The Lorca Winery is out of business and sold what remained of their wine inventory, 600 cases of 2003 Gary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, to Trader Joe’s. This wine is currently being sold at Trader Joe’s for $14.95 about half the suggested retail price. Get it while you can because this wine is delicious and will fly off the shelves. 600 cases does not go far when there are over 150 Trader Joe’s stores in California. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been several weeks since we have been to the Napa Valley; perhaps the longest stretch in recent memory. We are in the middle of a kitchen remodel and our wine travels are on hold until the project is completed. We are hoping that will be in two weeks. In the meantime, while staying put, we have been tweaking our Wine Country Trip Planning tool and we hope you will use it the next time you plan to visit the wine country in the Napa Valley, Carneros, or other popular wine country regions in California.

What is neat about the Trip Planning tool is you can select wineries by region and then drill down and find wineries by features. For example, on your next excursion to the Napa Valley, you would like to visit Napa Valley wineries that have a picnic facility, are family-owned, and farm organically. With the Trip Planning tool you can select these features and others to generate a list of wineries tailored to your fancy. A vacation getaway is always better when you have a well-planned idea of where you want to go and what you want to see.

Once you have made your selections the next step is to input your starting and ending destination and the Trip Planning tool will provide a printable map and directions for your use.

Our list of wineries in the database includes most of the wineries that are open to the public with regular tasting room hours and ones that are open by appointment only. If we have missed your favorite winery, let us know and we will add the winery to our database. The same goes if you are a winery and you find yourself not listed. Just email us the pertinent information to plug into our database and we are set to go.

Since we are still tweaking the Trip Planning tool tell us what you think and how we can make it even better.

Amazon Closer to Selling Wine
When New Vine Logistics closed its doors a couple of weeks back many were predicting that Amazon would either drop or have a long delay in launching their plan to sell wine online. Amazon had contracted New Vine Logistics to handle the sales. New Vine Logistics is back and word has it that several key wine industry people (not me, however) have been invited to a sneak preview of the Amazon wine website. For Napa Valley wineries this just might be the help they need to clear building inventory. This is good for the consumer as well, more chances to find the ultimate wine bargain. Wine.woot is cool but Amazon will be fierce competition. My source for this information is from “Tech Flash“.

Events for the Wine Traveler
It is heating up in the Napa Valley with events and happenings scheduled for the summer wine traveler. One of the main attractions is next Saturday evening, June 20th, 6 pm to 10 pm. called the Solarbartion. This event is taking place at the new, chic, and very “green” hotel, the Bardessono in Yountville. Ten solar-powered Napa Valley wineries will be represented. This event features wine tasting, food, and live entertainment. Tickets are $50. Read the rest of this entry »

As a frequent traveler to wine country, a hunter of wine values and bargains, a wine blogger, and a member of Twitter, I recommend to all Napa Valley wineries, you should Tweet. Don’t just take my advice, read the cover story in this week’s Time Magazine on Twitter and read in the current issue of Business Week, Jack and Suzy Welch’s article on “Why We Tweet.” I joined Twitter in March and my only regret is that I did not start sooner. The payoff is big in many ways.

I checked to see how many Napa Valley Wineries are currently on Twitter. In the “Find People” link on Twitter, I put in the keyword “Winery” and sorted through about 200 wineries and found exactly 20 Napa Valley wineries and 2 in Carneros registered on Twitter. Amazingly, only a handful of these wineries are using Twitter frequently and one small Napa Valley winery, Casa Nuestra, is on the cutting edge. Casa Nuestra at the moment has 560 “Followers” and the winery has made over three hundred Tweets. A Follower is one who decides to follow someone on Twitter and receive any Tweets they send out. A tweet is 140 characters of information. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you Negotiate Wine Prices These Days?
A friend of mine returned from a recent trip to the wine country and told me that he had bargained for a case of wine. He started out by saying He’d take six bottles of a wine when he knew he really wanted a case. Then he added quickly “will you give me a case for whatever…?” The person agreed and all were happy. Next time you hit a Napa Valley Winery or any winery for that matter, think about giving bargaining a try. It just might work. These are hard times out there for the wine industry and inventories are stacking up. Did you see the story on the CBS Evening News about Fetzer’s Inventory?

