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Blogs
May 9, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
April 5, 2012
San Francisco's 10 Best Wine Lists
San Francisco is one of the best places in the world to drink young wines, particularly those with attitude, from many different places. Sommeliers here are passionate and their wine lists reflect it. We don't have many older wines on lists because restaurants turn over so quickly that they don't ... More >>
Blogs
March 27, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
March 20, 2012
A16 Wine Club: How to Leverage the Experts
When I first started learning about wine, one of the first things I did was sign up for a wine club. The idea of monthly deliveries of high-quality wines from regions around the world appealed to me as something like having a personal trainer waiting for you at the gym: you're paying the bill wheth ... More >>
Blogs
March 14, 2012
Wine of the Week: La Sirena's Moscato Azul and Syrah Santa Ynez
Heidi Barrett's family has been making wine in Napa long before the valley became a world-renowned wine destination. Barrett is one of Napa's rock-star winemakers, best known for bringing in perfect scores from some critics for her work at Screaming Eagle. If you don't care about Napa, or rock ... More >>
Dining
March 7, 2012
Drink: Buying Wine: Finding Great Bottles and Advice in S.F.
Heidi Barrett's family has been making wine in Napa long before the valley became a world-renowned wine destination. Barrett is one of Napa's rock-star winemakers, best known for bringing in perfect scores from some critics for her work at Screaming Eagle. If you don't care about Napa, or rock ... More >>
Blogs
March 6, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
March 1, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
February 28, 2012
Wine of the Week: Imbibe Federalist Dueling Pistols in Honor of Aaron Burr
There's a new wine sheriff in Zin town, and its name is Dueling Pistols. Corny, I know, but the label alone could have you looking for a gun fight. Dueling Pistols is a new wine, first vintage, from a new project, The Federalist, which itself is only in its second vintage. The Federalist is Terla ... More >>
Blogs
February 21, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
February 20, 2012
La Paulée: Try Great Burgundy on a Budget -- or Drop Four Grand on It
Wether you have $4,000 or $95 to spend on your Burgundy education, La Paulée has an option for you. You probably can't go further toward an extreme Burgundy education and experience than through a ticket ($4,000) to La Paulée de San Francisco's Legends Dinner at the Napa Valley Reserve. ... More >>
Blogs
February 15, 2012
Wine of the Week: Shake Ridge Red
In Champagne, most big-name "houses" buy their grapes from multiple growers and blend them to achieve consistency -- Veuve is Veuve whenever you drink it. But if you talk to Somms in the city, you'll most likely find that they favor grower-producers, those wine makers who grow their grapes. Latel ... More >>
Blogs
February 8, 2012
Winos of the World Unite at Pinot Noir Summit
No, but it may rain wine at the Pinot Noir Summit.What: 10th Pinot Noir Summit Where: Hilton Financial District When: Saturday, Feb. 25, 1:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Cost: $130 for an all day ticket, $85 for the Grand Awards Tasting and Ceremony. The rundown: Hang out with wine lovers and ABC ... More >>
Blogs
February 7, 2012
Wine of the Week: Waterstone Merlot and Cabernet
Sometimes you have to go a long way to find a local wine. For this week's wine(s), we turned to Canada. Actually, Canada came to us in the form of our friend Dups, and his iPhone image of a Waterstone Cabernet. He asked if we knew it. We didn't . He liked it, we tried it, and now here we are. Wa ... More >>
Blogs
January 31, 2012
What's White Burgundy like? Find Out for Less with Gary Farrell
The View From Gary FarrellAccording 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 >>
Blogs
January 17, 2012
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 >>
Blogs
December 27, 2011
Wine of the Week: Tuck Beckstoffer's 2009 Melee
If you aren't a wine geek, you may not recognize the name Tuck Beckstoffer. Beckstoffer's family owns a variety of premium vineyards and has historically sold fruit to some of Napa Valley's best. Their TO Kalon vineyard is so sought after, and of such exceptional quality, that it is often credite ... More >>
Blogs
December 20, 2011
Wine of the Week: Mercury Rising Bordeaux-Style Tastes Pricier Than it Costs
"Exceptional value-per-dollar ratio" is how Cinnabar, or at least their publicist, promotes their wines. Based on our tasting of their 2008 California Mercury Rising "Bordeaux-style" wine, we see substance in the statement. We taste wines blind-ish. We don't brown bag and mix them up to confus ... More >>
Blogs
December 7, 2011
J Rosé's New Clear Bottle Helps Holidays Sparkle
Holiday party e-vites are filling our inboxs, and the calendar is already looking like a mostly completed crossword puzzle with lots of full boxes and only inconvenient white space. All those parties means hostess gifts, or, if you are the host or hostess, the gift of expectation -- the expectation ... More >>
Blogs
November 29, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
November 15, 2011
This Thursday: Arlequin's Beaujolais Bash!
