Alameda County Fair wine judge Barry Herbst of Bottle Barn at Santa Rosa.   From pigs to pies, county fairs long have highlighted the intersection of industrious agriculture and individual creativity. Wine, with its roots in both farming and artistic expression,...

May is the month of transition, from the hearty red wines of winter to the breezy white wines of spring. That isn’t how things worked out this past first weekend of May, however, when the seventh Amador Four Fires Food & Wine Festival convened at Amador County...

Mysteriously, quietly, acai bowls are showing up on restaurant menus about Sacramento. But what’s acai, and why should diners care? Sacramentans will have an opportunity to learn all about acai and a whole lot of other dietary staples – coffee, cocoa, quinoa, corn,...

Highlights from a recent surge of commercial wine competitions: California State Fair Sauvignon Blanc is one of the few bright spots in the American wine market, with sales and plantings up compared with all other grapes and wines not named Cabernet Sauvignon or...

A quick jaunt to Calaveras County the other day paid off with introductions to several mighty-fine wines: The day began with the fifth-annual International Cabernet Franc Wine Competition inside the sprawling Golf Club at Copper Valley, a gated settlement just outside...

A fresh and lively discussion is under way on the California wine scene. It centers on Napa Valley, specifically on what its most prominent style of wine – Cabernet Sauvignon – represents: Place or personality? Karen MacNeil, one of the state’s more prolific,...