Wine Tasting – Smelling
I hope you all had a chance to take a moment to LOOK at your wine over the last week; now we are going to start Smelling the wine! On Monday, Lisa and I and two great club members ventured…
Category History
Wine Tasting: Look Before You Sip
If you are wine tasting, or just having a glass, before you take that next sip of wine, stop and take a good long look at the wine in your glass. There are so many things you can learn about…
Our Mourvedre & Bottle Shock
Last weekend we had a small bottling run and bottled about 105 cases of Mourvedre which is a typical run for us. We got the label machine working and so we didn’t have to hand label like we did with…
Its Willamette Dammit
Last week Lisa and I took an afternoon and investigated the northern half of the Willamette Valley in Oregon just south of Portland. It is a great place to visit especially if you like Pinot Noir because that’s about the…
Koi Zen Cellars 1st Anniversary
On April 24th, 2016 Koi Zen Cellars celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We planned 5 days of events and right now are very tired, but the whole event was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who came by both…
Put a Cork in IT
Cork Production, Sustainability and Carbon Footprint: This week we will be exploring natural corks and their use in the wine industry. Before opening the winery, I thought a cork was a cork and there wasn’t much to know about them.…
Are Old World Wines the same as New World Wines?
Last week I wrote about how wine generally can be classified as either Old World, or New World. Well here is a twist I think you will enjoy. France has always been known as a premier wine growing region, but…
Judgement of Paris
Old meets new at the Judgement of Paris 40 years ago. On May 24, 1976, Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant organized a blind tasting of some classic French wines against some of Napa Valley’s emerging wineries. The results shocked…
Paso Robles and Terroir
Lisa and I just spent two wonderful days in Paso Robles exploring wine country and attending the WiVi (Wine & Viticulture) convention. It has been a while since we had a day away from the winery and it was great…
Grapes and Global Warming
Is Global Warming causing early Bud Break? A lot of people ask me how the drought and global warming is affecting winegrowers around the state. I wish I had a better answer, but I don’t really know, I am not…