Calaveras Winegrape Alliance Wine Sierra Foothills California

Wine of the Worlds June

We're giving you the chance to taste the winning Calaveras wines from the 2012 Calaveras County Fair! Judy Creighton, the Cheese Lady, hosts our June 14 Event at the Historic Murphys Hotel.

Cheesemonger extraordinaire, Judy is a core instructor at the Cheese School of San Francisco and C'est Le Cheese in Sacramento. She is a columnist in the Sierra Lodestar and locally she is know as "The Calaveras Cheese Lady."

Eight award winning wines and eight mouth watering cheeses will be paired as we savior the best that Calaveras County has to offer. 

Wines of the World is an integral part of the wine association’s educational program. Cost for CWA members is $20 and $30 for non-members. Guests are welcomed to dine at the hotel afterward with a $5 discount on each entrée. For more information, call 728-9467 or visit online at calaveraswines.org.

And the winners are...

The results are in from the 2012 Calaveras County Professional Wine Judging Competition. Special thanks goes out to Laura Gianni, Tom Bender, Pat & Bert MacDonald, Carrie & Gerry Nelson, Diane Cornish, Tina Bagget, Charlie Creighton, and Bill Kaufka. 

See the results here...

May Wine of the Worlds

 

Pinot Noir showcased at the May Wines of the World from the Calaveras Winegrape Alliance

"A devil of a wine!"

André Tchelistcheff, America's most influential post-Prohibition winemaker, declared that "God made Cabernet Sauvignon whereas the devil made Pinot noir."

Join us May 10 at the Historic Murphys Hotel, 5:30pm-7pm for an evening of Californian Pinot Noir. Steve Collum, of Vineyard Concepts, and Sara Teeter, Executive Director of the Calaveras Winegrape Alliance, host this educational event! Travel California with us as we explore the cool climates where Pinot Noir thrives. Chiefly associated with the Burgundy region of France, we will explore how this varietal grows in California. Regions discussed will be:

Sonoma Coast, Rusian River Valley, Carneros, Anderson Valley, Santa Lucia Highlands, Calaveras and the Santa Cruz Mountains

 

Sara Teeter remarked, "Pinot Noir can be one of the most difficult varietals to produce an cultivate into wine. I have worked for several wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and some of the winemakers refused to make Pinot Noir! They knew they did Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon well and didn't need to bother attempting Pinot. While other winemakers accepted the challenge. The micro climates in that particular area make for growing Pinot Noir so well. You get a balance of coastal fog blanketing the grapes and bright hot sunshine from the higher elevation. But they are myriad reasons as to why this grape can be difficult. It's very sensitive to heat, wind, frost, and needs to be low yielding for quality juice. In the winery it is sensitive to fermentation methods and yeast strains, while it's skin can be prone to all sorts of diseases."

Steve Collum will present this wine tasting beginning in the northern counties of California with a sparkling wine and end the tasting in the southern most region of Santa Lucia Highlands.

 

Wines of the World is an integral part of the wine association’s educational program. Cost for CWA members is $15 and $25 for non-members. Guests are welcomed to dine at the hotel afterward with a $5 discount on each entrée. For more information, call 728-9467 or visit online at calaveraswines.org.

 

 

Home Winemaker Night at CAMPS

Angels Camp has a secret underground coalition of home winemakers that I bet you didn't know about. Oh, you did? Well you must have been at CAMPS restaurant at Greenhorn Creek last night. 

The Calaveras Wine Grape Alliance hosts "Wines of the World" each month, an educational and casual tasting for the public to attend. Varietals served last night were all grown in our county, if not in the home winemakers backyard. Take Ed Miske for example, his lives two streets away from me and has an acre of Sangiovese grapes. I couldn't even grow tomatoes last year. 

The house was packed last night with friends and neighbors of these winemakers, who poured everything from Chardonnay, Syrah and Zinfandel to a vintage port made from Portuguese grape clones. It was fascinating to hear the comedy of errors that these winemaker go through to produce up to 100 bottles of wine, you simply would not believe the chemistry that goes in it all. Truly, a labor of love.

Join us for our May 10th Wine of the Worlds hosted by Sara Teeter and Steve Collum, at the Historic Murphys Hotel,  as we present Californian Pinot Noir. Yes, there may even be some Sparkling wine thrown in there, so be prepared.

For more photos from this event please click here.

photos courtesy of David Gonzales

 

             

The benefits of wine and cheese never end...

Did you know that drinking wine and eating cheese while learning conversational French boosts your comprehension level? It's true! Just ask Tasha Unninayar at Allegorie Winery. Tasha will be hosting a series of classes to locals through May. 

For more information contact Allegorie at 209.728.9922