California Wine Country

We have a selection of Bottle Barn picks from Dan Berger on California Wine Country with Dan and Daedalus Howell today, wines that Dan says show a trend in the retail wine business. He has brought selections from Bottle Barn that will illustrate this new direction. Dan Berger is our weekly co-host and has also been featured on the show, such as this episode about Gamay Beaujolais.

Many younger consumers are looking for something different. Instead of dwelling on doom and gloom because of low sales, there is an opportunity to reset the industry and to rethink things. As consumers change, the industry needs to adapt to changing tastes and provide more variety. Dan calls it a Return to Reality. So, for example, we have seen a rebirth of Chenin Blanc in the last 10 years. Barry Herbst, wine buyer at Bottle Barn, makes sure that the store has lots of choices for people looking for something new.

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CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference !

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The first taste is Esporão, a Portuguese white wine made in the style of Chardonnay. It is aged in wood, but delicately. It has only 13.5% ABV. The region is near the Atlantic Ocean in a cool area. It’s a 2020 and still fresh. It was $30 at first release, but now it is $12.99. The wine has the aging that it needs, it’s ready to drink.

The next tasting is a 2024 Assyrtyko. It is a Greek grape that grows primarily in Greece. But this one is from Jim Barry Wines in Claire Valley in Australia. It sells for about $24 at Bottle Barn.

Dan thinks the next wave of interest in wine will not be from collectors. There will have to be more diversity in the choices of wines, varieties and origins. Wine today is better than it has ever been around the world, because of better grape growing and better technology.

Then they taste a 2024 Pigato from Liguria from the Durin label. It has some lemon blossom in the aroma. It’s delicious and has a lot of personality. Pigato only grows in Italy in Piedmont and Liguria, both are cool climates. Wine makers need to plant grapes like Pigato here in California.

Next is a red, Pithos Rosso. The bottle is 750 ml but has a squat shape. The grape variety is Nero d’Avola and is native to Sicily. The label says both Italy and Sicily. It is red, but light and delicious and not particularly tannic.

Last is a 2024 Verduno Pelaverga from Fratelli Alessandria. It is a light grape from the Piemonte province, where Barolo and Barbera also grow. Pelaverga was planted as a blending grape. After 1945, they sent cuttings to UC Davis. Then, the vineyard was bulldozed and became extinct in Italy. But UC Davis had cuttings and now they have replanted it in Italy. It is as light as a Rosé but it has the taste and flavor of red wine. It’s Dan’s favorite recent discovery. Bottle Barn has it for $29.95, down from $45. It has the flavor profile of a good Barolo. Black pepper, violets, green herb, “complexity without knowing what it is.” Pelaverga is very rare here. The importer is North Berkeley Imports. Dan says they are committed to the wines they import. 

Sal de la Cruz from Ludor Wines joins Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell in the studio on California Wine Country today. This is the first time on the show for Sal and for the winery.

All of the wines that Sal has brought come from the Weiler vineyard in the Sonoma Valley AVA. They begin by tasting a red wine blend called Yuma, named after their beloved nine-year-old dog, who is on the label. It’s a very casual wine, delicious and fruity. Dan says that this is the modern era of red wine. “Drink it soon,” but it is authentic to the fruit. It is similar to Beaujolais but with better grapes. The Merlot character is right up front, and it has beautiful other nuances of black fruit.

It is in a clear bottle. They wanted to show the color and break the boundaries of a traditionally dark glass. Since it isn’t meant for long aging, the clear glass is fine. It was just bottled three months ago. This is a great picnic wine, declares Daedalus. It got no wood, all made in stainless steel and unfiltered. “It feels like the French countryside,” says Daedalus and Dan agrees.

