Review: Charbay R5 Clear and Aged Hop-Flavored Whiskey
Whiskey is (basically) made from beer, so why not make it from really good beer? For its long-awaited R5 whiskey, California’s Charbay (best known for its high-end flavored vodkas) took Bear Republic’s beloved Racer 5 IPA and put it through a still. This is not an inexpensive task: 10 gallons of beer distill down to…
Tasting Wines with Francesca Planeta, 2012 Releases
Planeta is one of the major winemakers of Sicily, a family affair that features six boutique wineries scattered around the island, its 30+ wines representing nearly every part of the area. Francesca Planeta, the matriarch of the family, recently dropped in on San Francisco and treated us to lunch and discussion of Planeta’s production. (Only…
Review: 2010 Breggo Pinot Noir Anderson Valley Savoy Vineyard
Breggo is a blue chip winery in Mendocino, based in Boonville and the proprietor of the Savoy Vineyard, located in the heart of this region’s Anderson Valley. While Breggo makes a wide range of wines, Anderson Valley is Pinot country, and this 2010 bottling is the flagship. The 2010 Savoy Vineyard bottling features a shocking…
Review: Casa Sauza XA Extra Anejo Edicion Limitada
Sauza may be best known for making inexpensive yet perfectly drinkable 100% agave tequila, but now it’s raising the bar with an extra anejo called Casa Sauza XA. This fancy-pants bottling is indeed extra-old, 100% aged three years in a combination of new and used American oak barrels. The bottle is something like I’ve never…
Tasting Report: Wines of Italy’s Morellino di Scansano DOCG, 2012
Morellino di Scansano is located in the southernmost part of Tuscany (Grosseto is the nearest major town), an area made a DOCG in 2007. Until now I’d never heard of it. At well-known sommelier David Lynch’s new wine bar, St. Vincent, in San Francisco, Lynch talked about what makes this region different, and six producers…
Review: Tomatin 15 Years Old Tempranillo Cask Finish
I’ve sampled Tomatin’s whiskys on numerous occasions, but this is oddly the first time we’ve covered the distillery in a formal capacity. Tomatin, based in the mountains south of Inverness in the northern Highlands region of Scotland, is less frequently seen on our shores, but the distillery makes a wide range of whiskies stretching to…
Review: Ransom Old Tom Gin
A reader recently turned me on to Ransom’s Old Tom Gin, asking (nay, begging) for a review. I’m obliging. Ransom Old Tom Gin is different than most gins. For starters, it’s yellow, not clear. That’s a characteristic of the rarely-seen Old Tom style, which was popular in the mid-1800s and faded into obscurity when the…
Tasting Report: Wines of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, SF Roadshow 2012
A few months ago I got the chance to visit some of Oregon’s best wineries. Recently, they brought the wineries to me. In a presentation of several dozen of Willamette Valley’s most notable wine producers, “Pinot in the City” saw over 200 wines being poured for attendees hot for both Pinots — Noir and Gris.…
