All posts tagged: Wine Making

Featured Winery of the Week – Liquid Farm

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Happy Wine Wednesday! Today I’m featuring Liquid Farm and their beautiful new tasting room in Los Olivos. 🍷I first discovered Liquid Farm 7 years ago when I was working for a wine event company. At the time, I swore I would never touch a Chardonnay again. That is, until I tried Liquid Farm. They changed my mind and made me realize just how many ways Chardonnay can be crafted. True to form, Liquid Farm offers up 5 different styles of Chardonnay at the tasting room. The first, White Hill Chardonnay from Sta Rita Hills, a Chablis style, which @adrienneastrology described as “salty lemonade.” The last was Bien Bien Chardonnay from Santa Maria Valley, a voluptuous, creamy Chard. My favorite was La Hermana Chardonnay, which was right in between these styles. However!! We didn’t just taste Chardonnay, we had 2 delicious Pinot Noirs and my personal favorite, a rosé of Mourvèdre (also known as PC, or “pink crack” to LF aficionados). The tasting room has a delightful shabby/chic vibe with comfy couches, hanging plants, an electric …

Wine Diamonds

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Have you ever seen these crystals in the bottle or glass of your wine?  I once had a server at a restaurant try to explain it as sediment in my white wine.  That’s not what these are.  They are tartrate crystals, also known as wine diamonds. These wine diamonds are nothing to fear.  They are a natural occurrence that happens from time to time, and are safe to drink.  They are formed from a natural component, called tartaric acid.  Tartaric acid is found in grapes, apricots, apples, avocados, tamarinds, citrus, and bananas.  You can find it in among spices and is commonly used as cream of tartar that can be added to eggs to increase their thickness. When you see them in wine, it is due to the tartaric acid binding with potassium when the wine is chilled.  They form the white crystals that can stick to the bottom of a cork and can be found in the last pours of a bottle. These crystals can occur in both red and white wine.  However, they …

These Vines Are Thirsty

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Spring is finally here!  The grass is green once again.  The dogwoods and cherry blossoms are all in bloom.  It’s gorgeous! All this new foliage reminds me of Spring at the Vineyard.  It’s that time of year when the vines are once again in bud break.  They awake from hibernation and baby green shoots and leaves begin to emerge.  It’s one of my favorite times of year at the vineyard.  It may seem small to many, but it represents a reawakening and new life to me. During the winter, the vines lay dormant.  Leaves are gone and the vines look like deciduous trees when they lose their leaves.  They are brown and barren.  In fact, I once had a guest at an event at the vineyard in December ask me what was wrong with our vines.  I still laugh when I remember this, because he was certain our entire vineyard had been hit with some sort of blight.  Even when I explained the vines are always bare during the winter, he thought I wasn’t telling …