5- 2004 Olivier Cousin Pur Breton $15 Grapes: Cabernet Franc Anjou, Loire (one of the nights winners! Flight Two: All Syrah all the Time 2005 Edmunds St. 2005 Dard & Ribo Crozes-Hermitage $30 CR, Rhone (It was austere and gorgeous. 2002 Domaine Bonnefond $45 Cote Rotie , Rhone (I put this in as a wild card. Many thanks! MORE >>

First posted December 12, 2004, and I refer to the cataclysmic summer that had just past. was roasting in the Rhone, looking upward, wondering just how hot it was going to get in an hour. The one in the Northern Rhone was about syrah. How did this happen without me seeing it? That's me this summer in Tain Hermitage. MORE >>

When the time came, I found myself still buying a couple bottles of one of my favorite Pax Cellars Wine, the Kobler Family Vineyard Russian River Valley Syrah, thinking it would be the last time. Wind Gap is the culmination of all we have learned from working so diligently with Syrah." Rumor had it that disagreements with co-owner(?) MORE >>

But I'll have made a sincere effort to create something new and strange and different, which may be the best you can hope for in the New World." --Randall Grahm, April 2009 It's also why I ponied up $95 last night to go to a Bonny Doon wine tasting at City Winery and meet "the original Rhone deranger" himself. Neither was a "wow" wine. MORE >>

Moving to the Rhone valley in France I tried some wines from Eric Texier. Domaine de la Janasse has several wines I was hoping to try but having skipped this table early on I was only able to taste the 2007 Janasse Cotes du Rhone Blanc. Eric Texier of The Rhone had some reds in addition to the whites I mentioned earlier. MORE >>