Dunne's Picks

With practice, patience and prayer, the monks of the Abbey of New Clairvaux look to be succeeding where Leland Stanford saw rare failure

Fresh out of UC Davis with a bachelor's degree in fermentation science, Sacramento native Rob Davis signed on as an intern at a brand new winery just outside of Healdsburg in northern Sonoma County, Jordan Vineyard & Winery.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Suisun Valley as an officially designated American viticultural area.

Among other annual signs of spring is the surge in the number of commercial wine competitions around the country.

From the outside, the Amador County winery Andis Wines is as much modern sculpture as utilitarian structure. It's a sharp-edged and soaring wedge of metal and glass that looks as if it's taking flight from its vineyard knoll in the Shenandoah Valley.

You can coach or you can play, but just a gutsy and smart few do both simultaneously.

Stuart Spencer calls his St. Amant Winery 2010 Lodi Marian's Old Vine Zinfandel "the mother of all zinfandels."

Ben Zeitman and Katie Quinn, the husband-and-wife winemaking team of Amador Foothill Winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, first visited the southern Italian region of Campania in 2001.

If anyone knows chardonnay, especially what it has to say when it is grown in Monterey County, that would be Dan Morgan Lee.

When judges of the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition at Cloverdale sat down for their final task in January, 84 glasses were gathered in front of every one of them.

The winery in the old Calaveras County gold camp of Murphys is named Milliaire. The people who own it are named Steve and Liz Millier. What's up with that?

As an officially recognized American Viticultural Area, the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County keeps growing, much to the alarm of grape growers and winemakers who subscribe to the view that the smaller an appellation, the better.

If my math is correct, this year marks the silver anniversary of Jim and Suzy Gullett's entry into the wine trade. In 1987, in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, where three years earlier they'd bought 21 acres planted in part to walnut trees, the Gulletts put down about an acre of sangiovese wine grapes.

This is the story of someone who went to Napa Valley to taste cabernet sauvignon but came home smitten with merlot, a varietal he generally doesn't pay much heed.

The Old Sugar Mill looms from the flatlands of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta like one more grim California penal colony to startle unsuspecting motorists as they wind their way through some quiet, remote and sparsely settled stretch of the state.

We're standing in the tasting room of Lone Buffalo Vineyards on the rolling outskirts of Auburn. It's a tasting room more informative than most because the Phil Maddux family, which founded the winery in 2007, is big into educating consumers about the smells and flavors of wine.

A decade has passed since Marco Cappelli startled his winemaking colleagues by letting them know that he saw potential in the trade beyond Napa Valley, specifically in the Sierra foothills.

As you drive up Slug Gulch Road in the Fair Play district of southwestern El Dorado County, you pass a small vineyard easy to overlook for the dense forest of pine and oak that rises up the slope just behind it.

Like small gems on an antique gold necklace, about 20 winery tasting rooms are scattered along and about Main Street of Murphys in Calaveras County.

France's Champagne region sets the standard for sparkling wines. That isn't exactly breaking news.

Despite its proximity to Sacramento, the officially recognized American Viticultural Area called Fiddletown is one of the smaller, more remote and less frequently visited wine appellations in the country.

When you stop by the small family winery Unti Vineyards in the middle of Dry Creek Valley, however, you don't find any cabernet sauvignon or sauvignon blanc, though their portfolio does include a zinfandel. (It may be against the law – of nature, at least – for wineries in Dry Creek Valley not to make a zinfandel.)

Jim Taylor is the father. Ryan Taylor is the son. Together, they form the grape-growing and winemaking team at Mt. Vernon Winery just outside Auburn. t. Vernon is the only winery in the country sanctioned to use the stamp on wine labels. The Taylors continue to donate to breast-cancer research, 12.5 percent from the sale of each of their two Global Journey wines with the stamp.

Sierra foothill historian Eric J. Costa has made my life much easier. Whenever I need to brush up on the history of the wine trade in El Dorado County, I leaf through his newly published book, "Gold and Wine: A History of Winemaking in El Dorado County." (El Dorado Winery Association, $20, 138 pages).

Though harvest was under way, Lou Preston wasn't in the cellar fermenting grape juice. Nor was he in the kitchen kneading dough and baking bread. He certainly wasn't in the tasting room of his winery, Preston of Dry Creek.

Grover Lee relishes a challenge. Tell him something is unlikely if not impossible, and he'll set out to prove that he can do it. In growing grapes and making wine in the Sierra foothills, for example, one of the more enduring shibboleths is that cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, pinot noir and merlot can't thrive in the region's arid soils and searing temperatures.

We strolled through several vineyards in western and northern Sonoma County. Our guides were Mike Officer and David Gates Jr., principals of the Historic Vineyard Society, a nonprofit organization they helped form a year ago to enhance the stature and appreciation of old vineyards.

On paper, tempranillo should be one of California's more popular varietal wines. As the backbone of Spain's glorious Rioja wines, it has reliability, tradition and nobility going for it.

The American wine consumer has been brought up on wines labeled by varietal, such as cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel and merlot.