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The Grape Leaf Inn
Explore the quieter side of Sonoma at the Grape Leaf Inn, a restored Queen Anne Victorian just a five-minute walk from downtown Healdsburg.
Three specialty cottages dot the inn’s acreage, which includes a working seven-acre vineyard.Upscale but unpretentious, the inn is welcoming from the outset. Genial hosts Richard and Kae Rosenberg enjoy showing guests the “speakeasy” – a basement wine cellar reachable via a hidden stone staircase.
Complimentary wine tastings (including some rare vintages) are only on weekends, but don’t despair if you miss it; each guestroom has a bottle of wine from the inn’s very own seven-acre vineyard – yours to keep.
Ordering Wine Like A Pro: How To Choose A Wine At A Restaurant
You’re going to one of the finest restaurants in the city with a very valuable potential customer and your department head and you’re tasked with choosing a bottle of wine for dinner. The potential client is a very big wine enthusiast and your decision can make or break the deal. What do you do? Do you feel panicky? Shortness of breath? Racing thoughts: What if your client hates the wine? How do you pull this off? First, calm down, take a deep breath, and relax. You’re a professional, you’ll get through this. Choosing wine in a restaurant is not very difficult at all once you know what to look for.
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The Top 8 Wine Producing Regions Of The World
Think wine and what’s the first image that comes to mind? That’s right. Miles and miles of rolling, lush vineyards of France and Italy and blue, sunny skies. Few are aware that the Roman Empire was responsible for popularising the concept of growing grapes and setting up vineyards outside Italy. A concept that was immediately picked up by its neighbouring countries like Spain, Portugal, Germany, and France.
In addition to Italy and France, today, there are many other regions in the world that are equally renowned for wine production, in terms of quantity and quality.
Ballentine Vineyards
Ballentine is a bit different than many of the other wineries I’ve featured from the St. Helena AVA for a couple of different reasons. To start, they make slightly more wine. Total production for the winery seems to hover at around seven thousand cases, which is hardly a big production operation but there are some nice side effects of having a winery with that level of production.
To start, Ballentine is still able to hand craft specific wines from small portions of their vineyard. They make, for Napa Valley, a reasonably priced small production Cabernet Sauvignon like many of their neighbors but they also make a variety of other varietals such as Chenin Blanc, Zinfandel and Petite Syrah.