By Maggie Smith
Our monthly make your own barrel meeting was last week. I hate calling them meetings since at your typical work meetings you don’t drink wine, dine at Province, and chat with amazing food and wine loving people. However there was some “work” to be done. We combined our Cabernet tasting with our Pinot [...]

by Maggie Smith
Tasting wine for a living is a tough job, but someone has to relay this information to you! Last week at Gibson’s Steakhouse, our barrel group’s “mission” (linked blog post from last thursday) was to bring a bottle of wine in the $50-to-$100 price range from anywhere in the world to blind taste, [...]

By Maggie Smith
This is the second year that Just Grapes has operated the “Make your own Barrel” program. What we do, as a group, is tour the entire wine making process, from grape to bottle. Whether you are the total wine geek that wants his or her wine customized to suit their palate, or the [...]

Here is Just Grapes’ owner/managing partner Don Sritong’s audition for a Casting Call for Season 2 of The Winemakers (PBS) being filmed in Rhone Valley, France. One of the 16 finalist will be chosen by popular vote; the person whose video receives the most “views” wins a role on the show.  So don’t delay, view [...]

The Just Grapes 2008 & 2009 Barrel Project members all met last night at the Grocery Bistro for a blind tasting of 10 Premium Pritchard Hill Cabernet Sauvignons. The Pritchard Hill area of Napa Valley is known for cult Cabernet producers such as Colgin, Bryant Family and Chappellet. All wines were tasted in a blind format (identity of each wines were hidden) served in two different flights. Each member was asked to vote for their top wine in each of the flight. Here are the results based on overall votes (ranked from top to bottom) and their suggested retail prices*. The order in which the wine were tasted will be in “()”. You can click the links for the tasting notes on each wine.

Yesterday, we began receiving stock for our Spring Blowout Sale: 50% on 50 Wines. As we opened box after box of incredible wine after incredible wine, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Three different 1.5 liter-bottles of Herman Donnhoff Riesling , each rated between 93 and 97 points by Robert Parker, marked down from $90, $79, [...]

I recently attended a luncheon at NoMi where I got to enjoy the lively and elegant wines of Pascal Jolivet, a dynamic producer from the Loire Valley, with a perfectly paired menu of fresh, seasonal foods. And, the best part was having the opportunity to learn about each of the wines we were sipping from Monsieur Jolivet himself.

By Brett Ashley McKenzie
Too often at weddings the table wine is guzzled like tap water, and brides and grooms can only look on in horror as guests young and old Cha Cha Slide with perilously poor balance. In many cases, wines provided by reception halls are less than top notch, therefore offering little to savor and becoming nothing more than [...]

By Brett Ashley McKenzie
Print out your Just Grapes bracket, grab your pencils, your stemware and favorite wines from Just Grapes, and prepare for our first-ever full-size Just Grapes March Madness Bracket Challenge!

We’ve taken 64 of our favorites and pitted them against one another in four regional showdowns: North America, South America, Europe, and Africa/Oceania.
Do you [...]

by Brett Ashley McKenzie
At the Paso Robles Grand Tasting on Tuesday, March 10, I stood at the Adelaida Cellars table with a glass of 2006 HMR Estate Pinot Noir in one hand and a giant, chalky rock in the other. The rock covered my hand in a fine white dust, which remained on my skin [...]