Posts Tagged ‘Amy Cleary’

Scenes From A Wine Blogger Tasting

September 30, 2011

9.25.11 was the date, 1pm was the time, Lytton Springs was the place. Wine Bloggers Tasting, Edition III, 2011.

And before I proceed any further, a big Cheers! to Marcy Gordon, whose blog “Come For The Wine” wins the prize for swiftest post-tasting post. You can read it here.

Now, to return to the task at hand. In attendance (you can click each name to visit each writer’s site):

Alison Smith

Amy Cleary

Chiara Shannon

Dave Tong

Deb Kravitz

Fred Swan

Joe Manekin

Marcy Gordon

Martin Redmond

Richard Jennings

Thea Dwelle

And the theme? (There is always a theme!) Small-production, winery-only library wines from the Lytton Springs Estate Vineyards. I’ll let you visit our blogger’s sites to discover the list of offerings, but suffice it to say it was an exquisitely delicious array of wines!

As has been the case on numerous past occasions, my offerings proved not to be the only wines tasted; this time around, the very excellent Richard Jennings brought a surprise treat for everyone to taste …

Not familiar? Not many people are. The vineyard doesn’t actually exist any longer, and even when it did, it didn’t cast much of a shadow; it wasn’t even an acre’s worth of vines (it was located quite near downtown Sonoma), and this was in fact the last vintage that Ridge produced from this property. To see a review of this wine from back in 1992, you can click here, and as to a current review: it was fantastic! I’m not kidding you, this wine was truly, truly, truly, truly delicious; thanks RJ!

And here’s a bit of video from the tasting:

I wish to offer full and sincere gratitude to our guests. This tasting series has been a fantastic success, and so very much of that is due to the caliber of our bloggers; they’re a fascinating and deeply knowledgeable lot, and I encourage you to read them as often as you can.

I also wish to thank everyone at Lytton Springs for all the help and support. Sandy, Jason, Eliot, and Brandye, I simply couldn’t have done this without you, thank you so much! And thank you to Keren and Joany for so commandingly holding down the fort even as I was poaching your co-workers! And special thanks to John Olney (VP of Winemaking, Lytton Springs) and Muiris Griffin (Assistant Winemaker, Lytton Springs) for being so gracious with your time, and allowing our bloggers to share in, and experience firsthand, the excitement of harvest.

If you’re interested in being a guest at an upcoming tasting, please let us know either by commenting on this post, sending a tweet (#RidgeVineyards, @RidgeVineyards) or posting on our Facebook page (facebook.com/RidgeVineyards).

Cheers!

Light On Lytton!

August 30, 2010

For this week’s issue of our Light on Lytton series, we’re quite literally going to show you … the Light at Lytton!

The following is a picture that was taken by Jamie Bakas, who happens to be married to Rick Bakas, who happens to be the social media heavyweight at St. Supery; both were at Lytton Springs Saturday night for our TasteLive/TweetUp,  and she snapped it in between sips of our new Fall Release zinfandels. If you follow her tweets (and you should! @jaimiebakas), you’ll see that while she seemed to love the new 2008 Pagani Ranch best, she was in her “happy place” when she tasted the 2007 Monte Bello, a little unannounced treat that Sandy pulled out!

If you’d like to see what others had to say about the tasting, just use your favorite Twitter ap — I prefer TweetDeck – and search #ridgewines, and you’ll see a great stream of thoughts and observations by Rick and Jamie, Meg Houston Maker (makerstable.com), Lenn Thompson (lenndevours.com/newyorkcorkreport.com), Carrie Becker (thechicagoist.com), Amy Cleary (winebookgirl.com), and more!

Anyhow, now for a little Light on Lytton:

(c) jamie bakas


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