s a Costco staple Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand’s famed Marlborough region that we had yet to post about. Almost hard to believe. A couple years ago we posted about Oyster Bay’s Pinot Noir which is also delicious, and frequently mentioned to be among the best wine buys at Costco. We don’t disagree. It’s a […]

Jim Schultze and his Hot Air Blower @drw Jim Schultze, the force behind Windy Oaks, had an international career that took him to Australia, England and Europe before he and his wife Judy returned to Corralitos at the southern end of the Santa Cruz Mountains to grow grapes and make wine, producing their first Pinot […]

“This might be the most sustainable winery in the world.” If you spend enough time in the wine business, you’ll eventually start to encounter mentions of UC Davis: vines and rootstocks that have been cloned, studied, developed, and/or analyzed there; people in the wine world who tout their status as “UC Davis trained.” For a […]