It has been a busy summer for the Wine Questers team. We’ve added almost 100 wineries to our database and maps for Temecula, Santa Barbara County, and Paso Robles. We added 34 in Santa Barbara County by branching out from the Santa Ynez Valley to Santa Maria, in-town Santa Barbara, and Lompoc.

Paso was NUTS! A year ago we had most of them mapped except for a few out on the fringes of the region. This year we added 58 and many of them are newly open. Some that were rarely open to the public, and outside the scope of WineQuesters.com, are now available either on a regular schedule or by appointment. Many growers have opened their own tasting rooms. So if you thought you’ve explored Paso wineries you may want to look again.

Crazy for a hugely deep recession heh?

- jim

Last Friday April 2 at 6 PM Katya and I hosted a Wine Questers SF Urban Meetup at the Winery Collective in SF near Fisherman’s Wharf.  Attendance was not outstanding, only 6 of us, but the conversation and wines were excellent and we had a great time by including hapless tourists.  The engaging tasting bar staff deliver a diverse selection of wines in a variety of flights for a good taste adventure.

We bought:

1. Sol Rouge Gypsy Blanc, and interesting white blend.
2. Sol Rouge 06 Napa Valley Cab – this one we have raved about before.  The nose and taste has more than hints of Kalamata olives.  The vineyard soil does this.

We spent Friday and Saturday nights at the adjacent Argonaut Hotel. Hotel management gave us a great deal on a room looking west to Ghirardelli Square, the Hyde Street cable car turnaround (entertaining) and the Golden Gate Bridge.  This hotel is nautical themed in keeping with the maritime museum in the same building. Actually, the building is owned by the National Park Service.  Great place to stay!!!

We wanted to spend the weekend resting but that never happens.  I looked out the window on Saturday morning and the weather was warm and sunny.  There was also no line for the cable car that goes over the hills to Market Street. We grabbed the cameras and spent much of the weekend shooting video and stills for a future Discover SF Urban Wine Region video.  We had a mostly empty cable car and a cooperative driver so we got some good shots.  We also shot from the ships in the historic park.

The Winery Collective isn’t the only wine thing to do around Fisherman’s Wharf.  We wandered into Ghirardelli Square for some reason (chocolate) and happened upon a wonderful wine store and tasting bar.  Cellar 360 has a huge selection of wine, incredible view of the Bay, a well-stocked deli, friendly and informative staff, and a nice patio. We picked a few munchies from the deli, bought glasses of wine at the tasting bar after they let us taste a variety, and relaxed in the warm sun on the patio. Lazy and hedonistic, just our thing.

As we wandered toward the famous chocolate store we were in for another surprise.  Alexander Valley’s Wattle Creek has a tasting room there and not in AV. I had never heard of them and we hang out in Geyserville in that Sonoma County valley, only minutes from their winery.  I’ve been tasting in Alex Valley since the early 70′s and love the wines there.

We bought Wattle Creek’s:

1. Yorkville Highlands “The Triple Play” red blend.
2. Alex Valley 05 Cab Sauv.
3. Yorkville Highlands “Focus” red blend.

We would have bought one of everything but we have a budget and no room to store them.

On Sunday we found Wines of California wine bar on Pier 39.  Their wine list is interesting and they have a patio overlooking the marina.  It also looked like they were preparing to BBQ. We had enough wine for the weekend so a visit there is on our to do list.

We hit many restaurants in the area.  Our favs are The Blue Mermaid for nautical ambiance and chowder in the Argonaut Hotel and McCormick & Schmicks at Ghirardelli Square for interesting seafood dishes and VIEW.

Our Discover SF Urban Wine Region video is a future project.  We’re just collecting what photography we can for now.

We only ventured a few blocks in each direction from the hotel but had a busy and interesting weekend.

- jim

On Saturday January 10th about 60 wine questers met at a warehouse winery operation on Treasure Island in SF Bay for our first Wine Questers Taste n Tell.  We tasted from these tiny boutique wineries: Vie, Blue Cellars, Treasure Island, Morningwood, and Sol Rouge.  Too much wine to review here but we loved them all.  The wines will be reviewed on Twitter as they are consumed.

