Touring and Tasting at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California, 2018
Did you know you can take the BART train (with a short car service ride from Pleasanton) from the Bay Area to go wine tasting in Livermore Valley? Well, you can! It’s a very price-friendly option with no drinking and driving to worry about. It’s pretty out there, too. Wente has 2000 acres of…
Review: 2016 William Hill Chardonnay North Coast
There’s no shortage of butter here on this unctuous, gooey wine, which layers in notes of vanilla, coconut, brown butter, and spice. Then rinse and repeat. Heavy and weighty on the palate, it’s an exploration of chardonnay at its Californian extremes. Too much for me. C / $14 / williamhillestate.com
Review: George Dickel Tabasco Barrel Finish
Listen, if you’ve never been to the Tabasco factory outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, you should go. Not only will you get to taste Tabasco and watch a movie about Tabasco, you will learn about Tabasco: Specifically, that the sauce spends years in a wooden barrel, covered with salt, as it ferments. What happens to…
Review: 2015 Louis M. Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County
Not to be confused with the 2015 Sonoma Valley cabernet from Louis M. Martini, this is the softer side of Louis, a kinder, gentler cab with an abundance of fruit that provides a lush, lightly sweet body. Full of plums, currants, and blackberries, the wine layers in vanilla and toasted marshmallow notes, leading to a lengthy,…
Review: Nikka Super Rare Old
In Japan, anything with a name like “Super Rare Old” is considered “old man whiskey.” That’s definitely what “Super Nikka,” as it’s known colloquially, is, though not in the same way that many austere whiskeys can be. Super Nikka, which was introduced in 1962, is a blended whiskey, and the company doesn’t provide any real…
Review: 2016 Castello Trebbio Chianti Superiore DOCG
Imported to the U.S. by Sonoma’s Cline family, Castello Trebbio is the center of a 350-hectare, organic winemaking operation that includes this Chianti Superiore. Soft for Chianti, the wine offers a significant graphite note, atop a dark but quite dry cherry base. Slightly tart, with notes of black pepper and some vague, dried spice notes,…
Wine and Whiskey Tasting in California’s Paso Robles, 2018
Paso Robles, in the northern part of San Luis Obispo County, has a storied past: a history of habitation by the Salinan Indians that we can trace back thousands of years, a change of hands to Mexican ownership (before and after the Mexican-American War ,when the U.S. annexed California) and an eventual purchase from a…
Review: J.H. Cutter Whisky
Hotaling & Co. (formerly Anchor Distilling) has launched a new whiskey, inspired by a San Francisco brand so old they called it whisky, a tweak that Hotaling keeps intact for this release. Some details on what’s in the juice: In the mid- to late-1800s when A.P. Hotaling’s liquor warehouse was the talk of San Francisco,…