Next they taste the 2024 Merlot. “This is serious stuff,” says Dan. Their vineyard has two kinds of soil, a clay loam and a sandy rocky soil. They planted it in the mid-’90s and they have been farming it for the last 25 years. Sal has been working there since he was a kid. They know the land very well. Sal says they do all the touches on all of their wines, meaning they farm it, they make it and they bottle it. Then they try to educate people about it. The name Ludor comes from his mother’s great grandmother. The family has a history in farming, mostly corn, beans and squash. (Those are the “three sisters” of native American agriculture.)

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CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

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The next wine to taste is a 2024 Cabernet Sauvignon from the same property, the Weiler vineyard in the Sonoma Valley AVA. The vineyard is on the valley floor. It spent about 17 months in French oak before bottling. Dan says you can tell it was made classically and will age well. He suggests leaving a wine open for a few hours and if it improves, that means it will also improve with some years in the bottle. Five more years would be great for this wine but at least you should aerate it with a decanter. Cabernet Sauvignon is quite tannic so have a steak or something with it. About 30 years ago Napa and Sonoma wineries would release Cabernets for sale when they were roughly four and a half years old. Before tasting the fourth wine today, at minute 16, listen to Daedalus riff on the Yuma wine, for 20 seconds it’s a brainstorm the captures and expresses that wine’s character with just words.

Sal explains how they pay careful attention to the ripening of this wine. They have to sacrifice some grapes, since a big crop load doesn’t produce the ripening that they want. It responds to air faster than Cabernet Sauvignon.

Carol Shelton brings her latest Gold Medal winners to California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell. She produces Zinfandel and other varietals under her own label, Carol Shelton Wines. She has been on the show several times and her very first episode was this one in December of 2017.

Dan explains that Carol always does extremely well in wine competitions. “Gold medal, gold medal…” says Dan, and he says it’s because she uses fruit that she knows and elevates it every single vintage.

The Wild Thing Zinfandel is the wine she is most known for. She started making it back when she was at Windsor Vineyards. It is a wild yeast fermentation, and it is organically grown. Without pesticides, the wild yeast grow on the skins of the grapes without any damage or weakness, so she can count on them to do the fermentation all the way through. The wine is “smooth and polished and long and slurpy,” she says.

CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

Dan calls it silky and elegant, with good acidity and perfectly balanced. It has a little Carignane (14%) blended in, and a little Petit Syrah (7 or 8 %). This wine just got 94 points and a Gold Medal at the North Coast Wine Challenge. She won a total of 8 gold medals and two double golds, and one was a best in class. The half bottles are 375 ml.

During the first decades of Carol’s career she worked for Windsor Winery and produced a lot of excellent wines. Dan got to know here when he was writing about the winery’s direct-to-consumer program, which was a new process then. She produced 200,000 cases a year of 48 different wines. “Everything was exemplary,” says Dan. Carol is one of the first women to get an Enology degree at UC Davis. In the early years she remembers there were about ten or fifteen women winemakers. She noticed more and more until today there are about sixty or eighty. She belongs to a roundtable of women in wine that meets monthly.

The second wine they taste is the 2023 Albini Zin, grown in Windsor. The vineyard is not old vines, it is only about 35 years old. She and her assistant winemaker taste every barrel. The first year they got that fruit, they both agreed that “the new Albini” was the best. Dan explains why Russian River Zinfandel is hard to find, because a lot of vineyards were converted to Pinot Noir. She also makes some other Zins from old vines and both styles are in demand.

There is an undefinable spice component in Russian River Zin that you don’t find anywhere else, says Dan. This wine got 97 points and a double gold medal. Dan explains that a lot of Zinfandel suffers from having too much alcohol. He actually put a small amount of water in the glass to balance it and free the flavors. All of Carol’s wines are under 15% alcohol, usually about 14.5. She used to use Clark Smith’s process for removing some alcohol from wine. Dan remembers a clinical tasting session with Clark Smith. The “sweet spot” for flavor was more apparent at different alcohol levels, and his favorite was the lowest.

