Gary, you should have said yesterday that your mom had made the great looking spread and then everyone would have commented. As it was could have been bought from Safeway and we wouldn’t have known. Be nicer to your mom!
Very revealing tasting today. I hacve disliked every bottle of Beujolais Nouveau for the last 15 years without exception. They make too much of it to be any good. The hype is what sells it.

My absolute favorite winery is Elyse. They give you so much to taste of so many great wines and don’t charge. Absolutely amazing and great wines to boot.
The second favorite is Turley in Paso Robles simply because of the quality of what they have for tasting and, since I am on the list, I get to taste that for free as well.

Living in the Midwest the only winery’s we get to visit are in Hermann MO. Adam Puchta produces some really good wine with the grape varieties that they are able to grow and Oak Glenn has a beutiful view of the MO river. We enjoy our visit every year.

Another good episode and I don’t have a problem with having to turn the volume up a bit.

Favorite winery – Davida (somewhere around Montalcino, Italy!). As we walked up the gravel path to the tasting room the wine maker came around the corner from her clothes line with a basket of wet laundry. vinyard on the hill behind, laundry basket in the doorway, unlocked the tasting room and sampled us through a lovely selection. Real people.

Worst winery – Fall Creek – Texas Hill Country. Several years back we visited because we’d heard that good things were happening with the local grapes. Driving in we noticed that the grape vines were all dead as a doornail. In the tasting room we inquired and were told that a bug had taken out all the vines in the vicinity several years back and they were now buying grapes from east Texas and other states. We commented that we thought the local “terroir” was significant to the vinyard and the guy responded with a smirk,
“Not at all! A grape’s a grape!”

Gary,

Nice episode. QOD–Pride Mountain Vineyards….hands down. Sits atop Spring Mountain above St. Helena in the Napa Valley. Incredible views from various picnic tables and a brand new wine tasting room just completed. Bob Foley, their winemaker is amazing. The wine, the views, the people….never a disappoinment.

QOTD – Answered Before – Far Niente…reasons are the same!

Favorite Winery: Messina Hof. Why? I am a die-hard Aggie, I bleed maroon, and this winery is in Bryan/College Station TX (Aggieland). I would love to see you do a show on Messina Hof wines. Maybe even a show on Texas wines.

Imagery Estate Winery in Sonoma, CA makes a wonderful single varietal Petit Verdot, as well as an amazing Lagrein. They specialize in single varietal wines.

QOTD: Gotta be Trefethen, appropriately enough, given the episode. I generally like Trefethen wines, but the reason I like the winery was because the people there were so nice. We were the only ones there, so they took us on a guided mini-tour. They had a basil garden out front and we were just chatting about how much we like making our own pesto and how nice it would be to have a big plot of basil like that instead of a tiny little box on our deck. So they told us to go pick as much as we wanted. Super friendly people.

Honorable mention to Sebastiani vineyards in the Sonoma valley. The carved casks are gorgeous.

qotd: how do you pick 1, how do you pick just 100? My fav at the moment would be Jean Bourdy. Because I’ve heard amazing things about his wines, they are not easy to get, and after a VERY long time of looking, I got a vin jaune, and his is supposed to be the best.
Love that you are tasting wines from you’re library. I hope that that is not an alwayd absolute however. That seems like imposing limitations on yourself with all the 1000’s of wines out there.
So Gary, how about tackling a vin jaune episode?, and on eon tasting different charbono’s?

Have had the Marlstone before, was good. QOTD-Linne Calodo, Paso Robles, waiting list for wine club, hard to find, very unusual Zin blends, Rhone style GSM's, all highly rated. Caldwell Vineyards-Napa-great Cabs, Rocket Science blend, Kosta Browne-great Pinot Noirs. http://www.winelx.com