The vintners presented their wines to the group sequentially and then set up on a nearby table so we could explore them more.  I was busy shooting video and doing event organizing things so I missed a lot of the presentations and wines.  Everyone seemed to be having fun and format was very good.

Katya Preston got up at 5 AM on Saturday and made over a hundred Russian peroshki.  These are little pies or turnovers stuffed with different meats, potato, and apple.  There were many comments that they went great with the reds.

Later we moved to A.P. Vin near the SF Design Center and then to the shoreside home of Canihan Wines with an incredible view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge!

These wineries are not open to the public on a regular basis.

I wouldn’t consider Treasure Island or even San Francisco a wine tasting road trip destination but it seems to be getting there.  The vintners are in various stages of opening tasting rooms and we can expect to see some soon around Fisherman’s Wharf.  They are enthusiastic about developing San Francisco as a wine tasting destination and their wines are terrific!

I added an olive oil tasting room category to WineQuesters.com.  This was requested by a Paso Robles olive oil company.  So now there is one online but others will probably join.  We may add these to our Tweetup Tastings!

There are maybe a dozen olive oil tasting rooms in California wine regions.  St. Helena Olive Oil Company, Temecula Olive Oil Company, and Pasolivo in the mountains west of Paso Robles are the better known ones.  If we can help them establish more of a market then we should see more such tasting rooms.

- jim

On Saturday December 13 we had our first Wine Questers Tweetup Tasting.  Three of us from the Twitter wine community met for lunch at Gerre Vineyard and Winery’s wonderful cafe.  We then proceeded to taste and micro-blog our impression on Twitter at 6 wineries starting with Garre’s tasting room for the next five and a half hours.  (We poured out.)  Many in the wine community followed and discussed our impressions during the tasting room visits.  Our Tweetup was exposed the hundreds of tasters around the US and the world.

We will be developing the Wine Questers Twitter Tastups into regular events.  The wineries quickly recognized the value of live micro-blogging at their tasting bars and offered us nice discounts.

Below are the wines that I bought that I considered to be particularly interesting to taste. Red Feather and Little Valley had some killer wines that they wouldn’t sell us because their labels weren’t approved yet.  We tasted them and wanted to try them in a home context.  I’ll be blogging about the wines below as we try them.  If you are looking for interesting and tasty wines please try these and comment on them.  None are too soft to be boring but they won’t bite you.  The list below is in the order I pulled the wines from the case and bags.

Charles R Vineyards:

• 2006 Livermore Valley Zinfandel.
• 2005 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.

Crooked Vine Winery:

• Stony Ridge Malvasia Bianca undated sparkling wine.
• Stony Ridge 2005 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.
• Crooked Vine 2004 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.
• Crooked Vine 2007 Livermore Valley Charve – Chard & Viogneir blend.
• Crooked Vine 2004 Aromatica Dessert Wine.

Red Feather Winery:

• 2004 Livermore Valley Merlot.
• 2005 Livermore Valley Jaiden’s Dessert Wine – unusual, dry, and tasty!

Les Chenes Estate Vineyards – specializing in very small case lots of Rhone style wines:

• undated Livermore Valley Deux Rouge – red wine.
• 2007 Livermore Valley Roussanne.
• 2007 Livermore Valley Mourvedre.  We finished the bottle over two days and sipped before dinner, during, and after.  Katya and I considered it better after it had time to breath and open up. Good quality and interesting but it this varietal takes a little getting used to for those unfamiliar with it.  Worth the “learning curve” though!

Little Valley

• 2002 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.

Gerre

• 2005 Livermore Valley Syrah.
• 2006 Livermore Valley Merlot.

Katya and I enjoy winery picnics with gourmet food, beautiful table settings, and of course the winery’s wine.  I’m thinking, should we publish our next picnic on Wine Questers, Twitter, etc. and see if a few folks want to join us pot luck?

Then the issue is where?  We are surrounded by great winery picnic sites in all directions here in Silicon Valley.  Maybe south into Monterey County?  Hahn as the capacity and the view.  Selecting a site is tough with so many wonderful choices.

