Enobytes Wine Blog

Ancient Peaks Winery is riding high. Not only does it sit a bit higher in elevation, but the recent certification of its Margarita vineyard as Sustainable in Practice, or SIP, is another feather in an already festooned cap.

This is a storied vineyard in a storied place. Franciscan missionaries founded rancho Santa Margaraita, at the foot of the Santa Lucia Mountains and the top of the Cuesta Grade between San Luis Obispo and Atascadero, CA in 1774. The vineyard itself was planted by Tim Mondavi in the 1990’s and was purchased by Doug Filipponi and his partner Karl Wittstrom in 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

Attention #VinQ fans: This Tuesday, we’ll be giving away prizes! Everyone who participates on Tuesday, February 9th between 5–6 PM PT will be entered into a drawing to win a fabulous prize.

THE PRIZE

We’ll be giving away four tickets to the Pinot Noir Summit ($125 value), compliments of Barbara Drady – you might know her as @wineevangelist on twitter! If you’re passionate about Pinot, this is one of those events you won’t want to miss. The event will take place Saturday, February 27, in San Rafael, CA.

HOW IT WORKS

On Tuesday, February 9th, log on to your twitter account. If you don’t have an account, make sure you register and follow enobytes prior to playing.

At 5PM PT, we’ll begin our #VinQ wine trivia game. If you haven’t played before, simply answer the multiple choice wine questions and (this is very important!) ADD the hashtag #VinQ. We will use the hashtag #VinQ to track your participation and register you into the drawing.

Each winner will win one ticket. If you win a ticket and cannot make the event, we would appreciate it if you let us know so we can release the ticket to another player.

ABOUT THE PINOT NOIR SUMMIT

On Saturday, February 27, 2010 consumers, press and trade will gather for the remarkable 8th Annual Passionate about Pinot Noir Summit at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael, California. An extraordinary array of palates will gather to assess “the best of the best,” representing Pinot’s from around the globe, from 50 different appellations including Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand and U.S. wines from California, Oregon, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington State.

Who: Affairs of the Vine and the International Wine Review
What: The 8th Annual Pinot Noir Summit
When: Saturday, February 27, 2010, 12:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 N. San Pedro Road,  San Rafael, CA 94903

For more information, visit the Pinot Noir Summit.

If you managed to survive our last post on how to find and follow wine twitters,  your’re ready to dive into our next topic, #hashtags, so lets get down to business.

Today we’ll dig into using #hashtags efficiently so that you get the most out of what they have to offer.

THE BASICS

In simple terms, think of a hashtag as a means to create “groupings” on Twitter to organize your comments so that others can find them later. In other words, let’s say you have a file cabinet at your office and you want to name a folder “Zinfandel” and file it under “Z”. Simple enough, right? Read the rest of this entry »

So I hear you’ve recently set up a new Twitter account but you’re lost at what to do with it now, eh? Well let me tell you dear reader friend, you are not alone.

As I’ve written in a previous post, social media is transforming our media landscape and for some, it’s not so easy to grasp this newfound concept. If you’re like most of my readers, you’re probably asking questions like,  “How do I…” or “What does “RT” mean“, and “How do I find winos?“, or what the heck is a “#wine“? …and for my wine biz friends, you want to know “What’s the value“, and “What’s the ROI“?

Unfamiliar territory would bring anyone to the brink of bonkers and believe me I understand your pain — but in all honesty, it’s not so bad after you understand some of the basics.

Some of you in the wine industry biz probably want to Read the rest of this entry »

If you are looking for ways to help Haiti victims, so many great wineries, restaurants and bloggers are pulling together to help the Haiti victims devastated by the 2010 earthquake tragedy which sparked widespread panic as it caused destruction throughout Port-au-Prince.

Here are just some of the great fundraisers happening around the world. Please consider participating or donating to one of these great charitable organizations.

Brother, can you spare a bottle? is teaming up with Palate Press: The online wine magazine to encourage the wine-loving world to contribute to a cause outside our own. Donate something special from your cellar for auction. Proceeds will help the Haiti victims devastated by the 2010 earthquake tragedy.

WLDG Haitian Relief Fundraiser: – Raffle of Bordeaux, an online forum raffle & fundraiser.

Wine 4 Haiti SF Charity Fundraiser – San Francisco, CA. January 18th. A public charity wine tasting to raise money for four foundations to directly help the Haiti earthquake relief effort: Sirona Cares Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health and the American Red Cross.

Eat for Haiti – San Francisco foodies and chefs unite to help earthquake victims. Various events run from January 14 through the 23rd.

Portland relief funds for Haiti – A list of Portland, OR restaurants contributing a portion of their sales to Haiti disaster relief.

Help for Haiti: A growing list of Los Angeles restaurants and food trucks contributing to the Haiti disaster relief.

Food Lovers Fundraiser for Haiti – London, UK, February 8, 2010. A fundraising dinner with all proceeds being donated to the ‘Disasters Emergency Committee’. Confirmed chefs for this charitable event include Vickram Purewal from Le Bouchon Breton and Herbert Berger.

How To Help Haiti In Chicago – A list of Chicago restaurants and bars contributing to the Haiti disaster relief.

Foodie Fund-Raising Efforts for Haiti – A list of fundraising efforts happening in the Bay area.

Do you know of other food and wine fundraisers going on in your community and around the world? Help us build a list of events supporting Haiti so that others know about them. Post a comment and get the word out. Read the rest of this entry »

December 2010 Wine Picks

2006 Chronicle Zinfandel “Bacigalupi” Vineyard, Sonoma, CA
2005 2006 Anam Cara Mark I Pinot Noir, OR
2005 Sausal Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley, CA
2007 Seven Terraces Sauvignon Blanc, NZ

Happy New Year from all of us at Enobytes. May 2010 bring you happiness, success, peace, hope & togetherness. Have a very safe, happy and prosperous New Year and welcome to 2010!

Photo credit: Anime History

In my wine column today on OregonLive.com,  I talk about a couple of recent articles that appeared in Gourmet and the Wine Spectator. Coincidently both of these publications decided to run stories in animation printed like a comic book. The WS comic titled, “Murder by Malbec” is a detective puzzle with all of its illustrated, animated (and I must say “corny”) content will probably not be the huge success its creators thought it would be. Check out my latest post on Wine Bytes to read where this is going…

Wine reviewers spend the better half of the day sipping and spitting and the other half stringing all those damn adjectives and adverbs together to come up with a spiffy, make you feel all fuzzy inside wine review that will make your head spin.

Well, enough is enough.

The new trend for 2010 is automated notes generators.

Huh? You heard me. Automated notes generators.

“Writing can be such a pain in the butt“, exclaims Enobytes wine reviewer, Pamela Heiligenthal. “…but with a tool like this,  Read the rest of this entry »

In my wine column today on OregonLive.com, I talk about the pleasures of vacationing at the California Mendocino Coast where we ventured through Anderson Valley, visiting a few old favorites and some new wineries including Duckhorn’s Pinot outpost, Goldeneye, which offers great wines and a very nice tasting room located at Obester’s old location. As we drove north to head back to Oregon, we found a great restaurant (thanks urbanspoon iphone app!) which proved to be a damn good Italian treat. I knew I was at the right place when I started to focus on the smells filling the restaurant over the decor; fabulous homemade pastas, wood-fired pizzas and a reasonable wine list. Check out my latest post on Wine Bytes to read more.