Get Ready for Harvest, now thru October
With the weather providing the ideal climate so far, growers and winemakers are expecting this year to be a banner harvest. The first sparkling wine grapes have been harvested and Sauvignon Blanc is just around the corner. This is the most wonderful time to be in wine country. Wineries will be a working around the clock and the smell of fermenting grapes will permeate the air. You’ll spot harvest in the fields, and trucks full to the brim with grapes will be roaring along the backroads . You can follow us for harvest updates on Twitter or our Facebook Fan page.

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They call themselves the “Eastside Bunch.” Who are they? The Eastside Bunch are eight wineries located near each other (within 2 miles) on the east side of the Russian River in Sonoma County. Each year, they hold an open house called the Summer Fest. We managed to visit most of those wineries at the Summer Fest event and went back again to a few during the week to get a better visit when things were not so crowded. Here is my quick review of each of these wineries. Read the rest of this entry »

To recap, the Vintage Wine Tasters, a group of non-industry people who love and enjoy wine, have been meeting informally for many years to taste and judge wine. At our previous meeting in June, we decided it was time to go public with our wine judging expertise. We posted the ratings for six Zinfandel wines we evaluated that day in June on this blog.

Little did we know what would happen next. Within minutes of the blog post, the social media sites sent out a wave of comments and tweets that reverberated throughout the online wine world. Within days we were inundated with tempting offers to be sent samples of wine. Talking notes appeared on wine shelves: “Vintage Wine Tasters Select Sobon Rocky Top as Best Zin.” We were astonished but quite pleased that the wine world was looking for a new voice in wine ratings. About those wine samples! We have agreed, unlike many wine critics, to refuse all samples of wine and vow not to be swayed by any winery, wine shop, or distributor. Read the rest of this entry »

We met Clay Mauritson, owner and winemaker of Mauritson Winery, early on Saturday morning at the Mauritson winery and followed him up to his family vineyards in the Rockpile AVA. Rockpile is a small AVA that is situated high above Lake Sonoma. This is a chaparral environment, dry and rocky, with steep hillsides. By the looks of it, you would hardly expect any vineyards to grow here. Yet, at Rockpile there are roughly 148 acres of vines that are stressed to the max and produce big, full-flavored and complex wines. The Mauritson Family owns 40 plus acres of vineyards at Rockpile.

This is not a normal morning at Rockpile. The air is thick with fog and you can barely see more than 100 yards. What makes this area so special is the fact that Rockpile is 800 feet to 2000 feet in elevation. With Lake Sonoma below, an inversion layer is created so it always has sunshine while the rest of the Russian River wine region is in fog. On most days, the afternoon brings strong winds from the Pacific Ocean that stress the vines and causes them to lose water. Yet all the vines look amazingly healthy at this time of the year. Read the rest of this entry »