In recent years, my role at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale has been to write tasting notes on best-of-class wines. This year’s competition attracted 5500 entries organized into 177 classes. That’s too many classes to taste and to...

Since 1981, Gail Skoff has been strolling through the vineyards and ducking into the wine cellars of France and Italy. She has had the opportunity to taste the most esteemed wines from many of the continent’s more exciting estates. But she hasn’t done it, or if she...

  Livestock exhibits, bull riding, barbecue and concerts are longtime staples of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Over the past two decades, wine also has carved out a significant role for itself at the exposition, with about 80,000 bottles opened in the...

(Santa Rosa wine writer Dan Berger, who has tracked the evolution of the California wine scene as long as anyone still writing today, wrote this affectionate tribute to Dorothy Tchelistcheff shortly after she died on Thanksgiving Day. Mrs. Tchelistcheff was a...

Highlights from recent wine-related explorations: Lodi’s Bokisch Vineyards, celebrated for its frank and alluring wines based on grape varieties traditionally associated with Spain, has turned to a grape more closely associated with the South of France for its newest...

With more whimsey than strategy, two professional women from San Francisco buy a rickety 13-acre farm at Fiddletown in Amador County. They haven’t much experience at digging soil, but the farm includes a scattering of pomegranate, apricot, walnut, olive, peach and...