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Category Archives: Reviews

Hanna Winery and Vineyards

Your faithful lifestyle scribe penned the “Upfront” piece in the January-February edition of Tasting Panel Magazine. The profile of Hanna Winery and Vineyards president Chris Hanna is part of an issue-wide “Women in Wine” theme also featuring photos by Flash Lely. It was a delight to chat with Hanna who has enjoyed great success with [...]
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Nick’s Cove: The Long and Winding Road to a Burger and Brew

Driving through rural West Marin County is like driving through a craggy, verdant Mobius strip. If you’re prone to car-sickness the scenic trip might prove lethal. If you survive, good for you, but it’s not “about the journey, man.” Our mission, at least on this day, was to obtain an old school, straight-up non-chichi burger [...]
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Emmy Kaplan: Patrón of the Arts

For Emmy Kaplan, the proprietress of both the San Francisco and Sonoma, California iterations of Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, the secret ingredient to a good cocktail is “freshness.” Fear not for Emmy’s punk rock cred, however, a favorite among Bay Area musicians, artists and foodies alike, the Shack (as it’s colloquially known) has not been Michael [...]
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Governor Declares September “Wine Month,” Or, My Lunch with Arnie

So, Governor Schwarzenegger has declared September “California Wine Month” (again). Apparently, he’s never been to Sonoma where every month is “Wine Month,” which is comprised of “Wine Weeks” and “Wine Days,” and so on  – to hours, minutes and nanoseconds. What’s the duration of a “wine nanosecond?” About the amount of time it takes to realize [...]
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A Fairly Decent Jobbe

To ring in the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference, the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau commissioned the comic, cheese-ball parody of Murphy Goode’s controversial “A Really Goode Job” campaign below. The quick flick premiered at the conference’s opening night and I’m  happy to report that it was well received (according to the several kind emails, tweets and [...]
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Theater of Protest

I’m a firm believer of the “use it or lose it” principle as regards exercising one’s First Amendment rights – so it is then with tremendous respect for civil protest that I was recently able to reflect upon some local expressions of free speech and likewise exercise my own free speech in the process. Of [...]
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Left Bank: Lunch on the Gauche

If you ever want to get in the good graces of your editor, take him or her to lunch at the Larkspur’s convivial French brasserie, the Left Bank. Part of a chain also represented in Menlo Park, San Jose, Pleasant Hill and San Mateo, the restaurant is something of a gustatory homage to La Rive [...]
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Amateur Wine-drinking

Let us momentarily transubstantiate ink for wine, so that with these words I may toast the Valley of the Moon Dilettante Enological Society. Clink. I like these guys, not just because they make wine, but because their name is nearly as pretentious-sounding as my own. I mean, what would it score in Scrabble – infinity? Moreover, [...]
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Cinderella fermenting in Marin

There is a troika of contiguous counties that have laid claim to Northern California wine country – Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino – but Like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, Kendric Vineyards wants you to know “There is another.” Of course, I didn’t know this at first. The availability of Marin County wines in Sonoma Valley, [...]
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SonomaWinos.com

My Fellow Sonomans – It’s high time to reclaim the name “Sonoma” from brands beyond our county. Sonoma is not a truck, a pack of cigarettes or a gated community in Florida, nor is “Sonoma Valley,” merely an eau de toilette made in Boston. Sonoma is our home and place of business. Sonoma is our way [...]
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