We had the good fortune to spend some time recently visiting with Antonio Pasos of Pasos Vineyards. His tasting room is located in Vino Piazza, The Winery Plaza in Lockeford, California.
Dave, one of the other regular tasters on Thursday nights at Fine Wines of Stockton, presented this wine tasting. Dave frequently visits friends in Oregon and on a recent trip collected wines from three wineries in the Southern Oregon AVA (American Viticultural Area).
A couple of weeks ago Nancy and I went up Highway 4 to Bear Valley, Ca. to do some cross country skiing. We go several times each year and usually go straight up and back. This time, though, our trip took a twisted turn.
We recently completed a series of three wine tastings at Fine Wines of Stockton entitled Red Wines of Tuscany. We tasted six Rosso di Montalcino, six Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and six Chianti. We chose our top two wines from each tasting and those six wines were our focus for the Tuscan Taste-Off. We will choose our two favorites from this group of six wines.
Recently we received some sample wines to try from Trione Winery in Geyserville California. We had not heard of Trione before and were intrigued by their story. For more than thirty years they have been providing grapes for some of the top wineries in the area such as Duckhorn, Kendall-Jackson and Sonoma-Cutrer among others. They farm almost 700 acres in the Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley and the Sonoma Coast. Only since 2005 have they decided to make their own wines, they opened their tasting room in 2008, and so far they have garnered several awards with subsequent vintages.
Our Thursday night tasting at Fine Wines of Stockton was a polite version of “Stump the Chump”. Alan organized the tasting this week and gave us a list of six wines at the beginning of the tasting, each a different varietal. He opened five of them and did not tell us which one he did not open. Our job for the evening was to identify the varietals.
Thursday night at Fine Wines of Stockton, we completed the third in a series of four Red Wines of Tuscany tastings.
It all began with an e-mail in the mid-November from one of Pete’s sisters. She had drawn Pete’s name in our family Christmas gift exchange and wanted to run an idea by me. “Would he enjoy a copy of Randall Grahm’s book Been Doon So Long? I can get an autographed copy.”
Red Wines of Tuscany Part Two – Vino Nobile di Montepulciano
Just like a lot of other people we will make some resolutions for 2013. Just ones related to wine, however. We will update this post as we complete our resolutions so everyone can see our progress.
We enjoy wine, food and travel. Pull That Cork is a chronicle of our wine adventures, the food and wine pairings we create and our travels which are increasingly organized around wine.