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Wine
The Wine Column
Last month the Bonny Doon winery in Santa Cruz opened a tasting room in an industrial neighborhood on the Westside of Santa Cruz. It's the coolest tasting room I've ever seen. More
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Wine
Google chef Charlie Ayers raises fast food to a new level at Palo Alto’s Calafia Cafe
After four years and a few false starts, Calafia Cafe and Market A Go-Go opened in Palo Alto two months ago in the Town and Country shopping center. The restaurant combines elements of the fast-food world and the labor-intensive slow cooking of more high-end restaurants. Ayers says there are people working in the kitchen 22 hours a day because they make everything themselves from bread to soda pop to ketchup. More
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Wine
Next weekend is Pinot Paradise, two days of pinot pleasure hosted by the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association. The event is a showcase for local pinot noir, and this year it will offer an opportunity to explore the regional variations of the sprawling Santa Cruz Mountains appellation.
For the first time, the dozen wineries participating in the event will be organized by six subregions. The Santa Cruz Mountains fall into the Santa Cruz Mountains appellation, a federally recognized designation that covers a huge area from Woodside to Watsonville. The area also includes the tiny Ben Lomond Mountain appellation. But n More
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Wine
Take a Flight to Spain
This week, the Grapevine in Willow Glen will demystify one of the world’s best rice dishes, paella. The April 15 tasting focusing on the traditional Spanish specialty will not only review the basics of paella physics but will also explain how to match it with a great Spanish wine. More
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Wine
Wine news and notes
A round-up of local wine news and events for April 2009, including Saratoga’s Mountain Winery summer concert series for its recently updated 2,500-seat amphitheater. More
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Wine
Corking High Fees
Restaurant wine markups are a sore point for me. Restaurants deserve to make a profit on the wine they sell, but at what point do markups above retail price become unreasonable? Two hundred percent? Three hundred percent? More
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Wine
Grahm and Kinch: Cafe Couple
Talk about a great food and wine pairing —Bonny Doon Vineyard and Manresa restaurant have teamed up to open a new cafe in the winery’s new Santa Cruz tasting room. More
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Wine
Alexander's Steakhouse's Eric Entrikin
This month, we are debuting “Ask the Sommelier.” The first week of each month, the Wine Column will feature a Q and A with Silicon Valley sommeliers and wine experts. First up is Eric Entrikin of Alexander’s Steakhouse in Cupertino. Thanks to Entrikin, Alexander’s wine list received Wine Spectator magazine’s award of excellence in 2008. In 2007, Entrikin passed the advanced test for the Court of Master Sommeliers and will be sitting for the master level test in July. More
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Wine
Every wine lover must have his or her favorite descriptor. Mine is wet forest floor, and it rises to the top because it is both absurd and surprisingly practical. The first time one encounters it in a serious discussion of taste and smell, it seems as though it must be a joke. And yet, the more wine one tastes, the more it becomes clear that "wet forest floor" is exactly the kind of description that makes wine such an endlessly fascinating topic of conversation: it evokes something authentic, almost seeming to draw out the quality by naming it. More
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Wine
Discovering the subregions of Santa Cruz Mountains pinot noir
Pinot noir has emerged as the Santa Cruz Mountains’ star varietal, but as fans of the grape know, there’s a big difference between wine produced from vines grown on the warm, eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Saratoga and the cooler, ocean-blown vineyards of Corralitos. Appreciating and debating what makes wine from one corner of the appellation different from another may sound like inside baseball, but for wine lovers, the devil—and the delight—is in the details. More
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