Last Thursday’s Lionheart tasting at Artisan was a roaring success, with both tasters and winemakers very satisfied with the evening. Wine was discovered, bottles bought and taste buds were pleased.

As I announced previously, Lionheart’s winemaker Leon Glover brought out 5 wines for us to try, all pre-release until his Mane Event Summer Release party later that Saturday at Crushpad. I got there a little before the start of the event and said hello to Leon and Artisan proprietor Lena and caught up with them for a bit before tasting some of the wines there that night. I hadn’t tasted most of the wines since the barrel tasting, and I was excited to try them now from the bottle. I was so busy getting caught up that I forgot to try any of the wines before we got busy! Once that mistake was rectified, I was free to mingle and check out our crowd, with had great diversity in age, style and wine knowledge. Also making the event were Marshall & Brittany, founders of WineQ.com. After raving about Lionheart for so long, I was glad that they could finally check out the wines for themselves.

WineLog.net is very excited to announce an evening discovering the wines of Lionheart Wines at Artisan Wine Lounge & Cafe in Walnut Creek, CA. Winemaker Leon Glover will be pouring his Summer release wines that will be officially released later this month.

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WineLog.net & Artisan Wine Lounge & Cafe Present:
An Evening with Winemaker Leon Glover & Lionheart Wines
07/17/08 7pm - 9pm
$10 per person for wine and appetizers
15% Off all Lionheart Wines purchased at the tasting!

Most of my readers know that I have a fond place in my heart for the wines from Carmel Valley, CA. Beth and I have made numerous trips to the Carmel-by-the-Sea and Carmel Valley region over the years, as evidenced by the travel post I wrote earlier this year. We’ve tasted some great wines over the years from wineries such as Heller Estate, Bernardus, Galante Vineyards and Boete. I only get truly excited, however, by the wines from Georis Winery and Parsonage Village Vineyard (PVV). Last weekend, Frank Melicia, Bill Parsons and the entire rest of the combined clan threw their very first party, their 1st Annual Wine Club Party, to be exact…and I was fired up!

The Walnut Creek Downtown Business Association launched a new yearly event this past Wednesday (06/25/08) with their first annual Downtown Wine Walk. For a $20 fee, you (were supposed to) receive a commemorative wine glass and a map to that showed the various downtown stores, restaurants and bars that were participating and pouring wine from 6-9pm that evening. This first event focused on Napa wines. The event fit in well with their long-running annual Art & Wine Festival and various downtown art and farmer’s market events. It also was well-timed to take advantage of the wine renaissance that is continuing to take place downtown where many wine bars and stores have gone in over the last year or so (and is also taking place across the Bay Area).

I met up with my friends Kristin & Ian and we had high hopes for the evening until we realized that we should have bought Presales…

Every time I go to a wine event that includes multiple wineries, I will usually find one winery that is new to me and stands out from the rest. I stumbled across many great wineries at the Wine 2.0 Spring Fling at Crushpad last April. But two wines from a particular new winery have stuck with me over the last two months. Leon C. Glover III’s Lionheart Wines had two very good Syrahs that night…and the scary thing is that they were from his very first and second vintages!

2005 found Leon in an interesting spot in his life. As a former and very successful Programmer/Project Manager, Associate Venture Partner focused on technical due diligence, self-taught chef and a recent recipient of an MBA, he was looking at his options in a tech industry environment that was beginning to look like the late 90’s again with the Web 2.0 movement in full hype. Then, a funny thing happened. His wife, Jen stepped in and offered him a rather nice gift…of the kind that keep giving.

One of the things that I’ve really tried to step up in my personal wine education is my ability to guess a blinded wine’s provenance or origin. What is the grape, what is the region and if I’m super-lucky, what is the actual wine?

In this case, led by Lisa and Joe, the gOenophiles’ intrepid vinous adventurers decided to try and tackle one of the most difficult cases of guessing a blinded wine’s varietal…New World Syrah/Shiraz vs. Zinfandel.

Here’s a question that recently hit our inbox. I thought others out there might be interested in how to log wines through the WineLog Mobile site and might not even know about the cool send yourself a message feature.

The email:

I really like your mobile site, and it looks great on my iPhone. But it would be REALLY great if I could add new wines to my log through that site. As I’m out and about, and reading about new wines or at the store or at a friend’s house, it would be so helpful to be able to add them to my log immediately. Do you have plans to add that to the mobile site?

My response after the break…

Beth and I have been itching to enjoy any of the Spring days lately that are actually warm and wind-free, so when we saw that not only was the weekend going to be warm, but that the Clayton Art & Wine Festival was on deck, we picked up the Pug and headed up the road […]

I was first initiated into the innovative world of Wine 2.0 when I attended their NRO event at Varnish last November. What I found was an extremely thriving movement of loosely knit and mainly younger wine aficionados, producers and entrepreneurs that were expanding upon the path set down by the original Wine Brats…they also tend to throw a party with a little more enthusiasm than your average wine event!

With those thoughts in mind, I geared up for some serious wine-drinking, networking and, well, partying last Thursday night. I was keenly aware of how the night would unfold and so I decided to BART and cab it to the event, held at the 3rd street warehouse of Crushpad in San Francisco. Crushpad is a custom crush facility, meaning that they provide equipment, bonded space, reagents and even fruit for boutique wineries and amateur winemakers, alike. They are one of the most well-known companies where winemakers can go to make their own wines with as much or as little hands-on participation as they might choose. I’ve been hearing about them for years and have been rather intrigued by their facilities, so I was quite happy to check out the space when I first arrived, just before the event opened.

Continuing in the vein of my first regional wine and food review of the Napa Valley, I will now travel south down the Central Valley to another loved wine region, Carmel Valley [WL]. Carmel Valley sits due Southeast from the beautiful and famous hamlet, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and is overlapped by the Monterey County and Central Coast appellations.

Beth and I adore the little seaside town and its accompanying wine region and have made numerous trips over the years with our little Pug Sebastian, always finishing each day with applause at sunset on the its white sand beach. This whole region is well-known as one of the most dog-friendly vacation spots in the US, as well as for its incredible beauty, both natural and man-made.
My list of recommendations span both Carmel-by-the-Sea and the Carmel Valley. I have included links to each individual website, as well as the accompanying information we have on WineLog [WL]. Enjoy!