We started our second day in Stellenbosch at Rustenberg Wines, a huge estate equivalent to 3,000 acres, owned by the Barlow Family. It is obvious that there is money here other than wine because only a small portion of the farm is devoted to winemaking; although, they do produce about 120,000 cases of wine a […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is estate bottled. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Estate bottled is a term used on labels which has a very specific meaning in the United States, where an estate-bottled wine must come from the winery’s own vineyards or those on which the winery […]

A few years ago I read Don and Petie Kladstrup’s fascinating book, Wine and War, the story of how France’s winegrowers protected and preserved their wine industry from Nazi plunder during World War II. So, when Dr. Debs of Good Wine Under $20 announced that February’s Wine Book Club selection was going to be another […]

On our first day in Stellenbosch, our first wine farm stop was at Hartenberg Wine Estate established in 1692. The tasting room hostess was nice, but she was juggling our tasting with a phone call about a doctor’s appointment. We tasted four wines at Hartenberg, and while all of them were decent wines, none of […]

While watching an episode of Wine Library TV shortly after Taste Washington last year, I was introduced to Pomum Cellars in Woodinville, Washington. Prior to hearing Gary V. sing their praises, I had not heard of them. A few weeks later, Colby and I were out to dinner at Stumbling Goat Bistro and found the […]

On our first day in the Cape Winelands, we were making good time to our morning appointment until we discovered that our exit in Paarl was closed due to road construction. Because we had never been to this area it took us about thirty minutes to circle around and get us back on track to […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is barrel aging. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Barrel maturation [the term used in this book for aging a wine in a barrel] is the wine-making operation of storing a fermented wine in wooden barrels to create ideal conditions for the components of […]

Our host for the February edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the blogosphere’s monthly virtual wine tasting event, is David McDuff of McDuff’s Food and Wine Trail. David selected A Passion for Piedmont (a title he borrowed from wine writer Matt Kramer’s Piedmontese cookbook) as this month’s theme in which he asked us to pick any […]

Our next excursion on our South Africa trip was a day trip to the wine farms of the Constantia Valley, a suburb of Cape Town. These wine farms are some of the oldest and most historical in the world outside of Europe, several dating back over 300 years. The setting is beautiful and serene with […]

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the government agency that oversees all things wine, has established the 4,145-acre Snipes Mountain AVA as Washington State’s newest American Viticultural Area (AVA); it becomes official this Friday, February 20. Snipes Mountain is located in Yakima County between Granger and Sunnyside. Some of the vineyards and […]