Organic Wine and Food Matching

Susan Sokol Blosser. Susan Sokol Blosser is not a famous winemaker. In fact, in 1990 when her former husband, Bill Blosser, extricated himself from the Sokol Blosser Vineyard & Winery that they founded together in 1971, she took over the operations with the experience of just running the tasting room, doing the books, and, as she once candidly revealed, never having “grown anything but a sweet potato in the glass” (Reed Magazine’s Alumni Profiles , Spring 2007). But she quickly found grape growing already in her as a dormant gene; despite the fact, says she, that “I could never have imagined that I would develop such a deep connection to the land… I could have lived my whole life in the city and never known.”   What Susan Sokol Blosser is now famously recognized for is being one of the driving forces behind the Oregon wine industry’s green movement. She not only began implementing sustainable grape growing practices in quite visible fashion, she built an underground ...

Eating and Drinking Green Makes Sense   So now we that we have choices between organic and non-organic foods, eco-friendly and non-eco stiletto heels, hybrid and non-hybrid cars, etc., why aren’t most of us making the choice to drink green as well? I suspect that, on an intellectual level, many of us figure that since wine is an alcoholic drink made from grapes, the organic-ness of a bottle is neither here nor there.  The truth is far from that. If you’ve visited vineyards in California or France, for instance, and looked at an organic vineyard that happens to be next to a non-organic vineyard, the differences are quite visible. Compared to organic vineyards, non-organic or “conventional” vineyards always look lifeless, practically dead: all you see is dirt between the rows, since any growth apart from vines is usually zapped with herbicides.  In organic vineyards, you see not only wild grasses, brush and trees in and around the vines, and cover crops of herbs, beans...

Tom Gamble. The only things I feel bad about telling you about the 2007 Gamble Family Vineyards Yountville/Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc (about $28) is that not a lot of it was made (1,650 cases), and it’s not widely distributed in the U.S. But it’s my insensitive side (yes, even I have one) that makes me want to go on and babble about this beautifully dry white wine like a lawyer in love because, well, it’s probably the finest Sauvignon Blanc I’ve tasted in many years (those of France’s Loire River and New Zealand not excluded). How shall I count the ways? Unlike French grown Sauvignon Blancs, to begin with, the Gamble Family is not dominated by minerality; and unlike the vast majority of New Zealand and California grown Sauvignon Blancs, it is not focused entirely on fruitiness (or weediness) either. There is, in fact, a ringingly bright and penetrating white peach quality to the qubw, playing in the nose with fresh cream, wildflower, wet stone and distinctive licorice-like fr...