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Tag: Cabernet Sauvignon

Smith Madrone Vineyards and Winery

Legendary Boutique Napa Valley Winery I first met Stuart Smith, Founder and Managing Partner of Smith-Madrone Winery at WWET 2018 in Napa Valley. He was a presenting winemaker at a couple of seminars sharing his POV, his wines, and his history in the Valley. If you are from Napa, I will venture that you know Stu, as he is known. After the conference, Gary and I stuck around for a couple more days. We intended to make our way up Spring Mountain, where the winery resides. But the road can be treacherous during inclement weather, and the clouds were not…

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Edison James Island Wine Dinner

Edison James Island Klinker Brick Wine Dinner You all know by now that I am a huge fan of wine dinners. The ones I attend tend to cost in the $90 to $125 range including tax and gratuity, although I have seen some advertised for as much as $200 to $300 per person. This occasion was my first wine dinner at Edison James Island. In my experience, wine dinners always sell out, and that makes me very happy. What made this wine dinner so interesting to me is the quality to price ratio (QPR) of the Klinker Brick wines and…

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Hawk and Horse Vineyards

Vineyards and wineries come in all shapes and sizes. Some wineries make a wide variety of wines, and some make just a few. Hawk & Horse Vineyards is one that makes a few and specializes in estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon.  I recently received a sample of two of their wines from Lake County, Red Hills AVA and I wanted to share their story and their wines with you. Where is Lake County and Red Hills AVA? Lake County is the next county north of Napa County. Where is Hawk and Horse within the Red Hills AVA? It’s at the southern edge.…

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Kelly Fleming Wines * Our Tasting Experience

This post about Kelly Fleming Wines is a collaboration with my friend and fellow blogger Amber Burke of www.winetraveleats.com. She is based in Napa and well connected. Our friendship was online based for months before we actually met, but once we did at the Wine Writers Education Conference (WWET), we quickly went from online friends to family. Gary and I could not have had the magical experiences that we did without her, and we are forever grateful. Now we talk all the time, so it only made sense to share this experience jointly. Amber Comments: One of the things that…

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Smith-Madrone 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon

I have always heard that if you love what you do, it will never seem like work. No surprise… and a loud duh, I love drinking wine. More than that, I love trying new wines. One of the benefits of blogging about wine is that it forces me out of my comfort zone. I can not become complacent and drink the same style and variety of wine, bottle after bottle. It is essential that I branch out. That said, it has been ages since I purposefully drank a California Cab. My experience with these Cabs. have been challenging at best, finding them to be a…

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Pickled – New Years Eve – Part 2

I had lots of great responses to the pickled shrimp recipe that I posted last week. And just so you know I ate it for several days and while it evolved, it remained delicious to the bitter end. So now let’s talk about the beverages that we enjoyed on New Year’s Eve. Pickled Without Trying To be clear there is very little forethought that goes into what we drink on NYE.  Every one of us brings several wines that we want to share. We then line it up and decide the order that it should be consumed based on our…

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