LaGayle and I are currently in South Africa visiting the major winelands of the Western Cape and tasting as many of their wines as we can that are available in the United States. On our first full day in Cape Town, after taking one of those Hop-On Hop-Off city tours, we walked up to the […]

Pedroncelli Winery, located in Geyserville, California, in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County, was founded in 1927 by John Pedroncelli, Sr. Today, Pedroncelli is still a family-owned business, now in their fourth generation. Winemaker John Pedroncelli, Jr. has more than 40 vintages under his belt at Pedroncelli Winery. We first visited Pedroncelli Winery in […]

Kim Crawford Wines, located in New Zealand, was founded in 1996 by owner/winemaker Kim Crawford and his wife Erica. In the beginning, Kim Crawford Wines was one of New Zealand’s first “virtual wineries.” They sourced their grapes from growers across New Zealand, made the wine at other wineries, and managed their sales and marketing from […]

In the process of cleaning up my desk and purging my files over the holidays, I found notes from four Walla Walla, Washington, wineries that we visited in October on the same weekend we took our vineyard tour with Rich Funk of Saviah Cellars. These four were wineries that we had not had a chance […]

South Seattle Artisan Wineries is a group of eight boutique wineries located just south of downtown Seattle, including Cadence, Elsom Cellars, Fall Line, Falling Rain, Nota Bene, O*S, Sodovino, and Stomani. Since these are small, boutique wineries, they are not open for regular tasting room hours. However, they host joint open houses on special Saturdays […]

Mother Nature gave us just enough of a reprieve between snowstorms to allow us and our guests to make it to this month’s wine tasting dinner last Friday night. After being cooped up in our homes for a couple days, it was nice to get out for a fun evening of good wines, excellent food, […]

After spending Thanksgiving Day in Seattle, we loaded up the car and headed to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The last time we visited wineries in the area, which was several years ago, we had not had a very pleasant experience. With the increasing notoriety that Oregon has received worldwide as a wine producing region, we decided […]

On a recent Saturday, the Wine Peeps attended tastings at two local wine shops. Mom (LaGayle) and Dad (John) attended the Ross Andrew tasting at McCarthy & Schiering in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood and then I joined them for the Stephenson Cellars, Otis Kenyon, and Five Star Cellars tasting at Pete’s Wine Shop in Bellevue. Ross […]

This time of year with the holidays rapidly approaching, my “wine” attention tends to focus on bubbly. I absolutely love sparkling wine but do not drink it often enough. However this time of year, I make sure to celebrate with friends and family and enjoy some sparkling wine. With that in mind, it was easy […]

We could not have asked for more hospitable hosts for the first-ever North American Wine Bloggers Conference than the people of the Sonoma wine industry. They really stepped up to the plate with sponsorships and donations of wine to help make the conference possible. Sonoma County is located north of San Francisco between Napa County […]