Then they taste the third and fourth wines. Third is an old vine Carignane called Wireless because the vines are not growing on trellis wires. Fourth is an Alicante Bouschet. That is a grape named after the botanist who created it. For a consumer looking for something “off the beaten path” this is a good choice. It has a dark red color. It is unusual and makes a great gift. Dan would give it 10 years but with really good storage.

Chris Sawyer is here as Melissa Galliani’s special guest, along with Courtney Wagner the winemaker at Martinelli Winery. Chris is getting ready for the Sonoma County Vintners Pour and Explore event on April 23. They will be tasting the best Pinot Noir in Sonoma County. He has been in the wine business locally since the 1970s and has seen its growth.

Courtney Wagner is the winemaker for Martinelli Winery. They specialize in wines from the old vines on their property. Giuseppe and Luisa Martinelli settled in Forestville in the late 1880s.

When they arrived and got the property, the Jackass Vineyard was already there. It is on a 60% slope which makes it maybe the steepest grade of a vineyard in the country. The Martinelli website has lots of images and videos of the vineyard.

The vines have been dry-farmed for decades. They start to get good after 40 years. That’s quite different than Cabernet vines that only last about 40 years.

Courtney Wagner followed a path into winemaking that began with studying music in high school. Then she thought of studying nutrition. Food science at Cal Poly led to wine. Chris Sawyer remembers the farmers market in San Luis Obispo on Thursdays. Courtney had a professor who suggested she work a harvest, to see if she really wanted to do that. She stayed with her grandparents in Napa and was able to work at Artesa. Chris thinks that they are making the best sparking wines in California now.

Courtney has made Pinot Noir and Chardonnay everywhere she has been a winemaker. She did 32 different varietals at Wild Horse. Chris Sawyer remembers Sonoma County in the late ’70s and ’80s. Some of the innovators were starting Pinot Noir then, but Zinfandel was already well-established.

Conditions can vary a lot from year to year, and so does the wine. 2022 was a hot year, and their last day of picking in 2022 was the first day of picking in 2023. They were worried that their foreign interns’ visas would expire before harvest was done. Because of that cold weather, these wines will age very well. The 2023 Bondi Pinot Noir is nice now, but it has the potential to be great up to 15 years in the future. 

Erica Stancliff, Deodora Estate Vineyards winemaker, joins Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell on California Wine Country. This is her fifth time as a guest on the show. Her very first time was this episode on February 20, 2019 and her last time was May 23, 2025 with Doug Mryglod and Judy Phillips, the owners of Deodora Estate Vineyards.

The Artemis II crew just splashed down off the coast of San Diego just this minute, as the show is being recorded live, so we toast with some great Riesling.

The wine they are tasting is the 2019 made by her friend Ashley Holland who was the first winemaker at Deodora, and who taught her that Riesling from Petaluma Gap could be gorgeous, aromatic, age-worthy and not sweet. Dan explains that you have to pick the fruit early enough to get the structure that will age well. The 2023 vintage represents Ashley passing the torch to Erica, who took over as winemaker that year at Deodora.

2023 was very cold on the Sonoma Coast, which made it a great vintage. Erica explains that the colder growing season is longer and that favors greater phenolic ripeness. Things need time to develop and if it is not so hot that you have to pick to keep the sugars from taking over, you have a chance for more interesting flavors. As the sugar comes in with ripeness, the acid drops. You don’t want too much of either one.

But the phenolic compounds will provide flavors that may fall into balance. You can add a small amount of water to manage the alcohol content at the right time. Erica compares that to putting a little bit of water in the sauce while you’re cooking it. There are other additives in the winemaker’s toolkit, like yeast, which some winemakers need, especially in a wet year. They actually use grape skins to feed the yeast. After the two Rieslings, they will taste the 2018 early cask Pinot Noir.

Erica was president of the Petaluma Gap wine growers’ alliance for a few years. In Petaluma Gap it is all about the wind. Dan explains that the Pacific Ocean has a wall of cold that is different than the Atlantic. The Petaluma Gap’s winds are persistent and not as strong as other places where geologic features increase the wind. The wind is regular but slow enough.

