WINE

This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register.
Barolo. Just saying the name sounds important. It sounds regal. It sounds strong. When I lived in the Piemonte area in Italy shortly after college, I knew very little, if anything, about wine. But on the table at every meal, I was drinking Dolcetto and Barbera on a daily basis. It was on special occasions that my friends would pull out a bottle of Barolo. I did not have the vocabulary to describe wine. But I knew that this was a special wine.
At Pebble Beach Food and Wine, a panel of sommeliers lead a discussion of Barolo as we sat down for a tasting of the Giacomo Borgogno wines from 1967 to 2010. Founded in 1761, Giacomo Borgogno is the father of Barolo, the original Barolo producer. He was the first to put the local wine into a bottle and commercialize it, beginning the legacy. The Borgogno family managed the estate for 247 years until 2008 when they sold it to the Farinetti family and a new evolution for the winery began.
Barolo has always been a classic wine, considered one of the best. The name implies a big, bold wine, but in the glass, the lack of a deep color contradicted this.
24 May, 2018
This story originally appeared in California Winery Advisor. Adam Lee has worked in all aspects of the wine industry. He has worked at a wine store, on the floor of a restaurant in Austin, Texas, for a distributor and wrote about wine before starting his first winery, Siduri. Experience working in all facets of the wine business has provided Lee with an advantage; he knows all of the benefits and challenges the industry poses. The biggest challenge a winery faces is selling the wine. When Lee started Siduri in 1994, he focused primarily on direct sales, with most of the sales sold on futures. Times were different then. “Pinot Noir was still in its infancy in the wine drinkers consciousness and growing a mailing list was easier than it is today,” Lee explained. Wine reviews, mailing lists, and direct sales helped his brand grow until they were large enough to work with a distributor. Thanks to a couple fortuitous events, Siduri followed this path. After a few bottles of wine, Lee was very relaxed and generously confident and left a bottle of his wine for Robert Parker, which resulted in a good review.  Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant Owner Debbie Zachareas was at EOS Wine Bar at the time and began selling the wine. By 1996, Siduri grew to almost 900 cases and entered the three-tier market. “It was a lot about getting to a certain size about where you needed a distributor.” By 2015, Lee sold Siduri to Kendall Jackson. While he remains the winemaker, the new ownership freed Lee from the business side of things. As a result, Lee gets to spend more time in the vineyard. “The growing and picking is the most important part,” according to Lee and he was thrilled to spend more time there. With the time in the vineyard, Lee began thinking about the legacy he would leave for his children. He and his wife Dianna liked the idea of leaving them something small that would not be a burden but rather something they could choose whether or not they wanted to grow. In 2017, named after Lee’s grandmother, Clarice Wine Company was born.
17 May, 2018
This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register.

As I sat down for a seminar at the 2018 Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival titled “The Future is Female: The Next Generation of American Wine,” I was excited to listen to a panel of women discuss taking the reins of their family wineries. As I looked at the panel of women sitting in front of me, I sat up a little straighter as I was so proud and inspired to see only women sitting there.

On one end of the table was Esther Mobley, the wine, beer and spirits writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. After graduating from Smith College, Esther worked harvests at two wineries, worked in retail and at a restaurant and then followed the path of a writer, working at Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator and now the San Francisco Chronicle. On the other end of the table was Christie Dufault, a former sommelier at top restaurants who today is the associate professor of wine and beverage studies at The Culinary Institute of America. In between these two formidable presences were four women who are taking over their family wineries.

15 May, 2018
This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register. As we look back at history, we can always find markers where something shifted and altered the future. Each of these significant markers have changed paradigms in life. These are game-changers, such as the invention of the car, the smart phone and every technology we use today.
We can also find markers in the wine industry that have transformed the industry. Breakthroughs in winemaking technique, heralded births of new regions and cultural moments have resulted in wines that have changed the world of wine as we know it.
“Over time, there are wines that changed our perspective in one way or another. These wines transcend their flavor. These are wines with history and they conjure memories. Each in their own way has changed the world of wine,” explained Ray Isle, executive editor of Food and Wine Magazine, as he moderated a panel at the 11th Annual Pebble Beach Food and Wine.
Along with four sommeliers — Eugenio Jardim, Shelley Lindgren, Kelli White and Master Sommelier Fred Dame — we tasted through eight wines that have changed the world of wine.
08 May, 2018
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