There's an oft-repeated bit of eno-philosophy that says the wine business is immune to recession because people drink in good times and bad. But it turns out there's a caveat: In bad times such as these, they mostly drink the cheap stuff.
Perhaps they're not the first place you think of when it comes to wineries, but these four regions offer character and great wine, without the hoopla.
This season the Raiders dirty laundry was supposed to be stuffed in the hamper. Out of sight. Deodorized. This was going to be the year that the woeful Raiders finally turned it around. Instilled discipline. Got back to basics. Stopped all the nonsense and distractions and the Al Davis public displays that come complete with overhead projectors and legal action.
Ask most wine hounds and sommeliers on either side of the Atlantic where the best chardonnay originates, and the answer will almost certainly be California or France.
The actress wants a ceremony on the beach and celebrations in Canada and Scotland
"Isn't it covered under my warranty?" This question is asked thousands of times a day in dealership service departments around the country.
As the former president of Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Television, Rich Frank has a long list of blockbusters to his credit, from Cheers and Entertainment Tonight to Pretty Woman and The Lion King. He's a born marketer with a knack for convincing the public that we want what he's got. And now he's ready to reveal his latest masterpiece, several years in the making. At his office in Calistoga, Calif., he reaches behind his desk for a dark, unmarked bottle that must weigh five pounds or more. It's called Promise. He hands it over. "This," he says, "is going to be one of those cult wines."
I'd all but given up on resort vacations for my family. I just couldn't take the food. As the editor of Food & Wine magazine, I've grown accustomed to culinary adventures pretty much every day. But resort meals, with their overcooked pasta and tasteless chicken, managed to fall short of even my lowest expectations.
The somewhat true story of the little California wine that could lacks all the character one expects from a fine vintage
The Raiders will have all their players present Thursday when they open training camp in Napa, Calif.
There's an oft-repeated bit of eno-philosophy that says the wine business is immune to recession because people drink in good times and bad. But it turns out there's a caveat: In bad times such as these, they mostly drink the cheap stuff.
Perhaps they're not the first place you think of when it comes to wineries, but these four regions offer character and great wine, without the hoopla.
This season the Raiders dirty laundry was supposed to be stuffed in the hamper. Out of sight. Deodorized. This was going to be the year that the woeful Raiders finally turned it around. Instilled discipline. Got back to basics. Stopped all the nonsense and distractions and the Al Davis public displays that come complete with overhead projectors and legal action.
Ask most wine hounds and sommeliers on either side of the Atlantic where the best chardonnay originates, and the answer will almost certainly be California or France.
The actress wants a ceremony on the beach and celebrations in Canada and Scotland
"Isn't it covered under my warranty?" This question is asked thousands of times a day in dealership service departments around the country.
As the former president of Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Television, Rich Frank has a long list of blockbusters to his credit, from Cheers and Entertainment Tonight to Pretty Woman and The Lion King. He's a born marketer with a knack for convincing the public that we want what he's got. And now he's ready to reveal his latest masterpiece, several years in the making. At his office in Calistoga, Calif., he reaches behind his desk for a dark, unmarked bottle that must weigh five pounds or more. It's called Promise. He hands it over. "This," he says, "is going to be one of those cult wines."
I'd all but given up on resort vacations for my family. I just couldn't take the food. As the editor of Food & Wine magazine, I've grown accustomed to culinary adventures pretty much every day. But resort meals, with their overcooked pasta and tasteless chicken, managed to fall short of even my lowest expectations.
The somewhat true story of the little California wine that could lacks all the character one expects from a fine vintage
The Raiders will have all their players present Thursday when they open training camp in Napa, Calif.
President Bush will visit Northern California to get a first-hand look at the wildfires that have ravaged hundreds of square miles and strained the state's firefighting resources
From making an omelet to getting some sleep, a little change in the mercury can make a big difference
Firefighting officials said Friday that one person died when a wildfire swept through a rural area of Northern California, a rare human casualty among the hundreds of blazes that have tormented the state for weeks
Smoke climbed high into the sky Friday as firefighters struggled to contain two wildfires that combined near Big Sur in California, a fire official said.
As gas begins to look more like liquid gold, more motorists are keeping it under lock and key, fueling sales for locking gas caps, according to retailers and manufacturers.
