Events
Wine, beer, and whiskey are all poured frequently at events held around the globe, and here at Drinkhacker we tend to patronize many of them. This category offers our tasting reports from these events — as well as announcements of upcoming events that you the reader may be interested in attending. Watch especially for discount codes and freebies, which we often cross-post to our Contests section.
Top Events Posts:
Tasting Report: Bourbon & Beyond 2018
Tasting Report: WhiskyFest San Francisco 2018
Tasting Report: Bordeaux and Sauternes, 2015 Vintage
California’s Lodi region is known for its wide range of varietals, irreverent approach to winemaking, and affordable prices, and to showcase all of the above, a sextet of Lodi’s most notable winemakers recently got together to showcase their wares via a Facebook webinar. The theme: white wines, many of which are rarely produced on American…
“Wine and cheese” go together so well it’s almost a cliche. Recently, Sonoma’s Sonoma-Cutrer Winery got together with one of northern California’s most noteworthy cheesemakers, Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese, to arrange a side-by-side tasting of both of their most iconic products. Three wines were tasted alongside four cheeses — Original Blue, Bay Blue (a mild,…
While you rarely see Temecula Valley-grown wines in stores, the region is hopping with tons of wineries, all hot destinations for southern California tasters, thanks to its convenient location about an hour northeast of San Diego. With travel shut down, visiting Temecula isn’t an option right now, so in lieu of bringing media to the…
A recent roadshow brought dozens of Oregon wineries to San Francisco to show off their recent wares — lots of pinot noir, and a smattering of white wine styles, namely. It’s especially interesting to see Oregon shift its reds to bolder, more aggressive and deeply extracted wines; it feels like alcohol levels are creeping upward,…
Blending whiskey is tons of fun. I’ve done blending sessions with Johnnie Walker and Woodford Reserve — but those were just for kicks. With HomeStock, WhistlePig and partner Flaviar are doing something quite a bit different, setting up about 1000 drinkers with kits that let them blend up a whiskey that WhistlePig will bottle and…
Like Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino is made in Italy from sangiovese grapes. What’s the difference between the two wines, then? Location: Chianti hails from Tuscany, while Brunello is born in Montalcino, about 60 miles to the south. The weather and the soils are both different here, and the warmer climes around Montalcino give Brunello more…
The arrival of 2017 Bordeaux brings with it the inevitable nervousness over quality. It was a year where spring frost caused moderate damage and summer heat created a different type of problems. While some producers have learned how to manage extreme weather conditions, some wines aren’t showing their best. Sure enough, this tasting was fairly…
As they did last year, over a dozen winemakers from Bordeaux’s St. Emilion region traveled to the U.S. to showcase their 2016 releases, many of which have just hit the market. (Surprisingly, a smattering of 2017s were also being poured.) We caught up with them during their San Francisco visit, tasting the new releases as…
Another year is in the books for San Francisco WhiskyFest, a typically packed event with hundreds of whiskeys to explore… plus, for those confused on where they are, libations from The Mocktail Project. My dance card was full of whiskies from around the world, with highlights to be found in just about every region. My…
New Zealand’s winemakers were back in San Francisco recently, bringing their most recent vintages to show to trade and press. No big surprises here, though as always the trend of overblown tropicality in NZ sauvignon blanc is being tempered, in no small part thanks to winemaking expanding beyond the Marlborough region to other terroirs and…