This month I decided to do something a little different with our challenging wine pairing. Rather than do the usual pairing with a meal, we decided to do a pairing with a dessert. German chocolate pie is something that I’ve used many times as the dessert with our tasting dinners. On most occasions, I have [...]

Peter Rosback is one of the most well-known and well-respected winemakers in the Pacific Northwest. Rosback got his start in winemaking in 1985 as a home winemaker experimenting with Pinot Noir. In 1986, he began making Old Vine Zinfandel from The Pines Vineyard. Rosback entered the wine business commercially in 1994 when he and David [...]

Since we live in Washington State and often drink wines from Washington State, we want to make sure that we continue to hone our knowledge of the entire world of wine and maintain well-rounded palates in order to make us even more objective when we evaluate wines from Washington State. Therefore, we are thoroughly enjoying [...]

Located along the Central Coast halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Paso Robles is California’s third largest and fastest growing wine region. The town of Paso Robles (“Paso” to the locals) is the heart of Paso Robles wine country. The Paso Robles AVA was established in 1983 and has expanded a couple of times [...]

Our host for the February edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the blogosphere’s monthly virtual wine tasting event, is Jennifer Hamilton of The Domestic Goddess. She selected Your Tender-est Twosome as this month’s theme and asked us to pair a wine with a dessert saying, “Every once in a while, dessert deserves the attention given to [...]

When you are winding down and relaxing after dinner on a cold, winter evening, there’s nothing better than a small glass of port wine. Add in a piece of chocolate with your port around the holidays and you have a treat that’s hard to beat. Port is a fortified wine, meaning that grape spirit (almost [...]

Last week in Texas Wine Country 2009, Part One, I shared with you my initial impressions of Texas wines in 2009 and how much better they are today than in 2002. Now after visiting a total of 23 wineries and tasting a total of 169 wines from 28 wineries, let me give you a summary [...]

Regular readers may remember that I visited several wineries in the Texas Panhandle about a year ago. Prior to last year, I had not been impressed at all with the Texas wineries I had visited. However, based on my limited sampling last year, I wanted to make a more comprehensive survey of Texas wines and [...]

The tagline used by the Washington Wine Commission to describe Taste Washington is “the ultimate wine experience.” That phrase definitely sums up this past weekend. Taste Washington is a wine and food lover’s paradise. The festivities kicked off on Friday with the Washington Wine Restaurant Awards, picked up steam on Saturday with Education Day, and [...]

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 [...]