If you’ve been reading this series from the beginning about our latest visit to the Dry Creek Valley (and if you haven’t, why not?), you may recall that we added one more winery to our itinerary. When we were visiting with winemaker Antoine Favero at Mazzocco Sonoma, he graciously suggested that we pay a visit…
Have you heard of Saini Vineyards? We have to admit that we hadn’t until last spring when we were planning our self-made tour of historic vineyards in Sonoma County. Unfortunately, our schedule filled up quickly but we were determined to make it happen on our next visit to the area, and we did! Two of…
You may have seen Pedroncelli wines in wine stores. Those are tasty wines but they don’t begin to tell the whole story. Those wines you see in stores might be considered their workhorse wines, allowing this fairly small family-owned historic winery property to produce about 50,000 cases per year. Much of the grapes are purchased…
After tasting some delicious white wines, we were ready for what the Dry Valley AVA is best known for – Zinfandel! Tasting room manager Eddie presented these tastes in a side-by-side format. We started with the 2023 Briar Zinfandel and the 2023 Sullivan Zinfandel, also from the Dry Creek Valley. The Briar has 9% Petite…
When we first began going to the Dry Creek Valley about a decade ago, the very first winery in the area we visited was Mazzocco Sonoma and its winemaker Antoine Favero was the first winemaker we met in the region. The only problem with this being our first stop is that the bar was now…
You may recall that a couple of days before our visit to Ridge Lytton Springs, Joel Peterson of Once & Future Wines had opened a bottle for us of the Ravenswood Belloni Zinfandel from 1993. Much to our surprise, Shauna shared barrel samples with us of the 2024 Belloni Zinfandel. Quite the coincidence! Even in…
For the final stop of our self-made Historic Vineyards tour, we took another of Historic Vineyard Society’s Emily Rasmussen’s suggestions and went to the Ridge Vineyards Lytton Springs property in the Dry Creek Valley, a visit that was long overdue. In an earlier article in this series, we mentioned the three Rs of Zinfandel –…
When we asked Emily Rasmussen of the Historic Vineyard Society for her suggestions of other wineries to visit in Sonoma County, especially in the Dry Creek and Russian River Valleys, she listed a few for us. One that got our attention was Nalle. Driving Northwest on Dry Creek Road, the sign for the winery might…
We were now ready to taste some Zinfandels from the Bedrock Vineyard itself. The side-by-side tasting including the 2023 Bedrock Wine Co. Bedrock Zinfandel and the 2021 Once & Future Wine Company Bedrock Zinfandel. Once & Future Wine was started by Joel Peterson in 2014. Of course, as the Godfather of Zinfandel, he’d been making…
This week my wine column is dedicated to hand-picked wine-centric events in both Southern and Northern California. I emailed my contacts from LearnAboutWine.com and LocalWineEvents.com for their best upcoming events and added in why they are trip-worthy for you: From LearnAboutWine.com Here are three great events from founder and CEO Ian Blackburn that I’ve enjoyed…