UPDATE: VINTAGE TWO-TRIPLENAUGHT:Read ‘Em and Weep! Maybe it’s all the CO2 in the winery during crush–it feels like there’s a different kind of energy that runs me at this time of year, and I’m surprised I haven’t noticed it before. Then again, human beings often seem to be exceptionally good at not seeing what’s right […]

UPDATE: VINTAGE TWO-TRIPLENAUGHT:Dancing with Lunacy This morning it became official. The inevitable sense that comes, sooner or later, in every harvest, that “all hell has broken loose” arrived in every muscle in my body. Some time during the night, last night, as I lay sleeping, the white flag was waved and the surrender took effect. […]

Hospice du Rhône 2000, Revisited Probably if you’ve visited our site before, you’ve noticed the announcements about and references to Hospice du Rhône, and if you have you have wondered what it was all about, and what it would be like to be there, I’ll try to give you a little of the flavor, having […]

UPDATE: VINTAGE TWO-TRIPLENAUGHT:First Stirrings of Harvest Late July: While vacationing in Western Massachusetts, I retrieved a phone message from Paso Robles that had an urgent quality. The Viognier grapes planted at a new vineyard source for us were rapidly gaining in sugar. (JULY!) It was impossible not to be skeptical: new growers. First harvest. Probably […]

UPDATE: VINTAGE TWO-TRIPLENAUGHT:Maybe it was the Full Moon In my walk through the Viognier Saturday, there were highly practical considerations to be addressed. Viognier wine tastes the way it does because that flavor is in the grapes, when they’re ripe, on the vine. Some grapes just taste like grapes. Viognier, if it’s grown properly, tastes, […]

Tales of Wining and Dining The venerable wine writer Hugh Johnson, whose World Atlas of Wine has taught me the most about wine of any book I’ve encountered, once remarked that wines’ initial importance to humans, ultimately, came down to its capacity to intoxicate, to “banish care.” He may well be correct, yet it’s the […]

Fall 1999 Newsletter Out Standing in His Field October 6, 1999: Steve Hill, who farms Syrah vines at two properties in Sonoma Valley that produce a couple of our best wines, left me a message a few days ago, alerting me to the approach of ripeness in his Parmelee-Hill vineyard. Steve, who is an outstanding […]

What’s New? This is the time of the year that the cycle of bloom and set begins in Northern California’s vineyards. The last couple of years the weather during that period has been pretty up and down, creating a lot of worry for growers and winemakers. What’s needed for the best results — each flower […]

Gil Handelman and Keven Clancy pour

Steve Edmunds and Ed Durell