More hardships to Come? – Smoke Taint 2008 Harvest
I recently heard from one Napa Valley Vintner that the 2008 Pinot Noir grapes he had purchased from an Anderson Valley grower all contain smoke taint. He was adamant that no matter how much filtering he did, it would not completely remove the smoke taint. Forest fires plagued Northern California last summer and for many days smoke permeated the air in various portions of California vineyards. Will this so-called smoke taint add to the woes of the 2008 harvest already victimized by frost? Read the rest of this entry »

The Wine Spectator’s June 15th issue has a feature article entitled “Napa Valley Getaways, a Wine Lover’s Guide to Fit Every Budget.” Well, not every budget as you might imagine. The Wine Spectator’s subscribers assuredly are in income brackets that span from the super rich to the high middle class. I would surmise, there are few wine lovers below this economic bracket that read Wine Spectator on a regular basis.

At the top end, for “those sparing no expense” subscribers, the article makes recommendations of where to stay and dine in the Napa Valley. They mention Auberge du Soleil, Brandesonno, and Meadowood where room rates run from $450 to as much as $8750 a night at Meadowood.

I would imagine that many Wine Spectator readers immediately did as I did and skipped to the budget portion of the Napa guide. I consider myself an expert in this area since we travel often to the Napa Valley and always travel in the budget mode. I think the article missed some important tips that I would like to add. Read the rest of this entry »

Many Latino owned wineries these days are getting plenty of press. Generations of hard work, good business practices, and excellent wine have brought Latino wineries like Ceja, Robledo, Renteria and others into the limelight. But few have heard of Madrigal Vineyards. We visited there a couple of weeks ago and we found the Madrigal wines to be excellent and wondered why this winery has remained “under the radar.” Read the rest of this entry »

On the Economy
I’m hearing on the business news that some economists feel we may have hit the bottom of the recession and will now experience a slow road back to recovery. We are also hearing about more people taking “day vacations.” On a recent trip to the Napa Valley, it was hard to tell if business was getting better. On a Tuesday night, at the Bottega Restaurant we found no signs of a recession. The restaurant has been booked solid nightly since its opening in December. But the next day at Redd it was a different story. The restaurant was much less busy from what we had experienced in the past. By the time we had finished dinner at 9 pm, there were plenty of empty tables and the bar was deserted.

At the Oxbow Public Market on a Wednesday afternoon, the place was absolute dead. Honestly, there were more workers in the market than customers. I wonder whether this place is going to make it. Maybe the weekends are different, but these merchants need a hefty dose of daily customers to make a go of it. We purchased some meats at the Fatted Calf and the merchant told us that things are very slow during the week.

Just outside the entrance to Domain Chandon in Yountville is where one balloon company launches its early morning rides. We were on a morning walk when we spied six balloon rides getting ready to take off. That surely looks like a positive. Read the rest of this entry »

It all started in 1971 when the Smith Brothers purchased land on Spring Mountain to begin their amazing story of making wine in the Napa Valley. We visited last week in the midst of bottling and an unexpected rainfall. The winery was abuzz with activity, but both Charlie and Stu took time to chat with us about their winemaking adventures high atop Spring Mountain.

We have been traveling to the Napa Valley since 1966 and we divide the Napa Valley into two distinct eras, the old and the new is the simplest way to express it. Well, Charlie and Stu represent the old Napa Valley. You won’t find a fancy tasting room or barrel room, or any merchandise for sale. The only thing you will find is just pure, honest, old-fashioned conversation and a passion for making good wine. Yes, Smith-Madrone represents the good old days of the Napa Valley. Read the rest of this entry »

Most wine tourists traveling north on Highway 29 just before St. Helena will spot Flora Springs Tasting Room because of its unusual architectural design. It is also right next door to the famed Dean & Deluca deli. This tasting room is a very convenient place to taste all the very good Flora Springs wines but we have a better idea. It is much more fun to visit Flora Springs working winery just a mile away on West Zinfandel Lane. This is where it all is happening at what is perhaps one of Napa’s most underrated wineries.

Flora Springs’ first vintage was 1978, which is considered to be the early days of the Napa Valley wine world. Jerome Komes, the CEO of Bechtel Corporation at the time, established the winery and it is now in its third generation of ownership and management. There were many advantages to starting out early in the Napa Valley, particularly land, which was inexpensive in those times. Today, Flora Springs is the third largest vineyard owner in the Napa Valley with 650 acres of vineyards. The winery uses only 20% of their vines to produce a total of 50,000 cases of wine per year. The other 80% of grapes from their vineyards are sold off to some 40 wineries. Read the rest of this entry »