What: Beaujolais Bash! Where: Arlequin Wine Merchants When: Thurs., November 17, 6-8 p.m. Cost: $25 The rundown: If there's one wine to love, it's Beaujolais, and that's not just because it's the most fun to say. This week, you have the rare and exciting opportunity to taste bottlings fr ... More >>
Blogs
November 8, 2011
Quivira Makes Jam, Not Just Jammy Wines
Wines are often described as "jammy," but how often can you buy jam and wine from the same producer? Dry Creek Valley producer Quivira will sell you both, and some honey from the estate as well, with the help of some goats, bees, and manure-filled bull horns. The goats mow the lawn, the bee ... More >>
Blogs
October 24, 2011
Pre-Auction Wine Tastings: The Best Deal in Wine
The only sure way to develop your palate for wine is to taste more. When you get the chance to taste older, rarer, or more expensive wines than you might normally dink, take it. That opportunity presents itself this Thursday at San Francisco Wine Center during the Wine Gavel pre-auction tastin ... More >>
Blogs
September 26, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
September 21, 2011
Piccino Wine List Seeks Balance, Naturally
White wine made from Pinot NoirWhen I first looked over Piccino's leftist-wine-geek wine list, I assumed it was compiled by a follower of the natural wine movement. Only seven of the 42 wines on the list are from California, and most are from winemakers associated with natural wine: Lioco, ... More >>
Blogs
September 15, 2011
Ten Things I'd Like To Tell People Who Don't Read Wine Stories
Grez Neuville/Trip AdvisorI was tasting wine at my desk at 11 a.m. when a coworker asked why. Because I hadn't had time earlier, I said; it's best to taste early in the day when your palate is fresh. That wasn't what he was getting at. He drinks wine, but never considered tasting as a separa ... More >>
Blogs
September 12, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
August 19, 2011
Family Winemakers Show Offers More Wine Than You Can Handle
Foodgal.comFamily Winemakers of California Tasting Where: Fort Mason Center When: Sunday, Aug. 21, 3-6 p.m. Cost: $65 advance, $75 at the door We can drink a lot of wine, but we find the Family Winemakers of California annual tasting overwhelming, in a good way. There's always about 50 times ... More >>
Blogs
August 18, 2011
Twenty-Five Lusk Serves 6-Course Champagne/Strawberry Menu
Seared diver scallop with foie gras torchon and grilled strawberriesSFoodie is willing to put ourselves on the line for you. So when we heard Twenty-Five Lusk is offering a 6-course Champagne and strawberry themed menu for $90 -- $60 food, $30 wine pairings -- through Blackboard Eats, we ran ... More >>
Blogs
August 10, 2011
The Less You Spend, the More Interesting Fifth Floor's Wines Are
Amy Goldberger in the Fifth Floor wine roomThere might be no better sign of where San Francisco's fine dining scene is in 2011 than the wine list at Fifth Floor. It's a pricey hotel restaurant, reviewed today by our restaurant critic Jonathan Kauffman. Yet the list is currently managed by wi ... More >>
Blogs
August 5, 2011
New California Law Gives Brewery Tasting Rooms a Break
Jason HenryDrake's Barrel House in San Leandro was built expensively under the old lawYou walk into a brewery tasting room and order a sample. The beer is delicious, but you can't help noticing that the brewery doesn't have washable tile flooring and the cashier isn't far from the dishwasher. ... More >>
Blogs
July 27, 2011
Pop-Up Wine Special: Only for SFoodie Readers
Cameron Hughes, the man, and Cameron Hughes, the winesPlanning 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 >>
Blogs
July 22, 2011
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 PetroskiWhen I called Dan Petroski to ask him how he managed to make M ... More >>
Blogs
July 20, 2011
Bar Tartine Wine List: If It's Porn, It's European Porn
Alex FoxThis week we ran our first wine list review to accompany Jonathan Kauffman's restaurant review in the print edition of SF Weekly. Jonathan likes to offer people a little extra flavor on the web, so I decided to do that too by dropping by Bar Tartine on a Friday morning to taste wine w ... More >>
Blogs
July 6, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
July 5, 2011
Dogpatch WineWorks Replaces Crushpad
Since Crushpad left San Francisco last year for Wine Country, folks wanting to make their own wine in town have had to go it alone -- which, in most cases, meant not making wine. And ripe smells in the Dogpatch neighborhood unfortunately haven't been coming from fermenting grapes. But now, t ... More >>