David Ramey believes that the Carneros is cool because of this same wind. Erica agrees. Every year, there are two vintages on the vines, the current year and the primordial buds of the next vintage. This causes some overlap in the influence of vintage years.

Dan tells a story from the book Wine and War that he read years ago. In 1939 the wine was very poor but then the Germans demanded all the wine so they sent the swill. Erica knows the story, they hid all the good wine and the caves under Dijon are still there.

They grow 5 clones of Pinot Noir. She compares clones to different color coats of the same breed of dog. They produce two Pinots, one they call early cask and another late cask. One is aged in wood for about 10 months. A late cask gets 14-16 months in the barrel. They can decide which direction the wines from the same vineyard can take. This late cask Pinot is also called over-vintage.

Erica explains why crystal glasses raise the aromatics, more than glass. The surface of crystal is more jagged, and this is believed to raise more aromatics when you swirl the wine in the glass. They are tasting the 2018 early cask Pinot Noir. Daedalus suggests it is like opening a cigar box and finding a blood orange with cloves stuck in it. 

This episode marks another Clark Smith Double Gold win, on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell. This is also Clark’s 12th time as a guest on the show. Clark Smith’s first CWC episode was this one in 2017 . It was one of our very first shows! Today we can say he has filled the case, with his 12th guest appearance. No other guest has been on the show as often as Clark Smith, and few of them have won as many awards. One of the wines they will taste today is a recent Double-Gold medal winner.

Clark begins by saying that he cut his teeth on European wine. That means wines that are balanced, that don’t have too much alcohol and will age well. “I don’t like to release them until they are ready and that means sometimes waiting 6 or 8 years in the barrel.” He doesn’t like woody wines. The barrels he owns are over 20 years old.

Clark is one of the only winemakers who makes wine from Norton, a grape that was discovered in Virginia in the 1920s. Hardly anyone grows Norton. Clark also makes a lot of uncommon wines, “goofy stuff.” His Petit Verdot just won a Double Gold from the American Institute of Wine. It is a 2018 that he just bottled, after six and a half years in the bottle.

The problem with Zinfandel is that too many people buy it to drink right away. Some are ridiculously high in alcohol. The higher alcohol, the less the variety shows its signature. 17% alcohol is the equivalent of adding two tablespoons of vodka to your wine. Don’t do that. All of the flavor components are soluble in alcohol so the heat from the alcohol masks the aromas. Dan says that this is a problem for the heavy Napa Cabernets. They will be prune juice in 20 years and undrinkable, unlike this wine which is below 14% ABV. 

Dan and Darryl.

Darryl Miller is back on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell, with wines from two Sonoma County wineries, Dehlinger Winery in the west county and Peterson Winery in Dry Creek Valley. He has been on CWC a few times, the most recent is this episode on July 18, 2025.

Darryl Miller is retired from the wholesale wine business. He works with the Dehlinger winery, assisting and advising them with their sales and marketing. He even used to live on that property in the 1980s. Darryl also works as an advisor to the Peterson family in Dry Creek Valley.

Dan Berger and Darryl Miller met when they were judges at a wine competition about 40 years ago. They found that they appreciated the same qualities of structure and balance in wine. For Dan, there is no such thing as a great wine that does not show good balance. There are unbalanced 100 point wines that are by definition, not great.

Darryl agrees. They are either too heavy or light. They are not made well. Darryl describes the Peterson’s method as zero manipulation. They grow the right fruit the right way and then they don’t have to intervene. The wine being tasted is a 2024 “3V” made of three Italian white grapes whose names begin with V. Vernaccia 37%, with a kind of chalkiness to it. Darryl says it’s like Chablis. They also blend in some Vermentino which has some pineapple tropical fruit flavors. Then some Verdello, which has grapefruit rind flavors, similar to a Sauvignon Blanc.

CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

They make the three wines separately and then blend them. There is also a red blend, of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. They call it GSM or GMS, in order of appearance.

Blends are becoming popular again. This is because winemakers find that if they have Grenache and some other varieties, they can end up with a better wine by blending them. That is better than making single varietals  which by themselves may not be as good as the blend.

Dan objects to blends that don’t tell you what is in the bottle. We want to know what is in it. It is not illegal to do, but does not help. The Peterson wines are very careful about telling the percentages in blends.

Dan and Ross.

Winemaker Ross Cobb is our guest again today on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell. He is the founder of Cobb Wines. Ross was on the show once before, on this episode in January of 2025.

Daedalus Howell remembers meeting Ross Cobb maybe 30 years ago, when they were both at the beginning of their careers. They begin by tasting a Chardonnay from 2023, which Dan describes as a nice cool vintage. The vineyard is in the eastern Sonoma County in the Sebastopol area. It was planted in the late 1990s. He got some Pinot Noir from the new owner, and he also got some Chardonnay.

He considers this to be one of the best Chardonnay vineyards around. The vines are mature, it gets 10% new oak, full malolactic fermentation, 22 months in barrel, and it’s not overly done. Dan Berger gives credit to all of those techniques, which gives it a combination or richness and tartness. The texture is rich and the aftertaste is delicate. It is only 12.5% ABV so it won’t knock you over.

CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

Ross describes how his parents planted the vineyard in 1988-1989. He attended UC Santa Cruz where he designed his own program focussed on the living soil. Then he met all of his neighbors who had vineyards, names like Dehlinger and Rocchioli. Then he worked for Ferrari-Carano, Williams-Selyem and then for Flowers.

Next they taste a Riesling. Ross and Dan Berger both get their Riesling grapes from Cole Ranch. Both of them make it dry and Dan credits Ross for a great product aimed at Riesling purists – like Dan.

After the break they taste the Pinot Noirs. Ross Cobb says the 2023 Pinot Noir from Emmaline Ann Vineyard was his transformational vintage. He recalls the 2006 crop when he picked at 21.9 Brix. At first he was afraid that he had made a bad decision. But it turned out well, because of the secondary chestnut and spicy aromas that emerged. Dan Berger says 2006 was the greatest age-worthy vintage Sonoma County history. “This is astounding!” says Dan. He likes it because it was a cool year. Dan says Ross did well to pick early because the problem with a lot of wine is over-ripeness.

Dan observes that this year’s crop is dealing with 90-degree daytime highs in March. He also thinks that we will also have some cooler weather in the next month. Dan says the best weather report in the world comes rerom Abacela Winery. Greg Jones who has a PhD in climate science, publishes excellent meteorological reports on the western US. His reports are free online.  Look for the Current Weather and Climate Report on this page.

The last tasting is the 2021 Doc’s Ranch Vineyard. It is another representation of Sonoma Coast style. They have 22 acres of vines at high altitude. It is risky, and can yield as little as half a ton per acre. Ross calls it a good place for ripening in September and October. This vintage was picked in late October.

Dan, Daedalus and Bob.

Our guest is Bob Cabral again, on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell, with four of his wines to taste and describe. He was one of our very first guests on this episode of June 21, 2017, a couple of years after he launched his own label, Bob Cabral Wines.

Since that first podcast appearance in 2017, Bob has been on California Wine Country many more times. His last time on CWC was June 14, 2024, with a double episode. In the first part of that show, Bob talked about his own wine company and about having just finished his 45th harvest. The other part of that show was with Mark Tchelistcheff, to talk about the film André the Voice of Wine.

Bob Cabral started in the wine business in 1980. The Judgement of Paris had happened in 1976 and it got a generation of future winemakers like Bob interested in wine. He studied winemaking at Fresno State, then  found a job working at the bottom of the totem pole as a “cellar rat,” hoisting barrels, etc. Dan points out that most great careers in the wine industry have begun this way. The experience is critical and all of one’s knowledge is goes into the work and to teaching others.

CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

Dan took a two-day intensive wine course at UC Davis in 1976 and he had to be completely alert the whole time. The most important class he took was Winery Sanitation. Bob says it was also the first thing his professors at Fresno State told him. You can’t control mother nature, but you can control sanitation. You have to clean and scrub. A lot of Bob’s fellow students became famous and influential winemakers. It was a generation that caught the wave growth in the California wine industry.

The first wine they are tasting is Bob Cabral’s 2019 Wildflower Riesling. Daedalus notices tropical fruit flavors. It comes from two vineyards on the Sonoma Coast. Bob fermented it in a concrete amphora. He used native yeast and no barrel aging. Dan says this is what the Germans do, they age Riesling. Dan believes that great white wine age well, such as some of his Italian Arneis.

All of the proceeds from Bob Cabral Wines after operating expenses go to charity to support local causes. Dan appreciates how important that is for the community of Sonoma County. One out of every five people work in the wine industry, directly or indirectly.

Dan notices that in addition to the tropical fruit, it has “TDM” which is a ‘petroleum’ taste. TDN stands for 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene. It gives a SLIGHT gasoline or kerosene aroma.

The traditional German Riesling bottle shape (“Schlegel” in German) will be either green, blue or brown, depending on the region. The shape of the bottle can be different from red wine bottles because the shoulders and the push-up bottom are there to to trap sediment. White wines don’t have sediment, which makes the flute bottle OK for it.

The next wine is the 2024 Chardonnay whose name is Acoustic Sunset. Neutral barrels give more flavors than mere stainless steel. Dan says this wine has an expressive personality. The secret to this one is there was no ML so the pH and the acid stayed the same. So this wine has all the pieces, which will merge and combine with one to three years in the bottle. He only made four barrels of this one.

Bob tells a lot of stories about famous musicians he has met, who were interested in his wine.

The next two bottles to taste are Pinot Noirs. The wines have proprietary names, Troubador and Fillmore, and the fruit comes from several different vineyards. The Russian River one, Troubador, has all the features of RRV, says Dan. The last tasting is a library wine, a 2018 Pinot Noir called Fillmore. He calls it “a one-off” because he got some special fruit once only. He only made six barrels.

Daedalu, Drew, Daisy and Dan.

Our guests today are Drew and Daisy Damskey, who join Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell on California Wine Country. Drew’s father and Daisy’s husband Kerry Damskey has been on this show several times, most recently on this episode of March 1, 2023.

The first wine in our glasses is a 2023 Semillon, made by Drew Damskey for Palmieri Wines. This white wine grape is relatively common in Hunter Valley in Australia. It is also the grape used for white Bordeaux and is a common blending grape.

This Semillon comes from a vineyard planted in 1886 and is the second oldest Semillon vineyard in the world, called Monte Rosa vineyard. The vineyard is at the top of Moon Mountain which is above the town of Sonoma in the Mayacama range. Drew considers it to be ideal for Bordeaux varietals. They make about 75 to 100 cases of this wine per year. That 2023 Semillon has some of clean, crisp freshness of Sauvignon Blanc but with the weight, richness and texture of a Chardonnay.

Dan would give it a minimum of three years of aging. He has 30-year-old Semillons that are still good. Dan contends that all wine ages, even whites. Dan opened a 1990 French Chardonnay the other day that was “just about perfect.” Speaking of perfection, Dan had a 1991 red wine from New Zealand, a Syrah, which Dan called perfect.

CWC is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that are producing exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! 

The next wine tasted is Daisy’s Chardonnay, which Drew and his father made for Daisy. They were making only red wines for a long time but Daisy wanted them to make a white wine too. So father and son got some fruit and made the wine. Dan says it’s terrific, with great presence and acidity and a little bit of oak character. The fruit comes from Dorell vineyard. Drew explains that the wine undergoes Malolactic Fermentation,