Fjellene Cellars is a small, family-owned winery located in Walla Walla, Washington. Owner/winemaker Matthew Erlandson founded Fjellene Cellars in 2008. Prior to going out on his own, Matthew worked as assistant winemaker at Beresan Winery and Balboa Winery under Tom Glase. Before his winemaking days, Matthew spent thirteen years as an outdoor educator and mountain [...]

Chile is a long, narrow country that runs 2,600 miles along the southwestern coast of South America between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. But don’t let its geography fool you, there is more climatic and soil diversity found east to west than from north to south. Spanish settlers first planted wine grapes in [...]

Pecan pie is one of the Wine Peeps’ favorite desserts. In fact, it is John’s absolute favorite! Kori is actually the pecan pie maker in the family; although, I made the one for this challenging wine pairing. Each year, Kori makes pecan pie for her dad’s birthday in November as well as for Thanksgiving and [...]

Founded in 1995, Planeta Winery encompasses six distinct wine estates throughout Sicily. The Planeta philosophy is, “For each terroir, its own winery.” Planeta has tried to identify the area within Sicily where certain varieties grow best and then has established a boutique winery with its own surrounding vineyard in that respective area. Planeta’s boutique wineries [...]

Rodney Strong founded Rodney Strong Vineyards, located in Healdsburg, California, in 1959. Current owner Tom Klein and the Klein family purchased the winery in 1989. In 2005, Klein added a “winery within a winery” concept to the Rodney Strong portfolio to focus on small-lot, artisan winemaking. The debut release from their Single Vineyards line was [...]

Washington State Cabernet Sauvignons are among the best in the world, and they are much better values (higher QPR) than most Cabs in other wine regions of the world. Last Friday evening, we tasted six Cabernet Sauvignons from the 2008 vintage from Washington State in our wine tasting dinner. It was another fabulous evening of [...]

Nota Bene Cellars is a small, family-owned winery located in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood. Owner/winemaker Tim Narby and his wife Carol Bryant founded Nota Bene in 2001. Tim got his start in winemaking over 15 years earlier in the Boeing Employee’s Wine and Beermaking Club. When their youngest child was out of preschool, they decided [...]

During the recent Wine Bloggers Conference in Portland, Oregon, Dad (John), Colby, and I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in the Dundee Hills. These wine country visits are always a highlight of the conference. When we boarded the bus, we did not know where it was going as each bus had a different [...]

The day before the recent Wine Bloggers Conference in Portland, Oregon, Colby and I had the pleasure to attend a culinary bus tour hosted by Wines of Chile. We boarded the Double Decker tour bus at the DoubleTree Portland and headed off for a wonderful afternoon enjoying Portland’s diverse food options paired with some wonderful [...]

Managing partner Marty Taucher and winemaker/partner Chris Peterson founded Avennia Winery in 2010. Located in Woodinville, Washington, Avennia’s first wines were released this past weekend. And, folks, an impressive debut it was. In my opinion, Avennia is the most exciting new Washington winery since Rasa Vineyards burst onto the scene a few years ago. The [...]