Blogs
June 22, 2011
Robert Mondavi Woodbridge 2009 California Zinfandel
This writer made a simple dinner last night of brown rice, freshly pulled chard and kale from the garden, a handful of off-season wild porcini from -- oops, almost gave away my patch! -- and several steaks of a hand-harvested lingcod, which we lathered with coconut oil and sesame seeds and br ... More >>
Blogs
June 15, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
June 14, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
June 6, 2011
A Field Guide to Sustainable and Delicious Dry Farmed Wines
Whole lotta irrigation goin' on in Napa.Irrigation is plainly a function of the modern world. Though the ancient Romans built spectacular gravity-driven aqueducts, drip irrigation for agriculture was not invented until the late 1960s in Israel, and only in the 1970s did water-bearing pipes a ... More >>
Blogs
May 26, 2011
Concannon Winery 2009 Central Coast Pinot Noir
The "R" at the end of "noir" is not silent. The letter is meant to produce a distinct sound, and, in effect, "pinot noir" rhymes with "film noir." But in the upper echelons of wine drinking society, some say "pinot nu-aaah." Have you noticed? One must guess they think they're quite cultured when pro ... More >>
Blogs
May 3, 2011
Glen Ellen 2009 Old Vine Zinfandel Proprietor's Reserve
dr_XeNo/FlickrAt last year's ZAP Festival, plenty of old-vine Zin, not enough scandal.In January, we attended the largest single-variety wine tasting in America: the ZAP Festival at Fort Mason. We sauntered through the pavilions, glass in hand, point-blank asking winemakers how old their "old ... More >>
Blogs
April 27, 2011
Vinyl Wine Bar's Kris Esqueda on Popups, Food Trucks, and Pretension-Busting
Markris WineVinyl Wine Bar's Kris Esqueda, right.The Sunday night pasta dinner at Vinyl Wine Bar that I wrote about in this week's review almost qualifies as a popup within a popup. Owners Kris Esqueda and Mark Bright -- who are also behind Saison and Markris Wine Group -- set up the wine bar in ... More >>
Blogs
April 19, 2011
Big House Unchained Naked 2009 Chardonnay
Big House WinesThe 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 >>
Blogs
February 23, 2011
Heartswork Winery WELL REaD 2009 California Red
At $5.99, this is one bottle that defies the common wisdom that no-sulfites-added wines justify a higher price.A molecule called sulfur dioxide ― aka sulfites, a common preservative ― has become the crux of an ongoing disagreement between two schools of winemakers. Those who vouch for the ... More >>
Blogs
February 9, 2011
Tasting Petite Sirah, California's Little Big Wine
Alastair BlandTasting panelists Noah P. and Eleni K. strike a pose with the Petite empties.It was born in 1880, and four years later came to California. But for another 80, almost nobody knew it. Petite Sirah is one of California's historical vines and among the earliest varieties introduced ... More >>
Blogs
January 10, 2011
Good Eats and Zinfandel Pairing Brings the "Z" Back to Herbst
dr_XeNo/FlickrFifty eateries, fifty wineries, paired up in the buddy system at Herbst Pavilion.Like bells to Pavlov's dogs, the sight of a capital "Z" this time of year starts us thinking of (if not quite drooling over) red wines native to the Golden State, punctuated by notes of pepper and r ... More >>
Dining
December 8, 2010
Fresh Eats: Our weekly roundup of SFoodie news
dr_XeNo/FlickrFifty eateries, fifty wineries, paired up in the buddy system at Herbst Pavilion.Like bells to Pavlov's dogs, the sight of a capital "Z" this time of year starts us thinking of (if not quite drooling over) red wines native to the Golden State, punctuated by notes of pepper and r ... More >>
Blogs
November 30, 2010
What Kind of Sparkling Wine Makes a Good Mimosa?
Brant FoehlWhich of these bottles should you drink at 9 o'clock in the morning? "All" is not the proper answer.Like many a San Franciscan on a slightly fuzzy morning, I love a nice morning drink to clear the haze or put a bounce in my step. The three standard breakfast drink choices: Bloody Marys ... More >>
Blogs
November 11, 2010
Kaiken 2009 Malbec Mendoza
Tuesday night we went to Boulevard and blew the rent. After two Woodford Reserve Manhattans, the sommelier John helped us pick out an astounding Barolo from Piedmont that set us back $165. Good thing the foie gras was amazing and the northern halibut was as close to the empyrean as one gets w ... More >>
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