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10 Last Minute Holiday Wine Gifts

Wine

With about a week to go until Christmas Day, have you done all of your holiday gift shopping? Have you even started? If not, don’t despair. To the rescue, a list of the 10 best wine gifts that you can snap up at the last minute — and it won’t look like you waited until the last minute. Check out these gift ideas that are more creative and thoughtful than a bottle of wine.

Bottlestoppers. You see them everywhere, but these colorful stoppers, made by Vine of the Wine are truly unique. They’re made by incorporating grapevines into the stoppers themselves.

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Shafer Vineyard’s Road To Success Not An Easy One

Wine

If you had told John Shafer, when he moved from Chicago to Napa Valley in 1973, that his winery and one specific vineyard would earn the highest critical acclaim, bring in top bids at wine auctions and create a formidable fan following, he would probably have scoffed, being the practical vintner that he is. But Shafer’s success in the wine world wasn’t instant and wasn’t easy going at all. In fact when you learn the stories of harvests where they couldn’t get pickers on time, or the vintage with a stuck fermentation that he had to get started using electric blankets, well, you wonder how Shafer ever made it to where the winery is today with a cult-like status.

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SOMM Reveals Secret World of the Master Sommeliers

Wine

It’s not easy to make a film or a video around the subject of wine. I should know, I produced the TV show In Wine Country on NBC for nine seasons. Wine on the big or little screen gets super boring. Our challenge was always ‘how do we make wine interesting? How do we make it less intimidating?’

One way to do it is to tell stories about the people and not focus on the wine. And that’s what SOMM, a documentary film directed by Jason Wise does. SOMM opened the 2nd annual Napa Valley Film Festival Wednesday night to a packed house and standing ovation. While I’d venture to say our crowd was very wine savvy, SOMM does something that makes it worth seeing. SOMM takes you into the world of The Court of Master Sommeliers, an organization that is notoriously secretive. That they let Jason’s camera capture what it is like to prepare for an exam that only 200 or so people have ever passed is extraordinary.

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The Evolution of Sokol Blosser Wines

Wine

Alison Sokol Blosser is in Portland, Oregon at the Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC) instead of being on her honeymoon. She just got married on the August weekend before the start of the conference at her family’s winery in Oregon’s Dundee Hills AVA,which is about an hour outside of Portland. As the winery’s Co-President along with her brother Alex, she’s at WBC to pour for nearly 400 bloggers during an activity called live blogging, which is more like speed dating. Then she’s hosting a busload of bloggers from the conference at Sokol Blosser Winery for a dinner with several other local wineries pouring. With all that going on and with harvest underway, Alison says she’ll go on her honeymoon after the fall craziness is done.

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Bernard Portet, “A Winery Without Walls”

Wine

It’s not everyday you get to have lunch and taste wine with a Napa Valley icon. Bernard Portet, founding winemaker at Clos du Val invited a small gathering of journalists to reflect on his 40 years making wine in the Napa Valley. He officially retired from Clos du Val at the end of 2009, but as so often happens he was going stir crazy and he knew he just had to get back into making wine.

Even sailing can’t keep Bernard away from wine. He has a 36’ sailboat named Obelix and loves to get out on the water. He’s also involved with the 34th America’s Cup through the Napa Valley Vintners. The weather for the upcoming weekend is perfect sailing weather but Bernard says he can’t go. He’s harvesting grapes instead.

The crush is for Bernard’s new label, Heritance. The project developed after Bernard bumped into Clos du Val’s former COO, Don Chase who also wanted to get back into wine. So they hatched a plan where Don would handle the business aspects and Bernard would make the wine. But the set up is nothing like Clos du Val. Bernard calls Heritance “a winery without walls.”

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Wine In My Lipstick

Fashionista

If you’re a cosmetics junkie and wine lover like me, no doubt you’ve heard about skincare products and makeup that contain some form of beneficial ingredients from wine grapes. Polyphenols in grapes and resveratrol are powerful antioxidants. Grape seed oil extract helps protect skin from free radicals and hydrates at the same time. You’ll find these anti-aging ingredients in many products including the French skincare line Caudalie to 29 Cosmetics, created by Lydia Mondavi, which uses grape seed extract in its skincare and color cosmetics.

Blending all this grapey goodness into beauty products is not groundbreaking. But two newcomers are focusing on what you put on your lips, especially since we all end up ingesting our creamy lipsticks and shiny glosses.

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25 Vintages of Wine Growers as Rock Stars at Patz & Hall Wines

Wine

Dutton Ranch. Durrell. Hudson. Hyde. Chenoweth Ranch. Pisoni. What do all these names have in common? Yes, they are all vineyards, and some are wine brands too. But they all provide grapes for the single vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines of Patz & Hall.

The Sonoma-based winery isn’t the first to put single vineyard designations on their wines but they also champion the grower. “The longest grower relationship we have is with Larry Hyde. We started to buy Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay in 1990,” says winemaker James Hall.

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Don’t Drink That Drink This! 6 Go-To White Wines That Are Anything But Chardonnay

Wine

How Chardonnay remains the most popular white wine sold in America is a mystery to me. Maybe because it is easier to pronounce or remember? At least some California winemakers are now showing restraint and instead of using lots of new oak they’re making unoaked wines instead. I just had a yummy Chard which was crisp with apple and citrus from Chamisal Vineyards in the Central Coast called Stainless Chardonnay. This bright vibrant wine is totally unoaked, very nice for sipping.

I’ll admit it, Chardonnay gets more than its share of bad raps. People are proud to say he or she is an ABC drinker – Anything But Chardonnay that is. So what’s the alternative? Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio are options, but sometimes I want something richer and creamier than a zippy Sauv Blanc or citrusy Pinot Grigio. Thank goodness for the white Rhone varieties grown in California that make wines memorable enough to compete with Chardonnay and even best it. You may even agree with me that the white Rhones are so much more complex and interesting.

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Speed Wine Tasting and Blogging in Portland

Wine

You know about speed dating, but what about speed wine tasting? In Portland at the annual Wine Bloggers Conference we’re tasting Oregon whites and rosés at a breakneck rate, and blogging about it live as it happens. 10 wineries showed up to pour, trying to convince us that their wines are blog worthy all in five minutes. Is this a good way to try wine, or just a gimmick? Let’s go…

First up – Amity Vineyards. Matt from Amity offers a 2009 estate dry Riesling. 91 cases made. Old vine Riesling – some planted in 1971. There’s petrol and flowers on the nose and it is super dry with lots of citrus. Not bad for $20, but you have to get it at the winery. This one has potential. The bell rings for a winery change. Go!

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4 Late Summer Reading Picks on Wine and Perfume

Perfume

Remember those days when you had a required summer reading list from school? Yeah, those lists made reading a chore. Now as adults, we lament that we have no time to read. But we get to choose what we read. There’s still time before the summer ends to pick up a book or two, especially when the subjects are wine or perfume.

In The Juice by Jay McInerney, the Wall Street Journal wine columnist takes you on a journey through the world of wine.

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