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• Jug Wine Sundays at Preston of Dry Creek

  Author: Michele Anna Jordan | Thursday, 05-06-08

  Jug wine isn’t what it used to be and I mean that in a good way. What’s on supermarket shelves may not have changed much since the days of Hearty Burgundy but here and there throughout Sonoma County, you can find outstanding wines in three-liter jugs.

  Take Preston’s Guadagni.
  
  Sold only at the winery on Sundays and limited to two jugs per customer, the bottle is filled and labeled on the spot, as you chat with the Prestons and nibble a few homemade olives.
  
  Guadagni is a tribute to Lou and Susan Preston’s late neighbor, Jim Guadagni, known to locals as the Mayor of Dry Creek. Jim was Lou’s mentor and if you get him talking, he’ll share colorful stories, including one of the teenaged Jim guiding a walking plow behind a sweating horse, a jug of wine at either end of the field.
  
  Jim grew zinfandel, carignane, malvoise and mataro. Today, malvoise is known as cinsault and mataro is called mourvedre but the blend that bears his name is as juicy, voluptuous and smooth as his family wine likely was.
  
  Preston of Dry Creek, 9282 West Dry Creek Rd., Healdsburg. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. $5 tasting fee, refunded with wine purchase. Guadagni is $32 per 3-liter jug; it is sold only on Sundays; don’t even think about asking to buy it on another day.

  – michele anna jordan www.micheleannajordan.com
  
  

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• It's Hot and I'm Thirsty

  Author: Michelle Baker | Thursday, 15-05-08

  The temperature is soaring towards 100 degrees in Sonoma County - California Wine Country this week, and suddenly a glass of warm red wine isn’t very appealing. No, when it’s hot outside I prefer a cold wine--either a simple, clean white or even better, an icy dry rose.

  I like to say that no one plans to make dry rose and holds aside grapes for that purpose (except Sola Rosa, a Sonoma County winery whose sole focus is dry rose). Rose in California is almost always the byproduct of “bleeding off” tanks.

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• Sonoma Wine Blending Seminars

  Author: Michelle Baker | Wednesday, 07-05-08

  There are a lot of wineries in Sonoma County competing for you time, attention and dollar.  Every once in a while a winery comes up with a new angle on how to get you, the treasured consumer with credit card in pocket, in the door.  For example, the food-wine pairing angle is thriving, with Lynmar Winery a more recent addition, and St. Francis, Mayo and Kendall-Jackson still enjoying great success with their elaborate paired tastings.  While J Winery no longer offers their food-wine pairing to bar visitors, but it’s still available in the J Bubble Lounge.

  Now a new visitor hook is popping up in Sonoma County tasting rooms, the blending seminar.

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• Joseph Phelps’s Freestone Vineyards Open in West Sonoma County

  Author: Michelle Baker | Wednesday, 30-04-08

  The long awaited Pinot Noir project of Napa Valley’s Joseph Phelps Vineyards is underway, with a brand new tasting room open in Freestone in West Sonoma County.

  In 1999, Phelps planted 80 acres of Pinot Noir and 20 acres of Chardonnay on three separate sites above Freestone in the Sonoma Coast appellation.

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