Wine, Wine Blog

Douro Valley: Unusual beauty

Put Douro on your itinerary, even if port isn’t your thing At 9:30 a.m. the traffic was light on the freeway that took us from Porto to the Douro Valley –- surprise to dwellers in American metropolises. Our guide, Francisco  ...

  May 23, 2018

  Wine, Wine Blog

Porto offers wine, food, awesome views

The ancient city of Porto offers an abundance of food, wine, fun.

  May 11, 2018

  Wine, Wine Blog

Brrr. Let’s have a glass of wine

Researchers bring wine grapes to cold climes It was not until last June, on a visit to wineries in Vermont https://suruchimohan.com/2017/07/26/wandering-the-vineyards-in-vermont/ that I learned about cold-hardy grapes. That  ...

  April 18, 2018

  Wine, Wine Blog

Texas vintners overcome weather challenge

Vineyardists use technology to overcome hostile conditions. However cosmopolitan we may consider ourselves, I suspect at the end of the day we are frogs in a well. Okay, maybe a pond. True, the size of the pond may differ,  ...

  April 9, 2018

  Wine, Wine Blog

Love of science, land led to career in winemaking

Parents’ love of wine tasting awakened a love of chemistry As a child, Tara Gomez loved the smell of wine cellars. Though not winemakers, her parents enjoyed tasting wine. They went sampling on the Central Coast with the  ...

  February 2, 2018

  Wine, Wine Blog

Happy new year. A bit late.

Sometimes I think, with more than a little embarrassment, that too many of my posts start with an apology for having let so much time slip. The holidays with family, a hard-drive crash that threw me at Apple’s mercy for a  ...

  January 26, 2018 1

  Wine, Wine Blog

Paderewski: Father of Zinfandel

Award-winning zinfandels made Paderewski a wine legend It is hard to resist anything if you are neck deep in slush. So it was with Ignace Jan Paderewski. As he sat in a mud bath in Paso Robles, nursing nerve pain in his left  ...

  November 28, 2017 1

  Wine, Wine Blog

Pianist Paderewski in Paso Robles

Paderewski arrives in Paso Every once in awhile, you stumble upon a story that takes you so deep into itself that only a very determined struggle extricates you from its tentacles. In planning a trip in the waning days of  ...

  November 14, 2017

  Wine, Wine Blog

Smoke may have tainted some grapes on the vine

As with so much smoke in life, time will tell Despite the note of optimism I sounded in my previous post, it turns out that some grapes have absorbed too much smoke to be of any use for winemaking. A story in the San  ...

  November 9, 2017

  Wine, Wine Blog

Wine Country Wildfires Bring out the Best

Wine Country Wildfires showcase remarkable human spirit. What a sad time to write a wine blog, with fires raging all around us. Even as firefighters contain some, others ignite. Predictably, even a good thing – lots of rain  ...

  October 18, 2017