In a landscape of rolling, oak-dotted hills and vineyards producing loads of forgettable wine, one Sierra Foothills winery is determined to make its mark. It’s called Cedarville Vineyard and it’s run by “tech refugees” and UC Davis oenology graduates Jonathan Lachs and Susan Marks. (That’s me with Jonathan at their tasting room.) Cedarville’s acreage is well-positioned on a hillside at a slightly higher altitude than most of the area’s wineries, so the grapes are protected from late frosts and kept cool at at night. Just as importantly, the husband-wife team is keeping quality high by keeping quantity under control: low yields in the vineyard, hands-on attention in the winery, and a very small production. (They do less than 2,000 cases a year and have no plans to grow beyond that.)

For our special favorites from Cedarville’s current line up, click here: More

Normally the words “emerging wine region” should merit a wine lover’s attention. With demand (and prices) rising for well-known labels, emerging wine regions are often the source of easy-to-find, easy-on-your-wallet palate pleasers. Such is the case, for example, with South Africa or Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France.

Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an area that is, on the whole, still struggling to get around some of the climate and soil issues that prevented it from being a prestige wine region in the first place. Such is the case, I’d argue after a recent visit, to the Sierra Foothills in California.

Also known as Gold Country because of the famous gold strike near Sutter’s Mill in 1848, the region lies mostly in Amador and Calaveras counties, about halfway between Sacramento and Yosemite. Many wild-wild-West remnants of the great rush remain, but these days in the Sierra Foothills it’s safe to say that red, white, and rosé is the new gold.

Not in the 14-karat sense, though. For my terrifying encounter with a junk-yard dog of a chard, click here: More

Just in time for tax season, here’s a list of my ten favorite wines that cost less than, well, a lot of stuff, including a bouquet of flowers, three trips across the Golden Gate Bridge — even Madonna’s new CD. To make it easier to find the wines, I’ve listed the four reds, one rosé, and five whites by type, and then supplied a particular example from a producer I’ve grown to love. So if, say, you’re inspired to cop a highly-recommended cheap thrill off a pinot bianco from Italy, but can’t find my favorite from Terre di Gioia, trust me. Pretty much any pinot bianco in this price range will do the trick. For less than $3 per glass on the average, these wines will also take the edge off that check you’re writing April 15 to the military industrial complex.

For this year’s list of top ten wines less than $15, click here: More

Because it’s one of San Francisco’s greatest restaurants with a wine list full of trophies, we made reservations at Michael Mina to celebrate a big promotion. Five hours and more than four bottles of fine wine later, the four of us were feeling fully lubricated and nearly insolvent.

My notes for your vicarious pleasure: More

You’d think that Tablas Creek’s remote location, more than a half hour’s drive into the oak-dotted hills from Paso Robles, would deter people. But no. In fact as we drove up, a stretch limo was disgorging a leesy troop of bachelorette-partiers; I worried they might be examples of the wine tasters gone wild phenomenon. Indeed, they were a symptom of a tasting room crowded with warm bodies getting warmer by the glass.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. One of the first large-ish wineries to set up shop in the area — France’s Beaucastel in Chateauneuf du Pape teamed up with its American importer to buy 120 acres in 1987, the Pleistocene Age in Paso terms — Tablas Creek now produces about 22,000 cases, and is pretty recognizable thanks to savvy marketing and kind associations on the part of Rhône wine lovers with Beaucastel and its owners the Perrin family.

Why am I glad I didn’t turn around and flee? Click here to find out: More

Dear Wine Girl:
I am going to Calistoga in Napa Valley with a friend at the end of the month. We are going to taste white wines because neither of us knows anything about them. We are staying at Solage on the Silverado Trail, and I was wondering if you had any good ideas for whites for us to taste. I want to go to Château Montalena and Folie a Deux. Clos Pegas and Sterling are within biking distance.
Signed,
From Vegas to the Vineyards

Dear Vegas in the Vineyards:

Napa is not the first place one goes to drink white wine, since cabernet sauvignon is king there. But you are right to checkmark the chardonnay at Chateau Montalena, since it helped Napa dominate the famous 1976 taste-off between France and Napa. You can continue your historic-whites-of-Napa tour by visiting Grgich Hills in Rutherford, which was founded by Mike Grgich, the Yugoslavian refugee who was winemaker at Montalena when they won the Judgement of Paris. Grgich Hills’ chards are widely regarded to have epitomized the big, buttery style that dominated California chardonnay for so long.

