VINEgeek

“Rising from the Sonoma terroir like the weathered fists of century-old men, these 100+ year old vines have seen history.” [from the winery's website] Producer: Wine Guerrilla Grapes: A field blend (yay!) of around 95% Zin and the rest a mix of Carignan, Petite Sirah, Alicante Bouchet. Appellation: Dry Creek Valley (AVA, California) Vineyard: Forchini [...]

I haven’t experienced a lot of New World albariño, so I thought it’d give this one a try when I spied it at Costco. I’m glad I did. tangent Albariño 2008 Edna Valley Producer: tangent (they seem to prefer the lowercase t). They’re an intriguing producer focused on white varietal wines other than Chardonnay. Their [...]

I always look forward to opening another bottle of wine from Cline Cellars. Cashmere is their GSM blend (Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre) and in their latest release – the 2008 –  they’ve upped the share of Mourvèdre in the blend. Your favorite blogger’s favorite grape is now the lead dog at 44%. (Let’s all pretend [...]

In the last Mourvèdre Monday post, I reviewed the Lorca 2006 Monastrell from Bodegas del Rosario. I wasn’t planning on doing this Lorca 2008 back-to-back with the last, but our dinner of chorizo, shrimp, olives and rice made me want to go to Spain with my wine choice, and this is the last Spanish Monastrell [...]

This wine always catches my eye on the shelf, with it’s orange label and simple design. I’ve had past vintages and like it pretty well, so let’s see what’s up with the 2008. Carro Tinto 2008 Producer: Bodega Señorio de Barahonda. They put out 10 or 12 different bottlings of Monastrell or Monastrell blends under [...]

A few days before the big #SauvBlanc twitter tasting a few weeks back, I found myself without any Sauv Blanc in the house (a pretty rare occurrence). I didn’t have time to make a run to one a proper wine shop, so I picked up something on my weekly grocery shopping trip. I don’t recall [...]

I had the pleasure of participating in Swirl Smell Slurp’s United Slurps of America: Texas. Each week they taste some wine from one of the 50 states and invite a blogger or two from that state to taste the same wine and share their thoughts. My blogger-pal Ben from Vinotology was the other Texan to [...]

If memory serves, Cline’s was the very first varietal Mourvèdre I ever tasted, way back in the mid-90s in the tasting room. If it wasn’t the first, it was certainly the one that made me take notice of the grape. It’s been an old favorite ever since. Producer: Cline Cellars Grapes: 100% Mourvèdre Appellation: Contra [...]

I first took notice of Wine Guerrilla, a producer of several distinct Russian River Valley and Dry Creek Valley Zins, after reading this post at Benito’s Wine Reviews. Reading the post and checking out their website reminded me of my early days as a wino, er , wine lover. After having my eyes opened to [...]

Producer: Hanna Grapes: 100% Sauvignon Blanc Appellation: Russian River Valley (AVA, California) Vineyards: From estate vineyards across RRV: Slusser 53%, Ricioli 11%, Brooks 11%, Gann Family 9%, Chalk Ridge 8%, Jensen Lane 3%, Crinella 2%, Mirabelle 1% and Gianquinto 1%. (I know all that vineyard detail doesn’t tell you much about the wine, but I [...]