Wine Tonite!

When most people think about Washington state, they are likely to conjure thoughts of the dreary, rainy confines of Seattle.  This makes sense as nearly 75% of the state’s population reside in the Puget Sound Lowlands.  However, when talking about winegrowing, 99% of the state’s grape production comes from vineyards east of the Cascade mountains [...]

After about 18 months, our 2008 Laurel Hills Syrah Alder Springs vineyardhas been birthed from it’s French oak barrel and finally bottled and ready for consumption.  It was a great experience working with the folks at Crushpad.  Their new facility in Napa (they used to be in SF) is coming along nicely as landscaping was [...]

In 2008 we hooked up with Crushpad to begin making one barrel of Syrah.  In hindsight, it couldn’t have been worse timing to spend that much cash with the great recession beginning to show its ugly mug.  Regardless, I was (and still am) interested in making wine and this was a way to learn the [...]

When we visited Montemaggiore Winery we had the opportunity to try their 2002 Syrah Paulo’s Vineyard, which is their flagship wine.  Here it is 2010 and they still have some 2002 hanging around.  There are still great discounts to be had with this wine and it is really drinking nicely right now as I mentioned during [...]

With the NCAA tourney just ended, I now present the results of our 2nd annual March Madness wine tasting where the host determines what wine-related madness we all will venture into while watching college hoops.  Last year was the inaugural Bordeaux Madness, in which 9 wines from the Bordeaux region of France were pitted against each [...]