Sondra Bernstein shocked Sonoma 10 years ago with her tiny, Cab-free restaurant, the Girl & the Fig. No Chardonnay even -- just Rhône wines (many locally grown and made) and a gutsy southern French menu fashioned out of the county's bounty. And at nearby Cafe La Haye, John McReynolds and Saul Gropman had started turning out stellar California-French dishes in a kitchen they could reach across.
His brown hair encased in a paper hairnet, Jeff Mezzetta strides through the aisles of his bottling facility in American Canyon, Calif., six miles south of the city of Napa.
In some ways the errant freight car that tore through the factory of Maud Borup Chocolates in 2003 did the owners a favor. Sure, the incident - in which no one was injured - ruined the building, destroyed inventory and raw materials, and put the underinsured company's survival in question (see "Thrown off track," from the February 2004 issue). But, says co-owner Kim Kalan, "the train accident made us rethink our whole business."
California's Napa Valley, with its rolling hills, vineyards and prized terrain, produces some of America's finest wines. Here, tradition and craft are everything.
There's a war on bluster, and Fred Franzia is losing. Sure, the CEO of Bronco Wine, the nation's fourth-largest wine company, tells me repeatedly that only a sucker would pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine - including his own $35 Domaine Napa. And that Napa's and Bordeaux's claims about their special soils are bogus: "We can grow on asphalt. Terroir don't mean sh*t." After relieving himself by the side of his Jeep, Franzia recounts a trip to Burgundy where, after an elaborate tasting, he told the winemaker at Château Haut-Brion, "You can bottle gasoline if you can sell that."
After a quiet civil ceremony, Usher and Tameka Foster at last pulled off their dream wedding in Atlanta on Saturday.
By the time we arrive at Ceàgo Del Lago Winery, on the northwestern shore of Lake County's Clear Lake, we've seen far more birds than people. Western grebes, thousands of them, bob peacefully until our boat gets directly in front of them. Then they dive upside down like toy ducks, showing their black-and-white behinds before disappearing under the surface.
With new wineries, restaurants, and places to stay, Lake County (north of Napa) looks better than ever.
Travel + Leisure scoured California's wine country to find one-of-a-kind boutiques and charming small-town stores. From Calistoga to Healdsburg, these eight spots are worth a visit.
If Barrett Wissman were in the ministry, his arts festivals would be sunny outposts on a fast-widening mission field. His Tuscan Sun Festival opens Saturday in Cortona, Italy. An all-new Singapore Sun Festival opens October 18.
Press the switch to open the curtains in your valley-view room at the Poetry Inn, and you're suspended with the primary-striped hot-air balloons of postcard fame. Pedal up the Silverado Trail to the Miner Family villa, climb the steps, look west over your shoulder, and a world-class view is yours too. The first might be a decade's splurge; the second, just a weekend getaway. There are many ways to enjoy this wine country.
Whether you're looking for mud baths or bike routes, a castle or just a good meal, Travel + Leisure steers you in the right direction on this easy drive from San Francisco to Calistoga, California.
Of the more than 670,000 consumer fraud complaints made to the Federal Trade Commission in 2006, identity theft was the biggest category of reported cases, accounting for 36 percent of calls.
One weekend morning in 2002, Michael Brill had the sort of epiphany that commonly befalls successful businesspeople - particularly tech businesspeople who live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Fed up...
Drive for an hour north of San Francisco following Highway 29 and you will enter the majestic wine country that is Napa Valley.
Similar to Robert's American Gourmet, Annie's Homegrown, a Napa, Calif., company founded by former organic farmer (and Smartfood creator) Annie Withey in 1989, sells packaged food that's supposed to be better for you than competing products. But unlike the iconoclastic, fun approach that Robert's takes, Annie's sends a message of caring and concern.
Why is it that wine has a singular ability to reduce otherwise worldly men and women to insecure, stuttering naifs--or worse, swaggering poseurs? It's mystifying, frankly. But as chef Mario Batali ...
THE LAW There's an added cost to buying fancy items--call it the bragging tax. But often the same quality and features can be found for less if you feel like evading that surcharge.
Do you need a pair of tickets to Springsteen? A bottle of wine? A fancy wristwatch?
Having recently explored the options available to the busy executive for summer relaxation, I was at a loss, I don't mind telling you.
