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 Rhone Valley in France is divided into two parts, appropriately referred to as the northern Rhone and the southern Rhone. While the northern Rhone produces mostly single varietal wines, the southern Rhone is known for producing blends. The most famous AOC in the southern Rhone is Chateauneuf-du-Pape which is well-known for its Grenache-based blends, […]

How often have you opened a bottle of wine that was great the night you opened it, but fell flat on its face when you tried the rest of the bottle the next day? What about the flip side, a bottle that was just okay the first night but you loved it the second day? […]

Our host for the April edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the blogosphere’s monthly virtual wine tasting event, is John of The Corkdork. He selected Fine Kosher Wine as this month’s theme in which he asked us to taste something reputed to be Fine Kosher Wine and then write about it. In the past, kosher wines […]

A few months ago, I saw a list of America’s most popular restaurant wines that was published in a post on the popular wine blog, Vinography: Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay Beringer Vineyards White Zinfandel Cavit Pinot Grigio Italy Sutter Home White Zinfandel Inglenook Chablis Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio Italy Yellow Tail Chardonnay Australia Copperidge Chardonnay […]

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 […]

On our recent trip to Hawaii, we decided to give ourselves a reprieve from eating out and paying restaurant wine prices every night by taking some wines from home and cooking a few meals in the condo where we were staying. So we grabbed a couple pairs of sacked-up wines from our private tasting lineup […]

Carpenter Creek Winery, located in Mount Vernon, Washington, was founded in 2001 by owner/winemaker Jeff Hammer and his wife Tara. They opened their tasting room in 2003 and did an extensive remodel in 2006. Their remodeled tasting room is very nice and quaintly situated off the road among fir and cedar trees. Currently, Carpenter Creek […]

Since we are in the midst of Washington Wine Month, we thought it was fitting to feature Syrah, our favorite Washington varietal, in this month’s wine tasting dinner. And taking it one step further, we focused on the 2005 vintage. To this point, many consider the 2005 vintage to be one of the best, if […]