Gazing at a full moon on a warm, velvet summer night is definitely a pinot noir moment. The earth, mushroom, cherry and barnyard mystique of a good pinot noir celebrates the silvery effect of the moon on my surroundings and psyche. It reminds me of earth and tides and werewolves ...

Wine critic Robert Parker splashed through Paso Robles this week, and left behind a wake of about 600 open bottles. What to do, what to do . . . I don’t know about you, but in Paso Robles we call that a great excuse for a party. A whole string ...

Winemakers, as a rule, don't dress like grownups. They prefer shorts or jeans, comfortable and well-broken-in shoes, and soft, old shirts. They drive trucks and they never wear expensive watches to work. If they own a briefcase, it contains equal parts food, dry socks, and viticulture magazines.

Having announced our intent to operate a winery, however small and conscientious, our every action was on offer to an altar of scrutiny. Ironically, we could have decided to raise livestock like our other neighbors, including a family with an overachieving rooster that crows every morning at 4 am., and no one would have had the right to protest. We wanted a small winery and vineyard...

If you bring your dog to wine country, please keep your dog on a leash and the leash in your hand. Our neighbors frequently go horseback riding through our vineyard and past the winery. Last year a couple pulled up to our winery in an SUV and let their large ...

People sometimes wonder why we are a small winery. Why don’t you produce more? they ask. Why don’t you distribute in more states? Why don’t you charge more? Why don’t you pour at more events? The answer is, because we don’t want to grow up. We don’t want to become ...

I am not much of a history buff because history tends to be so repetitive and depressing (what year did one nation kill every one in the neighboring country again?) so I had expected to slog through Wine War, by Don and Petie Kladstrup. But I found myself with my ...

In a British Columbia article titled “Where’s the Organic Wine?” the author says: “Conventional wine may also be produced naturally, or may include more than a dozen additives, such as synthetic yeasts, sulphite preservatives and taste and appearance enhancers. Natural, organic methods rely on cultured, not genetically modified yeast for initial fermentation.” Disregarding the other...

Crush is almost here. It's that time of year again. Time for grapes to be harvested and turned into wine. Do we call this time of year "crush" because the grapes are poured into hoppers and dumped into crusher-destemmers to be de-foliated and mangled before fermenting? No, we call it ...

In a daring leap of faith, central coast zinfandel grower Sylvester Dusi and his son Benito raised the price of their wine by ten cents a case. Dusi zinfandel went from $5.90 a case to $6.00. They held their price at $6.00 a case for fifteen years—from 1959 to 1974. ...