Crush
"But this really is Cailles en Sarcophage!” — General Lorens Lowenhielm, Babette’s Feast The general is shocked when he says this. He is shocked because he has just finished describing …
My last visit to Fallbrook Winery was in 2006; longtime restaurateur Ed Moore had invited me up to listen in on a blending session for the winery’s 2004 Merlot. But …
Place Carruth Cellars 118 S Cedros Avenue #C, Solana Beach In 1998, Carlsbad native Adam Carruth was “kind of a life student — just [kept] going back to school.” He’d …
Dennis Grimes spends the first half-hour of every day “tending to Twitter, being a cheerleader” for Ramona Valley wine. From September 6 of this year: “94F today, 47F low & …
Crush
Ryan Baker was happy. Living by the beach in PB at the dawn of the millennium, working at Stone Brewing, and attending San Diego State. “I was, like, ‘Why would I go anywhere?’” he recalls. …
That’s Matthew Richards of Matthew Richards Wines over there in the picture, and while it’s a decent enough head shot, it’s not really the right pic to accompany this piece. The right pic would be …
This story starts around 20 years ago, when Peter Van Alyea fell in love with the Sonoma Valley. And, he notes, “If you want to move to that valley and buy property, then you better …
I have no idea if it’s any kind of leading economic indicator, but according to Amanda Keston, director of client services for the newly formed Spectrum Wine Auctions, “The wine-auction market has turned the corner. …
Born to Americans living in England, Marc Hashagen grew up in Great Gidding, a farming village in Cambridgeshire. “A hundred houses, one pub, one butcher,” he recalls. “The public bus would come through on Wednesdays; …
Anthony Terlato — importer, distributor, marketer, and now winery owner — never intended to write a book about his life in the wine business. He was content being the guy in the background who made …
The line, maybe 400 people long, ran back along Seventh Avenue from the entrance to the Hillcrest Whole Foods. An unusual sight for a winemaker bottle-signing, which made sense, because it was an unusual winemaker …
I can't tell you how it came to pass that the Italian winemakers Mario Schiopetto, Giacomo Bologna, and Maurizio Zanella joined Italian gastronomic giant Luigi Veronelli on a trip to America in 1981, a trip …
The San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival turns five this year and continues to draw light from ever-brighter stars in the foodie firmament. This year, the headliner is Ted Allen, who is, among other …
"I figured there would be a lot of riesling. That’s why I brought a chardonnay – but it’s a different sort of Australian chardonnay, the Bindi Composition.” You don’t often hear sentences like that – …
“I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot!” — Miles, a Pinot Noir fan, in the film Sideways. Miles was that reviled thing: a tremendous, unabashed wine snob. And yet, people listened. Pinot Noir sales in America …
For Rob Barnett, the long and winding road to VinVillage is finally coming to an end. The technical snags for his wine-based social-networking site — devoted to “creating locally based social wine groups and connecting …
San Diego’s social status is ascendant. Of course, you knew that already — you live here. You’ve eaten in the new restaurants, drunk in the new nightclubs, partied in the new hotels. I mention it …
There is perhaps no finer marketing machine in all the wine world than the one that operates out of Champagne. (You don’t get to be the world’s official party wine without doing something right.) And …
The La Mesa library recently placed California Wine a Sunset Pictorial, published in 1973 and edited by the estimable Bob Thompson, in a cardboard box outside the building’s front door. A visual history of the …
Erica Martenson is not a scientist. Rather, she is a gardener. In her big backyard in Napa, she says, she has “several fruit trees and a small area where I have a vegetable garden. At …
File Under: Fiction Is Good for You. I was reading Peter May’s crime novel The Critic, which took as a dramatic starting point the murder of a famous wine critic, one Gil Petty. The hero, …
‘When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” That line, from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, serves as part of the epigraph for Peter May’s crime novel The Critic. The novel …
Oh, now this is a fun idea for a story: an American wine critic — one of those make-it-or-break-it critics in the mold of Robert Parker — winds up murdered, pickled in a vat of …
‘Why don’t you write a book about wine?” You write about a subject long enough — nine years here at “Crush” — and you’re bound to hear it a few times. And every time I …
Don’t misunderstand — Robert Baizer is glad he went to Sundance. He had a lovely time — made even lovelier by the happy reception accorded Bottle Shock, a film he helped to finance. By festival’s …
J. Todd Harris is a movie producer. That means that he gets films made. “I’m just like any other guy that goes and tries to find projects and tries to find financing and a director …
By now, most people with even a passing interest in wine have heard of the Sideways effect: a movie takes Pinot Noir as a central metaphor for its thin-skinned and temperamental protagonist, and hey presto, …
"First to Fight for Right and Freedom," reads the title of the big military print on the tasting room wall at Carlsbad Wine Merchants. The painting depicts a group of Marines moving along a ruined …
Portland didn’t agree with marketing VP Kathy Bankerd. Her employers at the tech company InFocus had moved her up north and bought her a house, but she still hadn’t sold her home in sunny SoCal. …
The hills across the road from Steve Chapin’s Temecula vineyards — situated out past the tourist-friendly wineries and a short hop from Lake Skinner — are fallow now. Chaparral grows where vines once stood — …
‘Cork is random,” observes Michael Friedman, CEO for Oneo Closures North America. “It’s a plant. When you punch a cork out of a piece of bark, it’s very unusual to get one that’s absolutely perfect, …
“These are people who are established. They’re well known for writing books.”
"People ask, 'After Sideways dies down, do you think it will go away?'"
"I mean, you put one drop in your mouth and it explodes... Our wines are identifiable!"
"You would be smarter to look to South America than to most parts of the United States."
"We want everyone to have a fighting chance to get exposure."
"I was built to bartend. It's what I was put on this planet to do."
"I've been on every day since April of '78 & five original shows a week."
"The people at Saturday School are my people; I keep it to groups of 12."
"They say in Napa Valley, 'The best fertilizer for the vineyard is the owner's footsteps.'"
"Women are a bit more adventurous when it comes to trying different varietals."
"We go back to '59 on Burgundy, '61 on Bordeaux, '74 on California."
"If you're filling the vines with chemicals they become lazy. They don't explore the soil."
"Send the chicken into the vineyard and let nature take its course."
"In the early evening, at least, most sales were half-bottles of Beaujolais to solitary ladies."
"Perhaps the Merrie Englanders and the Puritans are not so far apart as each imagines."
"We have to get back to the visceral love, pleasure, seduction, sensuality of it."
"Old school vs. new school, Bob Hope vs. Adam Sandler, dirt vs. fruit."