The Domaine de la Pépière Cuvée Granit 2006 is classified as a Vin de Pays (the link is to Wikipedia), which is a classfication level below that of the French wines, appellation d’origine contrôlée, that we’ve reviewed in the past, and the wine hails from a poducer known more for its whites — Muscadet, to be precise — than reds.     
Still, we found this blend […]

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Our interest was piqued in the Juris St. Laurent Selection 2004 when a staff member at K&L described the wine’s features as a cross between an earthy Pinot Noir and a meaty Syrah.  In case you’re curious, the varietal here is St. Laurent, which is widely produced in Austria.
Here’s what we found: aromas of leather and berries; a leathery palate but accompanied […]

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For those of you that still don’t accept the idea that $10 can buy an outstanding bottle of wine, allow us to introduce the Cascina Minella Dolcetto di Dogliani 2004, which, as its name suggests, is a Dolcetto from Dogliani (located within Italy’s northwestern region of Piedmont).  This wine had been glowingly recommended to us, yet we felt that the recommendation didn’t even do it enough justice.
We were pleased […]

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We’ve been traveling in the Northeast for the past few days to spend time with family, and due to all of the flying and driving, we are surely wiped.  Fortunately, we will be staying with my folks for the next couple of days, which to our minds means only one thing: party time!  While they […]

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These days, cheap Pinot Noir tends to be an anomaly, so anything that’s actually decent is truly a treat.  The La Forge Estate Pinot Noir Reserve 2006 is far better than just decent, and with a price tag of only $11, we felt more than justified in selecting it as this week’s Weekday Wine.
We found the style of the La Forge to be more typically European than, say, a big extracted Californian version – at […]

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We were in the mood for something different when we purchased the Olaia Dehesa de Rubiales 2004, and different is certainly what we ended up with.  This wine bears very little resemblance to any of the others we’ve reviewed previously.
The Olaia is composed mostly of Prieto Picudo (50%) – a darkly colored, nearly extinct grape that is grown almost exclusively in Spain and […]

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Recently, we were watching an episode of In Wine Country that reported that an increasing number of new wineries have set up shop in Oakland, California – rather than in the more usual, but pricier, wine producing areas like Napa or Sonoma – in hopes of keeping costs (and prices) down.  These wineries typically source (i.e., purchase) their grapes from vineyards across California and then produce and bottle their wines inside the city […]

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This past weekend, we returned to San Francisco after a couple of days in North Carolina attending our law school reunion, and when we first stepped outside of the airport’s doors, we were stunned to find summer weather — 80 degrees, completely clear, bright blue skies, and amazingly, the smell of Eucalyptus, which is so prevalent in this […]

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