The tell-tale sign of a stagnating real estate market? When homes for sale start lingering - and that's exactly what real estate brokers and other industry watchers say they're seeing now.
Texans consider seeing the bluebonnets abloom in the Hill Country a true rite of passage. For those of us merely passing through this time of year, the experience borders on pure joy.
One of the favorite fantasies of the affluent post-industrial age is the retreat to wine country.
River floods leave fertile soil in their wake, the silver lining to the havoc wrought. But instead of cropland, the Napa River is repaying its namesake city with a revitalized downtown scene.
Not long ago a wedding was a modest affair: a little lace and a bit of the bubbly were all it took to launch a couple on the sea of matrimony.
Not long ago a wedding was a modest affair: a little lace and a bit of the bubbly were all it took to launch a couple on the sea of matrimony. These days it calls for much more pomp and ceremony. H...
"Take it back," snapped Robert Mondavi, his pulse quickening with rage. What had been a festive family celebration that day in November 1965 got eerily still. Robert and his brother Peter had toile...
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Call it a girly pin-up for metrosexuals.
It's an 85-degree day in September, and Mike Wood of Wood Family Vineyards in Livermore, Calif., is inspecting his 14 acres of merlot grapes. He wanders between the rows of vines, sampling grapes t...
Nothing says "I love you" like a $125,000 five-day getaway that starts in the Alaskan wilderness, stops on Rodeo Drive and comes to a finale on an historic Broadway stage.
For many, ringing in the New Year will involve making a toast. Some people find it intimidating -- especially in front of a crowd.
Congressional authority to peek into citizens' tax returns wasn't the only clause hidden in the omnibus spending bill that recently passed. There's also a more welcome surprise for the American worker: a grant for a comprehensive study of the effects of outsourcing U.S. jobs to cheap, foreign labor markets.
The property begins a few yards from the Mediterranean, wanders through fields and orchards, then climbs up a talus slope before ending at the base of a marble cliff.
Every few years, wine lovers anoint a country or region as their new darling. In the 1970s, it was Napa. Then came Sonoma, Chile, Australia and others from the New World.
Ah, the legendary romance of winemaking. Apple-cheeked peasant girls treading grapes under a harvest moon. Intimate tastings. And, of course, multispectral imaging and neutron probes. Huh?
The sorry stats say that as much as 10% of all wine is infected with TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole), a compound found in plastic, burlap, and--more to the point--cork. A mere nanogram can make a live...
California's wine country, it turns out, was hit just as hard by the economic downturn as the rest of the world. Prices for some of the most coveted brands plummeted by a third, and profits of high...
That last offsite in Barbados? The beach was great, not to mention the rum punch. But add up the plane tickets and the days lost to travel and ... well, the office conference room starts looking pr...
California's Olive Oil is about where its wine was 20 years ago: A few small producers are making great products, yet many consumers still think the best stuff comes from Europe. The U.S. imports a...
Years ago, you'd see lots of bourbon drinkers showing up in the obituaries, but not many in the wedding announcements." That's Bill Samuels talking. He's the CEO of Maker's Mark, the brand that's h...
BOSTON
Anytime you come home to find a big box sitting on your stoop, you know what comes next: digging through a lot of cardboard, polystyrene, starch peanuts, bubble wrap, plastic pillows, or confetti t...
Rudyard Kipling once pointed out San Francisco's one drawback: 'Tis hard to leave. That's still true today, even after the Internet bust that hit the Northern California economy so hard.
Wall Street hasn't exactly been pampering Wayne Huizenga lately. The shares of his car-retailing empire, AutoNation, and his garbage hauler, Republic Services, are both chewing gravel. But while hi...
Even in our gilded age, this spring's Napa Valley Wine Auction was amazing. Tickets to the four-day charity event, priced at $2,000 per couple, sold out within a week. The food was fantastic--salmo...
THE BEST JOB ON WALL STREET
So you've landed the vice presidency, you're spending tons of your company's money at the bistro of the moment, and the maitre d' still sniffs and seats you near the busboy. Now what? For those of ...
The number of bonded wineries in the U.S. has more than doubled, to over 1,400, in the past dozen years, partly because burned-out executives have been trading in the big-city life for pastoral toi...
In the soft-drink industry, where a successful new product can be like hitting the New York lottery, companies are placing their bets on an unlikely combination: carbonated beverages with real frui...
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