Review: Captive Spirits Big Gin
Seattle-based Captive Spirits makes one product and one product alone: gin. Big Gin, actually. Crafted in the London Dry style 100 gallons at a time and is imbued with nine botanicals: juniper, coriander, orange peel, grains of paradise, angelica, cassia, cardamon, orris root, and Tasmanian pepper berry. Altogether it’s a fairly traditional botanical bill, with…
Review: Wines of Gary Farrell, 2010 Vintage
Gary Farrell is based on Sonoma’s Russian River Valley, but it makes wines with fruit from all over California. Russian River, however, remains the focus. The 2010 bottlings are now hitting the market. We tasted through a solid sampling of five of them. Thoughts follow. 2010 Gary Farrell Chardonnay Russian River Valley Westside Farms –…
Tasting Report: 2013 Berkeley Wine Festival
Now in its fourth year, the Berkeley Wine Festival features a series of weekly dinners hosted by California winemakers. The dinners and the big kickoff takes place at Berkeley’s iconic Claremont Hotel, which I attended. Packed with attendees, the opening night featured tastings of over 180 wines, plus a smattering of foodstuffs prepared by Claremont…
Review: Wines of Portugal’s Alentejo Region
The Portuguese don’t sit around sipping Vintage Port all day. For everyday drinking, they turn to some simple and very affordable wines. Increasingly, these wines have been coming to the U.S., letting us discover new grapes, like Antao Vaz, and new regions, like Alentejo, where these three wines hail from. Alentejo covers most of the…
Review: 2007 Banfi Brunello and 2009 Sartori Amarone
2007 marks the first year that Banfi’s new Horizon Winery got up and running, featuring new a fermenting system that uses oak cores with stainless steel caps to produce wine. The newly released Brunello, the first wine to come out of this winery, is reviewed below, along with a hot new Amarone from Sartori, one…
Review: Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon (2013)
Elijah Craig is a Bourbon brand on the rise, and its latest release is another knockout, this time bottled at cask strength. A whopping 12 years old (the age statement is in the text on the back label of the bottle), Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is an amazing whiskey that should (and will) be sought…
Review: 2010 Ghost Pines Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon
Ghost Pines is a label produced by Louis Martini, which is itself a subsidiary of the Gallo empire. These two new releases are single-varietal wines, blended from grapes harvested from both Sonoma and Napa counties. Thoughts follow. 2010 Ghost Pines Merlot – Made from 29% Napa County and 71% Sonoma County grapes. An easy-drinking Merlot,…
Review: Schramm Organic Gin
Yes Virginia, they make gin in Canada. This unique gin comes from Pemberton Distillery in British Columbia, where a smattering of products are produced. None seems more highly lauded than Schramm Organic Gin, an organic dry gin made from distilled potato base and infused with a mere eight (organic) botanicals: juniper, coriander, orange peel, rosemary,…
