Randy Caparoso

Nicolas Joly. Decanter. Without a doubt, the most influential proponent of biodynamic grape growing in the world is Nicolas Joly, who became converted to the method in the late 1970s when he noticed the soil of his Coulée de Serrant estate in…

Green wines have become more plentiful and better than ever, which is good news for all of us, and the environment. One of the unseemly aspects of this inexorable movement, on the other hand, is the public sniping between the various camps…

“When I told my dad we were going to take the company organic,” says Mark Neal, “he drove over to Sonoma and came back with a tray of rotten apples and peaches and said, ‘this is how our grapes will look when you grow organic.’” Not to be dissuaded,…

“Times fun when you’re having flies,” was the motto at Frog’s Leap when they first burst upon the persnickety Napa Valley scene in 1981. They're going stronger than ever, even long after the departure (in 1992) of founding partner Larry Turley, who…

I spent more time with Julie Johnson at her CCOF certified Tres Sabores than any other single winemaker during a recent three week swing through the West Coast this past spring. Why? Admittedly, because I can drink her wines all day or night,…

In Italy the Pinot gris grape is called Pinot Grigio, and there it yields delightfully fresh, easy drinking dry white wines, in boatloads of quantity. As catchy, ubiquitous, or maybe annoying, as ABBA. In France’s Alsace region, the grape is called…

When Biodynamic® guru Alan York began consulting with winegrower/proprietor Rob Sinskey of Robert Sinskey Vineyards (a.k.a. RSV), the first thing he advised was to “get over the voodoo doo-doo” and find the “practical ways to get it done.” “I was…

My favorite wine in the world (by France’s Domaine Tempier) happens to be pink; and I’ll tell you why (whether you want to know or not): It has as much of a stony dryness and deep intensity of flavor as any red wine, but is as soft, round and…

Susan Sokol Blosser is not a famous winemaker. In fact, in 1990 when her former husband, Bill Blosser, extricated himself from the Sokol Blosser Vineyard & Winery that they founded together in 1971, she took over the operations with the experience of…

Eating and Drinking Green Makes Sense So now we that we have choices between organic and non-organic foods, eco-friendly and non-eco stiletto heels, hybrid and non-hybrid cars, etc., why aren’t most of us making the choice to drink green as well? I…

The only things I feel bad about telling you about the 2007 Gamble Family Vineyards Yountville/Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc (about $28) is that not a lot of it was made (1,650 cases), and it’s not widely distributed in the U.S. But it’s my insensitive…

There are many skeptics and wine geeks who do not quite see the value of some of Rudolph Steiner’s original formulas for enhancing the life of vineyard soil; such as “fermenting” cow manure in cow horns, then burying them over winter, and applying…

“Trying to uncover what a vineyard is trying to say,” says Steven Canter, winemaker of Quivira Vineyards in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, “is like an archeologist brushing away the sand.” Plucked by Quivira three years ago from the celebrated Torbreck…

It’s good to know there are still visionaries walking among us. In the late 1960s, armed with little more than the determination to grow a Pinot Noir as great as any found in France, Richard Sanford wandered up and down the coast of California before…

I could see for miles and miles at the top of the Purisima Mountain Vineyard, owned and farmed by Steve Beckman of Santa Barbara’s Beckman Vineyards. But the “truth,” according to Beckman, is not “out there,” but in the soil, the grapes, and in the…

There’s a white, chalky flintiness everywhere in Montlouis, a long under-appreciated region in France located across the Loire River from the Vouvray AC; the latter better known around the world for its soft, flowery fresh, demi-sec (“off-dry”)…

The first two things I need to tell you about the 2006 Paul Dolan Zinfandel (about $19) is that it’s produced by the former CEO/Winemaker of Fetzer Vineyards – one of California’s pioneers of organic grape growing – named, of course, Paul Dolan, and…

Vouvray is like the girl with the Scarlett Johansson sweetness, Bette Davis wit, and knockdown Grace Kelly beauty that made all the boys in high school too dumbfounded to ever ask out (except for the dumb jocks, who’d never get a yes). Yet Vouvray is…

Collette wrote of France’s Jurançon: when I was a young girl, I was introduced to a passionate Prince, domineering and two-timing like all great seducers… My lifelong affair has been with Domaine Tempier’s Bandol rouge, which began in the early…

In recent years, the red wines of Priorat DOQ, from the mountains of Spain’s Catalonia, have become the El Toro, the Cyclone, The Incredible Hulk, the Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster of wines for vinous thrill seekers: heady, exhilarating, palate…