For the best whites in Napa, click here for more: More

By spousal order, I’ve had to limit my membership in wine clubs to two. So after an excruciating process of elimination, I came up with a pair of desert-island wineries. I didn’t pick them because they make my favorite or most prized wine. (That’s what mailing lists are for, and thankfully Alice didn’t say anything about them, since I’m on like a hundred.) I picked the wine clubs I did because I knew they’d send me consistently good, reasonably priced bottles I can sign for on my doorstep, unpack, and put straight on the table. Additionally, the wineries had to be within striking distance, since I like to exploit my membership to get VIP treatment when I visit, including discounts, free tastings, reserved seating, photo ops, whatever.

Justin Vineyards was one. I collect their Bordeaux-style blend called Isosceles, and at the time I signed up, they were having great success with Rhône grape varieties like syrah and mourvedre, which I love. Someday, too, I hoped to be able to stay at Justin’s pastoral-looking bed and breakfast and eat at their restaurant. (The other is Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma.)

So how did it come about that, as Alice puts it, “every time I drink a wine from Justin, a piece of me dies inside“? Click here for the story: More

The only cult cabernet I buy every year is Shafer’s Hillside Select — I love drinking it, and it’s the only example of this rarified category I can afford. Not that it’s cheap. But compared to Screaming Eagle at $500 or Harlan Estate at $350 per bottle, a $200 Hillside Select is a bargain. Plus, I’ve always liked the uncharacteristic modesty of the father-son-winemaker team behind Shafer’s top wine. Shafer Vineyards is one of the few wineries left in Napa that can be described as a farm rather than a vanity project; especially after taking my mother for a birthday visit last Friday, I’m convinced that the Shafers make wine for a living, not for a lifestyle.

How does this big, bold cab come from bantam-weight vines? Click here to find out: More

A reader alerted me to the recent triumph at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition of the $1.99 per bottle 2005 Chardonnay made by Charles Shaw, affectionately known as Two Buck Chuck. The wine has already made a name for itself and Fred Franzia (head of Bronco Wines, which owns the label) by proving to be an entirely drinkable, even agreeable byproduct of the California wine grape glut — as well as a nose-thumb to an industry Franzia calls egotistical, greedy, and bloated. (The colorful CEO insists, for example, that no bottle of wine can cost more than $15 to make; the rest, he says, is hype.) Now Two Buck Chuck can claim bragging rights to quality, too, after it bested 350 other wines in a blind tasting of California chardonnays from a range of prices, a couple of them costing more than $100.

How could this happen, one might ask – especially one who has tasted the Shaw line and found it, as I have, to be inoffensive indeed, but also forgettable? Click here for my two cents: More

A light golden-hued, ever so slightly green liquid is in my glass. If a color could be lively, this one would be — the wine looks like it’s about to rush forward with energy and flavor. Green apples and honeysuckle on the nose, but the real attraction of this wine is the way it tastes and feels in your mouth. It’s got everything a girl could ask for: a certain richness and even a tiny bit of creaminess balanced out by cleansing, fresh acidity. Both flesh and backbone in perfect proportion. Apple, pear, and some interesting, pleasing burnt-earthiness on the midpalate, and then orange peel and citrusy stuff on a long, clean, finish. Definitely a food wine. White fish, prawns, crayfish, and scallops would all go great with this, made (by the way) from a grape native to a region shared by two major winemaking countries, bordering the bounty of an ancient sea.

Email me your guess, or click here for the answer: More