For those of you who find traditional wine events a big yawn, consider coming out this Wednesay to Nightlife Napa Valley here in San Fran, where, besides a bouncer, a DJ and sundry other accoutrements usually reserved for the club scene, you'll find fantastic wines from more than 60 Napa ...

If I had a dollar for every time I tried a new Gewurztraminer - the varietal popularly held to be "the spicy white" - and didn't find it even remotely spicy I'd be quite a bit better off than I am now. The fact of the matter is that Gewurz, ...

As an English major in college I was prone to long windedness . Fortunately, they looked fondly on that so long as you got your message across at the same time. Detailed descriptions , colorful but precise verbs and well chosen metaphors were preferred to, say, just saying something. Although ...

I visited cult Cab producer PRIDE recently in my ongoing quest to learn more about the somewhat mysterious Spring Mountain appellation . Situated literally on the crest of the Mayacamas Mountains, the range that splits Napa County from its neighbor Sonoma (the break in vines in this pic is the ...

Ever since I arrived at the house here in St. Paul de Vence I've had an intense sense of deja vu. It's probably because I came here and stayed with a French family on the Riviera for a summer exactly 10 years ago, in a little village called Mougins right ...

Ok, so I know that Bordeaux isn't technically in Provence, but I'm really liking the Postcards from Provence motif I've got going on here so I'll appreciate everyone's suspending their disbelief for one more entry. I'm in Provence NOW, while writing this recap of our fantastic stay in Bordeaux, so ...

A couple of Saturdays ago my sister and I took an impromptu trip to Santa Cruz. It was one of those Saturdays where you find yourself, surprisingly, with some free time on your hands, and so we thought "why not?!" I'd been itching to check out the area, and harvest ...

Things got off to a very good start today after I disembarked from my red eye from NYC. Amazingly enough, my good pal and travel partner in crime JC was right on time meeting me at the Bordeaux airport, our chosen spot of contact for this leg of the trip. ...

I've always thought of wine as the ultimate interpreter . As interpreter par excellence of place, of people, of culture . I think there are other things that also capture time and momentum and the spirit of of an era . Film and music come to mind as the clearest ...

"It is a very good day. We got a new tractor and the cicadas didn't start singing until 9AM." So began our wonderful day at Moulin de la Gardette, a small family-run estate in the Gigondas district of France's southern Rhone Valley about 45 minutes from Avignon. We spent a ...