Educational Blog

I love the holidays! As they creep up on us, I'm thinking about some of the best products I've come across in the last two years and would like to share them with you! There is something for every price range.

As soon as the weather cools down and we round the corner to autumn, club members will enjoy these wines for the fall!

• 2019 Highlawn Picpoul Blanc (white)
• 2014 Bee Hunter Syrah (red)
• 2019 Cote West Counoise (red)

Did you know that every 13 seconds, a bottle of Rhone Valley wine being enjoyed someplace in the world? The Rhone is one of the major wine producing regions of France, often wrongfully overshadowed by Bordeaux or Burgundy. It's my favorite!

Can your wine actually have sodium in it?!  Surprisingly, yes. This varies by varietal, root stock, soil, terroir and region however a "typical" American wine (take a Merlot from Napa for example) will have approximately 5 mg of sodium per 4-oz pour (40 mg/l). Whites in general are slightly higher. But there are wines with far more sodium than that. Read this post for how sodium and other salts find their way into a wine!

Have you ever picked up on a subtle vanilla flavor in your wine? What about cloves and spices? That's not surprising as wine is often matured in oak barrels that share the self-same flavor compounds found in vanilla and cloves! And by "toasting" or firing the inside of an oak barrel, higher concentrations of these compounds are achieved!

2K years ago the ancient romans used cork to seal their wine. Today we still use cork to preserve our wine, but so much has changed. You have screw caps, glass and other manufatured products for wine sealing. Which is best? Which do you prefer?

Did you know my license to sell wine in California cost $1400? Or that I needed an in-home inspection by an ABC field rep to get that? Or that the ABC mailed each of my neighbors, telling them how to block my license from happening!? There are no shortage of headaches when you decide to sell some amazing wine! 

Did you know that your Champagne label will tell you if your bottle is being sourced from a giant conglomerate or a small independent producer? It will also tell you how sweet the Champagne is. You just have to learn to read its secrets. Read on to learn more!

Blind tasting means that the wine labels are obscured from you and you don't know what is in your glass. Sometimes you might not even be able to see the color of the wine (if you're blind folded or the wine is in a black glass). Learn some tips to help you guess what's in your glass. Might be fun to try this at the next party you go to and impress your friends!

Champagne was not invented, nor did it just happen overnight. What we know today as champagne was actually 400 years in the making!

Did you know that the average bottle of champagne (or other sparkling wine made in the "traditional method" is under 90 psi of pressure? That's more than a car tire! The corks themselves can travel at a speed of up to 25 mph, leading to as many as 24 champagne-related deaths each year! 

Your guide to what to decant, when and why! After reading this post, you'll be an expert on decanting and aerating and have all the know-how to make the call with your own wines.