White Wine

Matchmaking At The 2013 Oyster Wine Competition

Every year I look forward to judging the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition put on by Taylor Shellfish Farms and oyster expert Jon Rowley. The setup is simple: through an extensive selection process, Rowley and a team of preliminary judges comb through 124 California, Oregon, and Washington wines ... More >>

Drink 2013: Small Batch is the Second Coming of Local Wine

SF Chefs 2012: The Guide to Boozing

SF Chefs, the week-long celebration of the San Francisco food and drink, has taken up residence once again in Union Square. The white tent being draped over an entire city block won't officially open until Friday night, when it will feature dozens of bars and restaurants representing over the course ... More >>

Gary Farrell's New Wines: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from Russian River

Early high-end wine efforts in Napa focused on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay while Sonoma experimented with Chardonnay and Zinfandel. Around 1970 a few visionaries planted Pinot Noir in Russian River's cooler regions. Gary Farrell was one of them. Many assumed great pinot noir couldn't be produ ... More >>

Sommelier Q & A with Urban Tavern's Steve Kleinfeld

Steve Kleinfeld C.S., General Manager of Urban Tavern, has built a wine list focused on wines with a sustainable focus to serve his mix of local and hotel guests. We have five questions for Sommeliers, and we hit him with them -- and then we can't resist dishing a bit below about his answers. Stev ... More >>

Top Sommelier Tips with Gabriele Originario of La Mar

Sommeliers spend all day with wine, and are a great resource for new finds. They're the "friend on the inside" that can help you suss out the best values on their wine lists. With that in mind, we've come up with a short suite of questions that we're posing to some of our favorite area sommeliers to ... More >>

Wine of the Week: Pine Ridge's $9.99 Crowd Pleaser/Polarizer

Pine Ridge is one of those Napa brands that people have collected and saved since before Napa wines became the rage across the 1% that actually have cellars to store wine in. The producer brought French thinking and balance to California wine making, producing great wines that became greater with ti ... More >>

Drink: Wild Spirits: Small-Batch Bay Area Distillers Take Big Risks

Josiah Baldivino, Lead Sommelier of Michael Mina, Dishes About Wine

​SFoodie's Ben Narasin sat down with Josiah Baldivino, Lead Sommelier of Michael Mina, to talk about wine. You moved here from NYC, so what differences do you see between how people order wine on the left coast versus the right? People order a lot more local things out here, and they're quick to ... More >>

In Pursuit of Balance: Celebrate the California Wines That Get Amount of Alcohol Right

​At most gathering of wine-folk, talk eventually turns to the topic of high-alcohol wines. Personally, I'm not too opinionated on the matter just so long as the alcohol is in balance as an element of the wine. But that balance is harder to achieve as the alcohol content climbs higher. If a fr ... More >>

Wine of the Week: Blue Plate Chenin Blanc Is Worth Getting to Know

Each wine region of France is home to a variety of grape used in wines bearing that region's name. From Vouvray comes chenin blanc. If you're a dessert wine-enthusiast, you probably know that chenin makes for exceptionally sweet wines, including Quarts des Charmes from the Loire, which are among the ... More >>

What's White Burgundy like? Find Out for Less with Gary Farrell

The View From Gary Farrell​According to William "Rusty" Gaffney, M.D., aka The Prince of Pinot, "Some consider Gary Farrell the father of Russian River Valley Pinot Noir." While Gary himself has long ago left the vineyard, the fog-shrouded winery he built with Bill Hambrecht is still producing pr ... More >>

Wine of the Week: Champagne-Quality Bubbles from Norcal

​One of our standbys for high-quality, locally-sourced, reasonably-priced bubbles is Schramsberg.  Schramsberg stands out, with a few others, as a producer that doesn't merely mimic the method of Champagne (Methode Champenoise), but actually approach or equal the quality of houses from spark ... More >>

Wine(s) of the Week: Riesling

​If you've followed Jay McInerney's move from chronicler of a generation to scribe of that generation's current obsession, wine, you may have seen his 2012 resolution to "Drink more Riesling." His insight that "every wine merchant and sommelier you encounter will think you're cool if you ask for ... More >>

Tyler Florence's New Recipe: Wine

If you're a writer trying to land a book deal, there's a good chance you'll learn you need "a platform." That's publisher-speak for a following via Web, Twitter, TV, radio, or whatever. The more well known you are to start, the more likely a publisher will be to invest itself in making you better k ... More >>

No, You're Not Allergic to the Sulfites in Wine

Tolosa Shows What Chardonnay Smells Like Without Oak

​Earlier this year I attended a fascinating seminar, led by a perfumer, at Tolosa Winery in San Luis Obispo County. Over the course of several mentally exhausting hours, we learned by blind-whiffing essential oils exactly what many of the descriptors we use all the time smell like. For examp ... More >>

New Anchorage Brewing Sour Beers Embrace Brett

​Who's afraid of the big bad "brett"? Brettanomyces yeast, used in conjunction with bacteria in many sour beers, is known to impart flavors with lovely descriptors such as "horse blanket" and "petting zoo." As old wives' tales go, winemakers who visit sour beer production sites must immediat ... More >>

Santa Julia Torrontes: Like Drinking Fresh Flowers

​Argentina is working hard on marketing Malbec as its signature grape, but I prefer Torrontes. For one thing, unlike Malbec, which was imported from France, Torrontes may actually be indigenous to Argentina. People used to believe it was the same as a grape of the same name in Spain's Galicia ... More >>

