(Originally published April 2004) At long last, the people who brought us Sassicaia have brought us something new. We recently tasted the Tenuta San Guido 2000 Guidalberto Toscana ($60). It is beautifully perfumed, with elegant aromas of red fruit laced with delicate cedar and earth. Full-bodied, but with velvety smooth tannins, flavors include concentrated red [...]
Read more →(Originally published October 2003) The story behind Tuscany’s Rocca delle Macie is the stuff movies are made of, which is appropriate given its founder’s history as a producer of spaghetti westerns. Italo Zingarelli bought the Rocca delle Macie estate in 1973, fulfilling a lifelong dream of producing wines. Improbably enough, however, his fame in Italy [...]
Read more →(Originally published June 2008) Christine Hanna came into the wine business naturally enough — her father, Dr. Elias Hanna, purchased 12 acres in the Russian River Valley in the 1970s. Within a decade or so, this world-renowned cardiac surgeon had founded the winery, and his children were beginning their home-schooling in winemaking. Today, Hanna Winery [...]
Read more →(Originally published April 2008) There are several reasons why Delia Viader is a perfect choice for this column and its focus on pioneering and (not to be redundant) outstanding women in the wine industry. As the founder of Napa Valley’s Viader Vineyards, Delia Viader (pronounced vee-ah-DARE, by the way) blazed a trail in a number [...]
Read more →(Originally published in October 2006) This time, the ladies got into a little custom cuvee blending, thanks to d’Arenberg’s Custodian Grenache Three Soils trio of wines. The idea is that the winery takes the grapes that eventually go into their Custodian Grenache – grapes from different vineyard plots – and bottle them separately. Each bottle [...]
Read more →(Originally published in August 2006) For our second Drinks with Les Dames wine tasting, we moved west to California. Paso Robles, to be exact. And Robert Hall winery. For those who don’t know, the Paso Robles wine region of California is located almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and about 20 miles [...]
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