Best of Sonoma County 2019

The local paper, the Press Democrat, does a yearly readers' choice "best of" for food, drink, entertainment, shopping, and services within Sonoma County. To the visitor what locals think of their restaurants, wineries and some other categories can help you figure out your itinerary.

Gender-Specific Drinks

Sometimes gender-specific items make sense. Women's clothes, things made smaller, lighter for women who are often smaller and lighter. As a kid I probably noticed clothing and bicycles first. Of course, many things can just come in sizes rather than having male and female versions. Instead of men's and women's backpacks, what if I'm a 5 ft 3 inch male? I'd be okay with buying a small pack, but maybe not a girl's.

Masculinity and Femininity in Marketing

A little insight into how marketing folks view you. That is, what's considered masculine (like watching sports and drinking Bud) and what's feminine (yoga and a latte). So you'll see beer ads aimed at guys with wine ads more likely for women.

Click on the chart to enlarge.

Wine Learning from Craft Beer

Premium wine has been around a lot longer that craft beer so you'd think it's beer that could learn from the wine industry. That's probably true, but what stands out are things wine could learn from the rise of craft beer.

Sonoma County Winter Events 2019-20

What's going on during the quiet season of December to March? Quite a few things as it turns out.

Visiting Sonoma County After the Fire

The Kincade fire burn zone: There are over 1.1 million acres of land in Sonoma County (about the size of Rhode Island). 78,000 burned or about seven percent. That still a lot, but it also means 93% of the land was unaffected. 
 
Following is a link to a nice write-up by a website called The Points Guy about coming to Sonoma after the Kincade fire.

Article

Should I Age My Wine?

I've been asked this a few times. Usually in the setting of a tasting room where someone purchases a bottle of red and wants to know about aging. Often I think this is "old thought" where many believed the longer a wine would age the better it must be.

The quick reply has two questions: (1). How are you storing it? (2). Do you like it now?

No Such Thing as a Good Vintage or a Bad Vintage

  You probably hear statements like, "2015 is a great year for Bordeaux, but 2017 is a bad year" or "1997 was great for California, but 2011 was terrible." At best these are half-truths. Let me tell you what happens in northern California cuz that's what I know.

Friday Wine Funnies

Because, you know, enough of taking the subject of wine seriously.

Sonoma County's Old Timers (Wineries, That Is)

There are a number of old, historic wineries in Sonoma County. In some you can still see the history. A few are even still owned by the same family. I highly recommend you visit some of these and support their generations of hard work.

California's ABC -- inept and apparently corrupt

The Alcohol Beverage Control Department, headquartered in Sacramento, is not very good at doing their job and that comes from the top leadership. Over the years of being in the wine biz I've seen some idiotic things come down from the ABC and never get the same answer twice to the same question. Most in the wine industry are probably afraid to say anything fearing retribution.

Now it seems there's also corruption, racism, sexism, and a whole lot of other stupid shit being carried on at the top of the organization. There are three lawsuits pending and whatever happens the taxpayer gets the bill.  Read here from The Gray Report blog.

Before Wine & Beer There Was Whiskey

Remember hearing about the Whiskey Rebellion in school? It seemed a little odd to have a war over whiskey. The following link from the History Channel tells of the importance of whiskey in early America.

When Whiskey Ruled in America