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Great Oldie on its Game Again
Two generations of David Bynum winemakers: Greg Morthole (L) and the eponymous Bynum (R) It’s come to this: 66 percent of the wine we drink in this country is made by the 6 largest wine companies....
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The Real World: SIWC
(R) Winemaker Adam LaZarre Here at Sunset, we’re gearing up for our second Sunset International Wine Competition. Starting next Monday, 48 wine pros from around the West will descend on our campus to...
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Remembering the Earth
Clockwise from left: Celebrate Earth Day; a St. Helena vineyard; the Iron Horse tasting room. By Sara Schneider, Sunset wine editor With Earth Day coming up on April 22, I have to tip my hat to...
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What I’m Loving This Week
Note to self: Drink outside California more often. With Sunset headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s too easy to just revel in NorCal wines. So this week, I reminded myself why that would...
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Mezcal’s Moment
The mezcal-based Smokin’ Word. Until recently in the agave-based spirit world, mezcal’s had a reputation as the rustic, rough-and-tumble cousin of the more sophisticated tequila (that worm in the...
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What I’m Tasting (With My Daughter) This Week
What’s up with Moscato?! Sales of the slightly sweet (usually), sometimes fizzy wine were up more than 30 percent last year, and that’s above and beyond the whopping 75 percent or so increase the year...
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Champagne Solutions
Last month, we judged our second-annual Sunset International Wine Competition, which involved 49 judges tasting nearly 3,000 wines over the course of two days—and mind-boggling logistics behind the...
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In Praise of $12 Wine
I don’t know what the sticker price is on your average Tuesday night wine—or whether it’s different from your Saturday night bottle. (Someone recently chided me for the assumption that those would be...
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Want Great California Cabernet? Try Paso Robles
Last year, at Sunset’s Savor the Central Coast wine and food festival, I moderated a seminar in praise of Paso Robles Syrah, psyched that I’d scored Syrah pioneer Gary Eberle (he of the reputed...
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Wines to Beat the Heat
Another June, another Sunset Celebration Weekend! We’re in recovery mode from our 16th-annual festival here on our campus in Menlo Park: 20,000 or so of our newest best friends showed up last weekend...
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Shaking up Gin for Dad’s Day
Sunset has a summer gin habit: the occasional warm, late afternoon finds a bevy of us—wordsmiths, design types, photo editors—circled on managing editor Alan Phinney’s back patio, sipping gin and...
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Wine Tasting a Different Way
The vineyards at Rams Gate Winery (Photos courtesy of Kopol Bonick Photography). One of the most common questions that comes my way is, “What are your four or five favorite wineries in Napa Valley? [Or...
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Affordable Drinking in Eastern Washington Gets Better
Waterbrook Estate Vineyard I’m a fan of Washington wine, most of which comes from east of the Cascades in the dry part of the state. So last week, with the prospect of a family wedding in Walla Walla—a...
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Wines for Your Food Truck Fare
As workplace perks go, Sunset may fall short of nearby Facebook or Google, but with a test kitchen, the occasional test-garden plant giveaway, and a wine cellar, no one’s complaining. But the best...
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Bring on the (American) Bubbles
Last week I drank a lot of sparkling wine. I’m a fan of Champagne (shocking, I know), French sparklers from regions other than Champagne (called crémant, and much less expensive than the name brand),...
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Wine and Fruit—a Surprisingly Tough Pairing
My job description seems to include tasks that lean toward ludicrous at times. I’ve paired wine with everything from Skittles to Triscuits. But to be honest, I had never sat down to a pairing with...
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What’s Your State’s Wine Grade?
Photo courtesy of oc_layos, Flickr Creative Commons. As a wine lover living in California, I take a lot of things for granted. I’m flying through Safeway snatching up the goods to grill Santa...
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Popcorn Capers
I’ve been an open fan of popcorn and wine—together—for a long time. Pour me a round, appley Chardonnay with buttery popcorn, and I’m a happy camper. Make it a zippy sparkling Chardonnay, a Blanc de...
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Glamping in the Vineyard
Wine country has a way of taking on the feel of how you choose to explore it. What I mean is that vineyards look a whole lot different from the tinted window of a limo than they do from the seat of a...
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A New Taste of an Old Sonoma Vineyard
Just in time for crush, there’s a new way to take a deep and gorgeous dive into Alexander Valley—eating and drinking like kings along the way. The place you can taste now, so to speak, surrounds...
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