You’ve got to love a wine region that supplies grapes both to anonymous, industrial, jug-wine conglomerates and near-cult producers like Williams Selyem. Which means you ought to love San Benito County.
Say what? San Which? Is that in California? I’m amazed at the number of my friends in the Bay Area who don’t recognize the name of the county, let alone think of it as having anything to do with wine. It’s the county south of Santa Clara County, west of Merced and Fresno, and most important, east of Monterey County, from which it seceded in the 1870s. San Benito is probably best known for the Mission San Juan Bautista, in the town of the same name, the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” the 1958 thriller staring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. The dizziness in this film had nothing to do with adult beverages.
Continue reading "San Benito County" »
The great wines of California are known all over the world; Oregon Pinot Noir has an international reputation; and the scrumptious wines of the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York are . . . a really big deal in Syracuse and Rochester.
The wines of the Finger Lakes are the best-kept secret in US wine, brilliant in the clarity of their cool-climate fruit, refreshingly higher in acidity and lower in alcohol than most California efforts, often possessed of a magical mouthfeel—and quite rationally priced. From the pretty to the intense, these wines are finally beginning to get a dollop of attention from the wine press, catching up with an outstanding track record in competitions. In early August, the cream of the Finger Lakes (and New York’s other winemaking regions) were on display at Copia in Napa. To get some well-deserved attention, the New Yorkers moved the annual Governor’s Cup competition for the best New York wines right into the belly of the beast and put on one heck of a show. (Results can be found on the New York Wine & Grape Foundation website, http://www.newyorkwines.org/nygold/wineandfood.asp.)
Continue reading "The Fabulous Finger Lakes" »