- jim

Wine is all about emotion and connection to people, food, and place.  A place could be a dining room, tasting room, vineyard picnic, romantic restaurant, or wherever else.  As I’ve blogged before, context heavily influences taste.

Out of curiosity I attended a media tasting for small Napa Valley wineries last Tuesday.  There were a few wine bloggers there but also the wine press.

The tasting was in the Rudd Center at the Culinary Institute of American just north of St. Helena.  Stunning place!  It is an old stone building at the former Christian Brothers Winery that was remodeled for wine instruction and tastings.  It is a cross between a small lecture hall and a chemistry lab.  We each had our own sink.  It was designed to be the perfect place to focus on wine tasting – but is it?

Our winery hosts were very nice and I really enjoyed them.  The wines were all excellent.  Mostly we tasted Cabs which are my favorite anyway.  The major problem is context.

We silently tasted the wines, and spit, in complete isolation from any type of environment that a consumer would experience.  Everyone was focused on each sip and the nose in a perfect environment for sipping and smelling. During the tasting it was silent in the room.  I tried to discuss the wines with a blogger on my left and a wine magazine publisher / editor on my right but someone behind me wanted quiet.  Basically we had to reduce sensory input as much as possible to “taste” the wine.

Some of the old wine media in the room were going to rate the wines and publish them.  If a wine doesn’t get a 90+ rating then it won’t sell from retail shelves.  That means that some poor vintner who has poured his or her heart into the wine is going to suffer a serious set-back.

So I made notes and decided to do a context experiment.  After the tasting I drove a short distance up Highway 29 to Benessere Winery and bought one of the wines we tasted.  I brought it home and shared it with my wife over dinner.  It tasted very different.  I’m not going to say better or worse because that is a meaningless value judgment.  I will say their blend cost $62 which I felt was way too high.

Experiments like this prove to me that pro tastings are worthless for the consumers.  I consider the popular point rating systems to be a fraud to be ignored by those of us who want to enjoy wine without the deep technics and at the time, place, and circumstances of our choosing.

I also want vintners to be freed from the huge constraints of the wine raters.  In Wine Questers we have a rating feature that was requested by dozens of vintners.  Those ratings will only be valid when large numbers of consumers rate the wine in their various environments and circumstances.

Compared to the old wine media tasters in attendance I’m just a barbarian invader.  A hairy beast from the hill country of California that doesn’t fit into the real wine world.  OK, but I’ve had a fair amount of wine education over the past 40+ years and I think those folks shouldn’t be making baseless judgments that affect the rest of us.

I really don’t like them terriorizing winemakers and stiffling innovation and creativity with their value judgments.  I want to taste that innovation even if it burns my nose hairs.  When I taste wine I want it to be an intimate affair between me and the winemaker and the context around me.  The techno-snobs are certainly welcome to enjoy their hobby as they wish but leave the rest of us alone.

Will you consider the wine rating the next time you buy wine?

- jim

As Katya and I headed out on Friday afternoon June 20 for the Calaveras County Passport Weekend we noticed a smoke plume starting to rise in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  When we arrived at the motel in Angels Camp smoke was starting to rise above the hills south of town.  Bad start but a great time wine tasting and munching in the park in Murphys that evening.

While the Calaveras County Passport Weekend was a blast it was also the weekend that a lightning storm started over 1,700 wildfires in Northern California.  One of those became the Basin Complex fire near Big Sur.  I have backpacked and done volunteer trail work in the Ventana Wilderness since the early 60′s.  Lately I’ve been leading Ventana Wilderness Alliance trail crews up the Little Sur River to restore that beautiful trail.

I started locating fire-related information  online and mapping it with Google Earth. I mentioned my map data Web location on the VWA forum which had become the default forum for discussing the fire.  At the height of the fire I estimate from site stats and feedback that I was informing upwards of 15,000 people directly and more through bloggers.

I was able to get access to data on government servers and have the most complete map available.  As the popularity increased I built http://disasterpost.net as a tool for future major incidents.  During this hectic time I had no time for Wine Questers but I expect to return to it soon.  I’m preparing Disaster Post to be presented to the California Office of Emergency Services as a better mass communication platform than anything that exists.  It is far more than just the map overlays.

- jim