Domaine Ste. Michelle, located in Paterson, Washington, has been producing an excellent array of value sparkling wines for over 30 years. DSM is one of the largest sparkling wine houses in the United States, producing more than 300,000 cases each year. Rick Casqueiro has been head winemaker since 1994. I had the pleasure to meet […]

The third Riesling Rendezvous, hosted by Chateau Ste. Michelle of Washington State and Dr. Loosen of Germany, was held last week in the Seattle area. Nearly 70 producers from seven countries and six U.S. states traveled to Washington State to celebrate, explore, and promote Riesling. While Riesling is enjoying a resurgence of sorts (currently, Riesling […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is vinifera. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Vinifera, the European species of Vitis that is the vine most used for wine production, to which all the most familiar vine varieties belong. Vinifera is not a classical Latin word, but one made up by […]

Good wine and great values have been the keynotes at the Rhone Rangers events that I have attended. So why was attendance down so much at this year’s trade event in Seattle, both in numbers of producers pouring wines and in distributors, restaurants, and media tasting the wines? For answers to that question, I turned […]

Would you like a quick suggestion for a good wine to drink tonight (or this weekend) that won’t break your budget and is widely available? Many of our readers have said this is something they would like, so here is this week’s selection, the 2007 Buried Cane Syrah from Washington State. Our selection criteria include: […]

Recently when we were in Walla Walla for the Wine Bloggers Conference, we had the pleasure to visit with one of our favorite Washington winemakers, Rich Funk of Saviah Cellars. We selected Saviah Cellars as our Best Washington Winery of 2009. Saviah Cellars is a family-owned winery located south of downtown Walla Walla, near the […]

People so often eat certain meals only on very special occasions. In our family the main entrée of our traditional Christmas dinner is chicken and dressing. Not wanting to wait until December to eat it again, I thought it would be fun to have a Christmas in July dinner for this month’s challenging wine pairing. […]

Kori S. Voorhees, our Wine Peeps Editor-in-Chief, is also a regular contributor to Washington Tasting Room Magazine, a quarterly magazine that focuses on Washington State wine with articles about wineries, vineyards, travel, and lifestyle. The following article, written by Kori, appeared in the Fall 2009 issue. Many a great bottle of wine has begun with […]

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is residual sugar. Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine: Residual sugar, occasionally RS, is the total quantity of sugars remaining unfermented in the finished wine.  This may include both fermentable sugars, mainly glucose and fructose, which have for some reason remained unconverted to alcohol […]

When we started publishing QPRs for all the wines we reviewed, there weren’t many wine writers using the term QPR. Now it seems that everyone is using the term as a buzzword for a wine they feel is a good deal. Commentary I read about QPR, or quality-to-price ratio, leads me to believe that it […]