Winemaker Derek Baljeu grew up surfing and skateboarding in Southern California, where he took an early interest in cooking, and wine was a familiar sight on the family dinner table.

The Sonoma County city of Healdsburg may feel like a tony town full of luxurious experiences, and it is, in many ways. But it wasn’t all that long ago that Healdsburg was better known as the “Buckle of the Prune Belt,” with plums planted on thousands of acres and horses parked around the dusty central plaza.

California is one of the few places in the world that grows Pinot Noir well. It’s one of even fewer places that grows Pinot Noir well at elevation.

In 2008, Michael Cruse was tasting his way through Northern California during the windows of free time his day job allowed. Cruse was working as a winemaker at Merryvale, where he’d spent seven years, mostly focused on the company’s Pinot Noir and Chardonnay-based Starmont brand.

To Kalon Vineyard is arguably the most famous vineyard in America, certainly when it comes to Cabernet Sauvignon, which it grows exceptionally well in the heart of the Napa Valley.

The 2020 Northern California vintage continues to haunt many producers, a good number of whom skipped it altogether. But you shouldn’t miss out on it, as there are some incredibly good 2020 wines to be found—especially whites (see my first note about Arista and Ferren for a great starting point).

For many, when they think of Napa Valley, they think of St. Helena. A northern-lying enclave that sits nearly in the center of the Napa Valley along Highway 29, St. Helena has become one of Northern California’s more prosperous small towns, ready to charm visitors with a movie-set-ready Main Street and mountains on both sides.

The face that launched a thousand cans.

Alsace is the heart of France’s aromatic white wine universe, a small region in the northeastern corner of the country bordering Germany and Switzerland. The biggest towns from north to south include Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse, and Besançon; Burgundy lies to the south and west.

In 1997, a year some experts hailed as the “vintage of the century” for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Cathy Corison made what she believed to be a terrific wine.

Napa Valley often gets unduly painted as a monolith of Cabernet Sauvignon, and, indeed, it grows a lot of it, with Cabernet making up 40% of the region’s total wine production and 55% of its value.

Nathan Fay is the most important Napa Valley grape grower you’ve likely never heard of. I hadn’t really, until a few years ago, when I was invited to walk the Fay Vineyard and taste some of the Fay Vineyard wines at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. My guides were founding SLWC winemaker Warren Winiarski and current head winemaker Marcus Notaro.

Sparkling wine has long been an important part of the Sonoma County wine and grape growing story, and the bubbles grown and made here enjoy worldwide recognition for their quality and appeal.

The boundaries that define and separate Sonoma County from the Napa Valley, its neighbor to the east, like all manmade boundaries, are arbitrary, and this week at a celebration of a new archway at Pride Mountain Vineyards, there were more similarities to celebrate than differences.

In California wine country, Rhone Valley varietals like Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre hold unexpected excitement.

In 2015, growers and wineries in the Russian River Valley undertook a curious experiment, the first, really, of its kind. They were not interested in creating new appellations, nor hardened border lines.

There’s no doubt that Cabernet Sauvignon is among California’s most important wine grapes. Across the state there are nearly 95,000 acres of it planted and the grapes that result produce some of the most collectible, sought-after and highest-quality wines of the world.

Max Thieriot grew up in Occidental the son of a prominent grape grower and vineyard owner. On Friday, October 7, he launches a new show called Fire Country, a firefighter drama set in Northern California in which he both stars and is executive producing, a passion project borne out of the fires he, his family and the community experienced in Sonoma County in 2017, 2019 and 2020.

Jess Jackson first fell in love with the mountains above Alexander Valley in the 1960s, when he missed a chance to buy the J Bar B Ranch, a 6,000-acre spread of horse and cattle pasturelands that included 2,800-foot-tall Black Mountain.

The West Sonoma Coast is a wonderland of cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and small pockets of Syrah—wines of great intensity and concentration yet fresh and balanced in alcohol; difficult to grow but exquisite to drink.

Zinfandel might be Sonoma County’s most historic grape, but it is nowhere near the most popular in terms of acreage.

Petit Verdot is an important and late-ripening variety in both Bordeaux and the Napa Valley, mostly used as a blending grape in Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant wines.

Was 2012 the year night harvesting of wine grapes truly arrived? In Sonoma County, it seems like it might be.

Among all the gorgeous vineyards lined along Westside Road in the Russian River Valley, Rochioli has always stood out.

How he changed the definition of red blend

California-based Jamie Evans, also known as The Herb Somm, is well known in the cannabis space thanks to her informative and educational events, website and two books

On the western side of the Napa Valley, from roughly Yountville to Calistoga, lies some of the best ground ever given to Cabernet Sauvignon, strewn along the benchlands and hillsides of the Mayacamas Mountains

The French word for a monopoly, monopole, refers to a vineyard site from which one producer sources grapes exclusively, a place where no one else has access to make wine

Could biochar be the next important ingredient in regenerative agriculture?

There’s been a lot of talk about millennials and Gen Z, and what their changing consumption habits mean for the wine industry.

In March of 2018, the Sonoma County Center for Ag Sustainability held its first meeting, bringing together a panel of outside resources and authorities to think about the important issues that confront Sonoma County farmers