Americano Cooks and Teaches About the Whole Hog

​Whole Beast Feast Where: Americano When: Thursday, Sept. 15, 5:30 p.m. Cost: $90 Here's a chance not only to eat the whole hog, but to learn how to make sausage. On Sept. 15, Americano executive chef Kory Stewart will turn a whole heritage Berkshire pig into a three-course dinner, and use w ... More >>

Draeger's Makes American Kobe Beef Pastrami Sweet

​Viognier restaurant, atop the impressively upscale San Mateo grocery store Draeger's, is moving into meat production, and was kind enough to drop us off a taste of its first product, American Kobe Beef Pastrami. The idea is fascinating. Pastrami, usually made from beef brisket -- one of the ... More >>

Organic Sangria, a Sneaky Stunner at Greens

Tamara Palmer​San Francisco's venerable vegetarian restaurant Greens, now 32 years old, is trying out a new healthy happy hour from 5-7 p.m. daily at the restaurant and at its takeaway counter Greens To Go. Snacks such as slow-roasted almonds, padron peppers with pecorino and grilled bread, an ... More >>

Oh, Those Sassy Junk Food Pairings

The challenge of pairing with Hostess Snoballs: Spatlese riesling or junmai sake?​Earlier this week, Food & Wine magazine's Ray Isle put up a blog post making wine pairing recommendations for junk food. Now, Champagne with potato chips SFoodie has heard of, but we've never been asked, nor woul ... More >>

Pop-Up Wine Special: Only for SFoodie Readers

Cameron Hughes, the man, and Cameron Hughes, the wines​Planning to write about pairing wine with roast chicken, I went back through months of tasting notes looking for the right Chardonnay: Great flavor, great price. It turned out to be a Chilean Chardonnay imported by San Francisco negociant ... More >>

Napa Winemaker Came from Sports Illustrated for Kids

This is another little extra for this week's review of Bar Tartine in the print edition: an interview with the man who made one of the most impressive wines on the restaurant's very interesting wine list. Liza GershmanDan Petroski​When I called Dan Petroski to ask him how he managed to make M ... More >>

Bring Wine to Mission Chinese Food (But Which Wines?)

Mission Chinese Food chef-owner Danny Bowien goes through this many chiles pretty fast. ​Mission Chinese Food is a great challenge for wine lovers. It's great, because corkage is only $8. It's a challenge, because some of Danny Bowien's food, like the kung pao corned beef, is so spicy that dri ... More >>

Fetzer 2010 California Moscato

​Muscat may be the most sensible, down-to-earth grape there is. Unlike so many other varieties, it doesn't play around: Ferment it into wine, age it for a time, and pour it into the glass, and it still smells and tastes like the grapes from which it was made. Muscat, in fact, is said to be the ... More >>

Surveying Stout Beer Jelly and Biodynamic Wine at Taste of Mendocino

Sean TimberlakeBlack Dog Farm's jams and preserves range from the mundane to the quirky.​Monday's Taste of Mendocino event brought some of the best nibbles and sips from the county to Fort Mason to sample. Under the expansive roof of the Festival Pavilion, long rows of booths offered up tempti ... More >>

No. 21: Blacksmith Cellars' Chenin Blanc

Lou BustamanteBlacksmith Cellars' chenin blanc: Drink local.​SFoodie's countdown of our 92 favorite things to eat and drink in San Francisco, 2011 edition.Even with the success of Dashe Cellars in industrial Oakland and Sutton Cellars in Dogpatch, it's challenging to hear the words "urban winery" ... More >>

Big House Unchained Naked 2009 Chardonnay

Big House Wines​The origin of Chardonnay, like that of many grapes, is uncertain. Sources seem to point toward the Middle East, and some believe the variety to be closely related to Muscat. Otherwise, Chardonnay's history is hazy, obscured by the centuries. Its modern history, though, is more co ... More >>

Valentine's Out: Cibo per Strada at the Punchdown

Sierra M./Yelp​Punchdown Love When: Sat., Feb 12, 5-9 p.m. Where: The Punchdown Wine Bar, 2212 Broadway (at Grand), Oakland, 510-251-0100 Cost: $55 for four wines and four small plates Why it's likely to be special: Hannah Hoffman's hit a slight snag in plans to roll out her Cibo per Strad ... More >>

Corky

JAQK Cellars: Boutique Wine and Food Pairings in Jackson Square

Lou BustamanteSmall bites designed to pair with JAQK's varietals.​The area around Jackson Square Park is heaven for designers of everything from clothes to furniture. Now the neighborhood can add wine to its list of boutique offerings. Hidden in an unassuming building is JAQK Cellars ― the n ... More >>

Oyster Bay 2010 Sauvignon Blanc

​I love the fact that most stores have delegated separate areas for wines from different countries of origin. There are French, Californian, Spanish, and Italian sections, and it's funny how if there's an Australian section, wines from New Zealand are usually ― and somewhat rashly ― thrown ... More >>

At Commonwealth, most of the experimental dishes are memorable

Fresh Eats: Our weekly roundup of SFoodie news

2009 McManis Viognier: Good with Indian Food, Perfect for Indian Summer

​As we head toward the end of our brief, glorious summer there's one last opportunity to drink in the cooling refreshment of a crisp white wine. The sheer number of wines that fit this description can be overwhelming, sometimes expensive, and not always rewarding. As much as the Cakebreads, ... More >>

Latest Vintage

One good wine bar leads to another

Berlin by the Bay

Fine German fare sandwiched between two viewings of the fine German photographs of August Sander

Wine

Barrel Fever

Hearts Afire

Curbside Too

Several Jugs of Wine and Thou

Clattering Platters

Bustling and informal, Le Charm is a true French bistro