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Amador County Wine Region Guide: Zinfandel and Granite
Why Amador's old Zinfandel survived on its own roots, what the Shenandoah Valley does to the grape, and the 1968 bottle that restarted the county.
6 min
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Sierra Foothills Wine Region Guide: Altitude and Old Vines
How elevation replaces the ocean as a cooling mechanism across 2.6 million acres of granite, and what that does to the wine.
6 min
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Livermore Valley Wine Region Guide: Gravel, Heat and History
Gravel soils, an east-west valley open to the Bay, and the land-use bargain that kept vines inside a Bay Area suburb.
7 min
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Monterey County Wine Region Guide: The Salinas Wind
The Salinas Valley opens at its cold end, so wind runs inland all summer. Here is how that one fact builds Monterey's thermal rainbow of appellations.
7 min
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Lodi Wine Region Guide: Old Vines and Delta Air
How the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta cools a hot valley, why Lodi's sandy soil kept century-old vines on their own roots, and what the wines taste like.
6 min
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Mendocino County Wine Region Guide: Cool, Remote, Organic
Mendocino County explained by distance: cool coastal Anderson Valley, the warmer inland floor around Ukiah, and the county's organic farming record.
6 min
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Santa Barbara County Wine Region Guide: A Cool-Climate Map
Its valleys run east to west instead of north to south. That one geographic accident explains every appellation and grape in the county.
6 min
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Paso Robles Wine Region Guide: Heat, Limestone and Rhône
The Salinas River splits Paso Robles into two regions with different soil, rainfall and grapes. Here is what changes as you cross it.
6 min
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Sonoma County Wine Region Guide: Where the Fog Decides
Sonoma has two openings in the coast range that let cold air in. Learn them and its nineteen appellations stop being a list to memorize.
6 min
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Napa Valley Wine Region Guide: AVAs, Grapes and Styles
Why one thirty-mile valley holds sixteen appellations, and how valley floor, benchland and mountain sites change the same Cabernet.
7 min