Welcome to beautiful St. Helena, located in the northern part of the Napa Valley, just north of Rutherford, south of Calistoga, and sandwiched between Spring Mountain to the west and Howell Mountain to the east. Home to over 80 wineries, the St. Helena AVA was blessed in the…
Sensing a theme here on the blog again… It’s International Cabernet Day, and thus, we offer fun Cab facts for you! Cabernet Sauvignon is the child of Cabernet Franc crossed with Sauvignon Blanc. And it was most likely not intentional. It occured in the 17th century in the…
Happy Ohio Wine Month! Ohio has a rich history of wine production dating back to the 1820s in the Ohio River Valley. By the late 1800s, the Catawba grape was the most important grape in the state’s wine production, originally planted by Nicholas Longworth. Today, the Catawba grape…
Happy International Sauvignon Blanc Day! We have a fun challenge for you today… more on that in a moment. Sauvignon Blanc is a grape that truly deserves international acclaim. Noble grape of the Bordeaux, hero of Sancerre in Loire, strange invader of Burgundy (yes, there is Sauvignon Blanc…
Happy Michigan Wine Month! With 13,700 acres under vine, Michigan is currently the 4th largest grape-growing state in the US with the #6 spot for production, just a hair behind Oregon. Most of the acreage is devoted to Niagara and Concord grapes for table use, which make up…
So now our theme emerges in the Off The Beaten Path series. Coat tailing. Picking up from our previous article on Tunisia and people we reached out to not knowing where it was on the map, our next wine producing country is much the same. Somewhat sandwiched, but…
The Languedoc-Roussillon region of France is a strange crossroads of wine blends, ancient politics, and relatively inexpensive wine for the high quality shopper on a budget. It is even said that the sparkling wines of this region actually predate Champagne (not to mention they are a fraction of…
Ok, no lie, we were holding off on writing about the Loire for as long as possible. What direction should we go? How should we present the information? What is the best way to simplify such diversity? This is not an easy region to generalize. There are some…
The state of Maryland has documented winemaking beginning as far back as 1648, but sadly it wasn’t until almost 300 years later in 1945 when the state had its first winery open. The state of Maryland has 3 recognized AVAs & 4 distinct growing regions: Linganore AVA –…
We’re going to go out on a limb here and assume you have heard of Bordeaux before and skip the whole “one of the most recognizable wine regions in the world” speil and get down to the real reason we are talking about it – what is in…