Wine For Nat'l Cheesecake Day

Wednesday, July 30, 2025, is National Cheesecake Day. You were probably wondering what wine to have with your favorite cheesecake.

Wines With Grilled Meat

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. It's the gateway to summer grilling. Let's take a look at some wine suggestions for grilled food. As always, the best wines are the ones you like, whether they're listed here or not.

Don't forget to take a moment or two on Monday to remember the soldiers and sailors that didn't get to come home.

What Wine with Cheeseburgers?

Wednesday, September 18th is National Cheeseburger Day. 

There are deals on cheeseburgers (with restrictions) at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendys, and hopefully at a decent local burger joint near you. BTW Sept 15th was National Double Cheeseburger Day and we missed it. Doh!

Of course, this leads to the question, what wine should I have with my cheeseburger? 

What's Behind Wine & Food Pairing?

It's science, of course, and most of us don't really know how it works. It helps if you realize your perception of a wine can be altered by many things, including being sick, even who you are with, and palate fatigue (already had too much wine and your senses are tired or it all). Food definitely has a big effect on a wine's taste. If done right, the food and wine will both be altered in a good way.

Food & Wine, Simplified

 In the past, I've made suggestions of food to have with Sangiovese or wines to have with your grilled burgers, for example. I once attempted a more all-inclusive post on wine and food pairing guidelines. I said "attempted" because it got so confusing that I gave up and it was never published. It doesn't help that I'm not an expert on the subject. This time I'll try to get the basics right.

Burger Wines

   It's summer and you're probably grilling hamburgers. Some people might go for a beer with the burger, but I'll suggest you have a beer while grilling, then switch to a red wine for dinner. Since we're having an inexpensive dinner, let's not go with any $50 wines.

A Non-Alcoholic Wine That Will Give You a Buzz

Herbacée is a fancy French sounding name for a California company making non-alcoholic sparkling wine. The buzz? That would come from the THC and CBD. Yup, a cannabis wine. It's made from wine grapes, but with no alcohol. All the fun of a sparkling wine with a different buzz!

Read all about it

Herbacée website

Sonoma County Secrets

If you will be visiting Sonoma County you will probably do your research and know about restaurants like Valette in Healdsburg and Girl and the Fig in Sonoma plus popular wineries like Buena Vista, Gloria Ferrer, and Coppola. These are all great places, but if you want to get off the tourist path and discover a few things only a long-time local might know, here's my list of semi-hidden gems.

Wine Country Lodging & Dining During the Pandemic

   We've heard about wineries and the economic pain with lack of visitation. Some have been helped by more shipping via their websites. The other parts of the hospitality industry in the wine country are hotels and restaurants.

Making Wine in a Restaurant Fun

Because nobody wants the restaurant staff staring at them while they try to make a selection from the wine list then sneer at their choice.

Restaurants would love to sell more wine to their lunch and dinner guests. Many already have a bar selling wines by the glass. The problem is sticker shock at restaurant markups that has to be overcome. The other issue is a complicated wine list with no real info the the selections. So what can be done? In short find restaurants that are wine-friendly, where you can experiment a bit with different wines. Yes, it can be done without having 500 wines on the wine list. It should be fun and educational.

Sonoma County - What's Not to Love

If I didn't live here in Sonoma County this spot would be at the top of my list of places to visit. Why? There are many reasons.

Let's start with the obvious one:

Why Restaurant Wine Lists Stink

First off, not all of them stink, but way too many do. There are some restaurants with great wine lists and some of these I can even afford to dine at occasionally. The vast majority of the family / casual / chain restaurants have wine list that are a steaming pile of suck. Many of the higher-end restaurants don't do much better except that their markup is much higher.

Sonoma County's Michelin-Starred Restaurants

The latest ratings were recently announced.

Single Thread Farms Restaurant in Healdsburg opened in 2016 to great fanfare. This year the restaurant received three Michelin stars--the highest award possible. This is a first for a Sonoma County restaurant. Want to go? It's $275 pp paid in advance. They will call you to customize your meal.

Madrona Manor in Healdsburg continues its streak as a one star restaurant as does The Farmhouse Inn in Forestville. Over in Napa County the Meadowood and French Laundry restaurants received three Michelin stars.

There are about 15 three star restaurants in the country.

What Wine with Your Burger

It's now officially spring so lets think about grilling up some hamburgers. Burgers, the all-American food, with a thousand ways to prepare them. You can start with beef, bison, turkey, chicken, or lamb. Veggie burgers come as mushroom, black bean, tofu. That's even before you get into all the condiments--onions, dill or sweet pickles, yellow or spicy mustard, etc. You can see the problem, or opportunity, with pairing the correct wine.

Sparkling Wine / Food Pairing

We should have more sparkling wine with our meals. In the U.S. sparkling wine is about celebrations where you have a glass or three at weddings and a couple holidays. That's a real shame because it belongs on the dinner table, too.

Sangiovese - A Food-Friendly Wine

Sangiovese (san joh vaze ay) is Italy's most popular wine grape and the Italians know a thing or two about putting food and wine together. What makes a wine a particularly good food wine? One key element is acid. The acidity of the wine is what stands up to food. Lower acid wines get wiped out by many foods. As a byproduct the acidity is a preservative and helps the wine age.

Best Sonoma County Restaurant Wine Lists

Wine Spectator magazine has an annual competition for best restaurant wine lists. For 2017 here are the restaurants in Sonoma County. There are many more nearby in Napa and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Restaurant Ploys

Like any business restaurant studies are done to figure out how to better separate you from your money. Some restaurant tricks from food&wine.

More on the second cheapest bottle of wine strategy.
 

Unique Santa Rosa Restaurants

You're in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, and want something a little different for your next meal. Would you like to light up your taste buds with great flavor? None of these restaurants are fancy or in a fancy neighborhood or look like much from the outside. That's the beauty of them--it's all inside. If you're looking for fancy check out this blog post. If flavor and reasonable prices are key then read on.

Top-Notch Dining in Sonoma County

Besides an abundance of premium wine Sonoma County offers lots of great restaurants. I mean dozens and dozens. But if you want to get a world-class meal where should you go? You won't find a lot of pretense, but you will find great food and a great experience.