Two wine events – past & future

John on Wine: Two wine events – past & future

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on Thursday, May 21, 2015

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT NORTH COAST WINE CHALLENGE is a wine competition brought to you by Vineyard & Winery Management focused exclusively on wines produced in select California North Coast AVAs including Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma, Marin and parts of Solano County. The judging was held April 14-15, 2015.

This weekend as I write this and last weekend as you read this, The Press Democrat will host/hosted a trade and public tasting at The Barlow in Sebastopol, California featuring the highest scoring Gold Medal winners from this year’s wine challenge. Mendocino County’s winners were:

2012 Handley Cellars Pinot Noir Mendocino County — 98 Points and Best of Mendocino County

2013 Artezin Zinfandel Mendocino County — 97 Points

2013 Campovida Campo di Rossa Mendocino County — 96 Points

2013 Frey Biodynamic Merlot Redwood Valley — 96 Points

2013 Campovida Arneis Mendocino County — 94 Points

2013 Husch Pinot Noir Anderson Valley — 93 Points

2012 La Follette Chardonnay Mendocino Ridge — 93 Points

2013 Masut Pinot Noir Mendocino County — 93 Points

2014 Navarro Vineyards Pinot Blanc Mendocino County — 93 Points

2013 Navarro Vineyards Pinot Noir Anderson Valley — 93 Points

2012 MacPhail Family Wines Toulouse Vineyard Pinot Noir Anderson Valley — 92 Points

2014 Navarro Vineyards Riesling Deep End Blend Anderson Valley — 92 Points

2013 Paul Dolan Vineyards Pinot Noir Potter Valley — 92 Points

2012 Handley Cellars Pinot Noir RSM Vineyard Anderson Valley — 91 Points

2014 Handley Cellars Pinot Gris Anderson Valley — 91 Points

2014 Handley Cellars Rose of Pinot Noir Anderson Valley — 91 Points

2012 Truscott Zinfandel Mendocino County — 91 Points

2012 Handley Cellars Pinot Noir reserve Anderson Valley — 90 Points

After attending the tasting for John On Wine and The Ukiah Daily Journal, with an intent to taste and write notes on each poured Mendocino County grown wine, next week’s column will be a review of these Gold Medal winners. Congratulations to each vineyard and winery involved. __________

Each year for the last 13 years, Lake County’s amateur wine makers and home brewers have gathered in June to offer the public tastes of their best efforts in the Home Wine and Beer Festival, and they’ll do it again this year on Saturday, June 27.  Along with the amateurs, many of Lake County’s leading commercial wineries and brewers will also sample their products, giving visitors the chance to taste and test some of the best beverages Lake County has to offer, all in one place at one time.

The event takes place from 1 to 5 p.m. at Lakeport’s Library Park, and also includes dozens of vendors offering arts, crafts, agricultural products and food.

The event is sponsored by the nonprofit Lake County Symphony Association as a fundraiser, and all proceeds go to support the group’s music activities, including the acclaimed Lake County Symphony and Youth Orchestras, as well as music teaching and scholarship programs.

Admission to The Winefest — the new and shorter name going forward — is $20 per person. Advance tickets are $20 at Cache Creek Winery Tasting Room, Don Angel Winery Tasting Room, EJ Video, Lake County and available at Wine Studio, Lakeport Chamber of Commerce at Vista Point, Lower Lake Coffee Company, Middletown Florist, Laujor Winery Tasting Room, Rosa d”Oro Winery Tasting Room, Steele Winery Tasting Room, Thornhill Tasting Room, Watershed Books, and Wildhurst Winery Tasting Room. Tickets will also be available at the event for $25. Each ticket includes a commemorative wine glass.

Most of the amateurs will have entered their wines and beers in advance for professional judging — I can disclose that I’m a judge this year — and results will be announced during the Festival.  In addition ticket holders will get the chance to vote for their favorites in the popular People’s Choice awards.

Since The Winefest is sponsored by a music organization, there will be music throughout the Festival provided by the David Neft Duo, as well as a performance by the Konocti Fiddle Club, and noted classical guitarist Travis Rinker. Winefest goers will also enjoy a major raffle and Silent Auction, produced by volunteers from the Symphony Association.

Children and leashed pets are welcome, although tastings are of course restricted to those 21 years and older.

Wine Submissions will need to be delivered the day of the event. A 750-milliliter bottle of each varietal to be judged must be delivered to the drop-off location at the tasting room of Bell Hill Vineyards at 125 Park St., across from Library Park and next to Biggs 155 restaurant. Please deliver your entries between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. the day of the event. Visit HomeWinemakersFestival.com to download an entry form to bring with your submission.

Visit the same website to download a booth application if you would like to be a vendor at the event, and mail your completed application to Home Winemakers Festival at CLPA, P.O. Box 974, Lakeport, CA 95453.

For more information about Lake County’s The Winefest 2015, contact Ed Bublitz at edandcharb1@att.net.

 

An early Thanksgiving

John On Wine – An early Thanksgiving

Susan Johnson and John Cesano at Passport to Dry Creek Valley

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on Thursday, May 14, 2015

I know I am supposed to save up all my gratefulness for the year and post it in a cliché Thanksgiving post toward the end of November, but Thanksgiving is coming early this year.

During the recently passed Hopland Passport event, one of our visiting tasters told me that she wished she could have my job. Everybody sees greener grass outside their lives; I would love to have Anthony Bourdain’s job, but I do recognize how blessed I am.

The Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley invited me to attend the Passport to Dry Creek Valley for the third consecutive year, and I am extraordinarily grateful. This year, I was accompanied by my good friend, Susan Johnson. Susan and I used to travel the country doing tradeshows, winemaker dinners, and corporate events for wineries, and then moved together to work for the Wine Appreciation Guild where we visited hundreds of wineries and tasting rooms throughout California.

Susan now works for a company that provides winemakers the tools to make great wine, and of course I pour great wine at one job and write about great wine in my other job. Although we came at each wine tasted from a different perspective, Susan looking at what could have made a wine better and me taking each wine as it is, we both were absolutely impressed front to back with the line ups at media check in host winery DaVero, Gustafson Family Winery, and Seghesio. Talty did the best job amplifying social media marketing, Selby had the best single bite of food, and Blanchard had the best ‘story’ wine.

DaVero produces organic or biodynamic wines from Italian varieties, and I shared the names of some Mendocino growers when asked by winemaker Evan, but if you grow grapes in the county, certified organic or biodynamic, and they are Italian varieties, then Evan wants to hear from you. Terrific wines that you will not taste anywhere else, plus they have farm goods for sale — and you know how much I love an organic farm stand & tasting room!

Gustafson is a long drive from any other winery, but absolutely worth the time to get there. Best winery views ever, fantastic wines, whimsically wonderful presented tasty food creations, and a dream property for vacation rental. Gustafson joins Preston and Truett-Hurst as one of my three favorite Dry Creek places to spend an afternoon with wine and food.

In spite of my desire to visit new wineries each Dry Creek Passport, Seghesio pulls me in year after year. Between wine, food, and music this is probably the most dependably solid stop for complete satisfaction.

Within seconds of a #DCVPassport post by me, about any participating winery, Talty was sharing or retweeting it. Visit them if you like Zin, Zin, or Zin. Selby’s duck and andouille sausage gumbo with crayfish cornbread was the best food I tasted all weekend. Blanchard had the best music with the Rosetown Ramblers covering Grateful Dead tunes, and each bottle sold of their “Helicopter” blend sees a donation to help the families of our military’s special operators.

Two days before our own Hopland Passport, I attended a general meeting of Mendocino Winegrowers Inc. at Barra of Mendocino. I would love to sit at a table with Charlie and Martha Barra, George Lee, Ed Berry, Leroy and Mary Louise Chase, and just shut up for a change. Listening to these, and other great growers, is so wonderful, and helps me in my education about Mendocino wine. I gratefully accepted an invite to visit the Chase Vineyard on a future date, and am thankful for the opportunity to tell a future story about wine from a great vineyard.

Hopland Passport. For me, it is a week of preparation, two days of intense energy output, and nearly a week of putting my tasting room back together afterward. Although people have reported that attendance may have been lighter than in the past, you couldn’t tell it by our numbers. I have everyone to thank, all of the team at the farm, the tasting room team, our chef team, and especially all of our visitors for more than doubling our numbers from last spring’s Passport event.

Passport is truly a team effort, and we all work hard to make it as fun as possible; I think we succeeded. Now, if you’ll all come and pick up all of your paid for wine, I’ll be even more thankful.

Thanks to Tom Liden, Mendocino winery photographer, for your kind words of encouragement about the words I write weekly. Thanks also to all of my other readers for your words of support; I confess that I am still a little freaked out when I’m recognized for my writing and the compliments about individual pieces I have written, but I am enormously grateful. Within the last two weeks, three different people have told me they enjoy the recaps of the Chef’s Winemaker Dinners at Crush; that makes the piece I’ll be writing about the May 20 Graziano dinner all the easier to write.

Thanks to Aubrey Rawlins, executive director of Mendocino Winegrowers Inc., for recommending me for a winery writing gig. The funny thing is I already loved the wines and winery involved, had planned a visit for a future spotlight winery piece here, and this might be the easiest gig ever, a two for one opportunity.

Thanks to Janis MacDonald and Kristy Charles of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association for invitations to all of your events, and for treating the Ukiah Daily Journal wine guy the same as the folks from Wine Enthusiast, San Francisco Chronicle, and Wine Spectator; it is appreciated, if a little surreal and humbling.

I will next be attending the 18th annual Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival on May 14-17; with a welcome dinner on Thursday (tonight) at Balo Vineyards, the Technical Conference on Friday at the Fairgrounds in Boonville (seriously, it may sound boring, but the tech conferences that Anderson Valley puts on are a highlight of each event) and a Casual BBQ at Lula Cellars that evening, a Press Tasting at Scharffenberger Cellars on Saturday morning followed by the Grand Tasting at Goldeneye Winery.

On Sunday, May 17, I’ll be headed to The Barlow in Sebastopol to taste Mendocino County’s Gold Medal awarded wines from the recent 2015 Press Democrat North Coast Wine Challenge. Friday, June 19, I’ll be at the Coro Mendocino 2012 Vintage Release Party & Multi-Course Dinner at Dogpatch Wine Works in San Francisco (tickets available at Sip Mendocino in Hopland, ask to sit at the McFadden table), and the next day, June 20, I’ll be at the Metreon in San Francisco for the 11th annual Pinot Days.

In between all this, I’ll be visiting vineyards, wineries, and tasting rooms for future pieces, or simply my own further education and enjoyment.

None of my opportunities would be possible without invitations from others, and those invitations come because I write for you, my readers, here in the Ukiah Daily Journal and online at JohnOnWine.com and you are the reason I have a life worthy of gratitude, of thanks, and of appreciation. I’m not waiting until Thursday, November 26, Thanksgiving day 2015; let me say it now (and possibly again then): Thank you!