Napa Valley’s New Competition from Crushpad Vintners in Foster City

Could two small Vintners from Foster City and others like them be a possible challenge and take a piece of the pie from the Napa Valley wine market? Probably not, but with over 100 Crushpad clients making and selling as much 1000 cases of wine, something has to give.

We met the owners of Jazz Cellars at the Family Winemakers event in San Francisco. We tasted their wines and thought they were very well made. We wanted to find out more so last week we sat down with the two aspiring winery owners of Jazz Cellars of Foster City.

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Schramsberg – Napa Valley’s Sparkling Wine Icon

Schramsberg Vineyards is the last of the wineries on our sparkling wine trail to be reviewed. It is perhaps the most interesting and fascinating of the five wineries that we have visited and posted to our blog. Jacob Schram originally built the historic winery and the magnificent Victorian house in the mid 19th century. After … Read more

Inglenook and Charbono Revisited

We recently celebrated the 40th wedding anniversary of friends with a dinner party. One of the guests, a wine collector, brought a 40-year-old bottle of Inglenook Charbono to celebrate the affair.

The bottle of 1968 Inglenook Charbono was decanted and allowed to sit one hour. After tasting the Charbono, we agreed that the wine was still fruity but maybe a little flat but that was okay because it was the thought that counted. What a great way to toast our friends with a wine from this famous Napa Valley winery made the same year as our friends were married. The bottle of wine also stimulated much conversation about the great days of Inglenook and the Charbono wine varietal.

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A Look at the “Paris Block” Chardonnay

A few blog posts ago, we mentioned that nearly all the grapes that produced the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, the wine that won the “Judgment of Paris,” came from Sonoma County and not the Napa Valley. We found all this out at the Family Winemaker Event from Katie Bacigalupi. Her grandfather, Charles Bacigalupi, sold a portion of those grapes to Chateau Montelena. Those grapes are still there on the Bacigalupi Vineyards in the Russian River Valley. So when Katie offered to show us the vineyard, we took her up on the invitation.

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Judgment of Paris has twists and turns. The inside news

The movie “Bottle Shock” is currently playing in selected theaters. The movie tells the story of Chateau Montelena of the Napa Valley topping the best of French white wines in the 1976 taste off known as the “Judgment of Paris.” Well, we experienced a bottle shock of our own at the Family Winemakers event held … Read more

In Search of Sparkling Wine in Napa Valley and Carneros

Any day of the year is a great time to enjoy Sparkling wine but in the warm days of late summer, this bubbly wine is particularly refreshing and tasty. Carneros and the Napa Valley have several wineries that produce great sparkling wine. With this blog post we begin a series of posts on some of these. But first, here is some quick information about Sparkling Wine.

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Napa Valley Reading Material

Are you getting ready to travel to the Napa Valley? Here are four books on the Napa Valley that we think you might enjoy. Two are non-fiction books that give an excellent account of the history of Napa Valley, and the other two are light mysteries that take place in the Napa Valley. Choose one and enjoy reading poolside at your hotel or in the library room of your comfortable B&B.

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Wine Spills — A Student’s Science Fair Project

This is quite a departure from our usual topic of the Napa Valley and Carneros wine country, but we thought our readers would find this posting very fascinating and helpful.

As we walked the aisles of an elementary science fair where our granddaughter attends school, one project caught our eye. The title read, “Wine Spills.” Wow, we thought, the topic of wine has come to an elementary school science fair!

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Julia Flynn Siler – The House of Mondavi

Last Saturday we attended the Burlingame Foundation Luncheon. Julia Flynn Siler, the author of the House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, was one of three featured authors. We did not attend so much to hear Julia but to support the Burlingame Library Foundation, but having Julia speak was a huge bonus. Her presentation was limited to 20 minutes but she gave us a fascinating account of her trials and tribulations in writing the book about one of the most famous families in the world of wine.

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Price of Napa Valley Wines — Too High?

Our last post on Dutch Henry Winery drew a comment from Dutch Henry owner and winemaker Scott Chafen. We mentioned in the post that we thought the Dutch Henry wines were priced on the high side. Scott responded by saying, “organically farmed, hand picked, barrel aged, and hillside grown all has its price.”

This leads to the subject of wine pricing in the Napa Valley or in any wine country. How is the price of wine set by a winery? Is there a set formula that takes into account the cost of wine production, how much profit to make, and other factors? Or, is the process totally subjective?

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