WineFoot.com

By Duane Pemberton Winery website: http://www.donandsons.com Don Sebastini and Sons is a huge wine producer in California that owns a lot of “grocery store” wines that most folks would recognize the brand of – one of those labels is Smooking Loon. This Old Vine Zinfandel comes from a variety of appellations withing California from a [...]

Read the full story

By Duane Pemberton Winery website: http://www.crystalbasin.com/ While many people may think of Paso Robles and Sonoma for great Zinfandel, there is a region out near the Sierra Foothills called El Dorado  - it’s elevation helps to create cooler nights than some of the hotter areas of California and that helps instill different flavors into the [...]

Read the full story

By Duane Pemberton Winery website: http://www.ridgewine.com There is perhaps no more of an iconic zinfandel producer in the world than Ridge Vineyards. Its pedigree of producing quality zins in the quantities it does is a bit mind-boggling – year after year, they’re consistently good. In this review, I take a look at three of their [...]

Read the full story

By Duane Pemberton Winery website: http://www.hartfordwines.com For Hartford winery, based in Forestville California, it’s all about pinot noir, chardonnay and zinfandel – three grapes that California does very well with. They focus on single vineyard sources and very limited bottling which in turn has panned out well for them as they typically have no issues [...]

Read the full story

Paraduxx winery is an off-shot of the infamous Duckhorn and is till headed-up by members of the Duckhorn family to this day. It’s goal is simple – take top-shelf California Zinfandel and blend it with bordeaux varietals to come up with wines that taste better than the sum of its parts.  For a number of [...]

Read the full story

By Darin Pemberton Its spring! Trees are budding, bulbs have pushed through the soil. Kids are playing in the streets and yard of our neighborhood. The wind makes sitting on the porch just a little chilly – not quite California weather – but pretty darn good for South East Michigan, in early April. Thanks to [...]

Read the full story

I freely admit that I can be a grilled-food junkie – I’m not at all one of those “fair-weather” grillers – you know the kind. Those that profess they love grilling, however, only do it from June-August *cough* pansies *cough*. I suppose it’s fair to say that because I do love grilling that it’s easy [...]

Read the full story

The husband and wife team of Optima Winery in Healdsburg California started in 1984 and has remained a relatively small, family-run winery that produces premium wines. Its mission is quite simple – work with top vineyards in and around its local regions and help them each showcase those particular vineyard sites. Mike Duffy is the [...]

Read the full story

Without a doubt, Ravenswood Winery is one of the most well-known Zinfandel producers in the United States and the world. Its owner and winemaker, Joel Peterson, most likely bleeds zinfandel. It’s his unadultered passion for this noble grape is one of the primary reasons behind it and he has made it his mission to bring [...]

Read the full story

If you were to have the chance to meet the winemaker at Four Vines in Paso Robles, Christian Tietje, and ask him what his style was, he’d most likely say “to make wines that do a kick-ass job of representing their varietal composition”. His fresh, bold attitude is, fortunately, one that we’ve been seeing more [...]

Read the full story