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2006 » Issue April 5 » Wine Country Getaways

Monticello Vineyards has been growing grapes in Napa County since 1970 and making wine since 1980. Los Altos Hills resident Jay Corley created the vineyard and winery, which now produces more than 15,000 cases a year of Monticello Vineyards and Corley Reserve wine. “We sell wine around the world and we feel we compete with the very best,” he said.

Corley named his winery Monticello after Thomas Jefferson’s estate, in honor of his family’s history in Virginia from the 1640s to the 1740s. “The Corleys in the South are fairly prominent, and every generation has been involved in farming,” Corley said. His wine is also named in honor of Jefferson himself, who “loved wine and food, like I do,” according to Corley, who attempted to grow grapes despite the difficulty of Virginia’s terrain for the crop. Although there is a burgeoning wine industry in Virginia now, Monticello is purely Napa Valley.

The vessel of our spirits - a look back at the wineglass

History tells us that our affection for wine long predates our taste for the delicate crystal and glass vessels we drink from today.

The earliest intact wineglasses date from the Pleistocene era and consist of baked-clay goblets made by the Iberians, and subsequently passed on to the early Britons. With the spread of Roman culture circa the first century BC, silver and gold vessels with ornate scrollwork along the edges of the goblets increased in popularity.

Wine country associations

Image from article Wine country<br />
associations

Calaveras Winegrape Alliance

P.O. Box 2492

Uncorked wine store and tasting gallery offers fine wines without the attitude

Image from article Uncorked wine store and tasting gallery<br />
offers fine wines without the attitude

Picking out wine for a dinner party or for your own pleasure can be an intimidating affair. Unless you know exactly what you want, wading through aisles of bottles can get frustrating and may often culminate in blind guessing. Ask a wine connoisseur what’s good and the novice is often confronted with strange questions.

Would you like a woodsy or oaky aroma? Do you prefer a crisp or full-bodied cabernet? Stuttering or cluelessness is embarrassing.