Comments on: Food Gal Giveaway — Tickets to the Berkeley Wine Festival

By: Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:23:13 +0000

I’m out of the running but Mr NQN would love this event!

By: foodgal

foodgal — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 07:06:54 +0000

LisaH: According to the Web site, the hotel is in the Berkeley hills on the border of Oakland and Berkeley.

By: Cynthia Cosco

Cynthia Cosco — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:37:04 +0000

After a 15 year law enforcement career in Virginia I decided to follow my passion for winemaking. I had been flying back and forth to Calfornia for two years before I decided to take the plunge. I would often Gundlach Bundschu and thoroughly enjoyed their wines. It was always on my mind that one day it would be great to meet the winemaker, Linda Trotta.
After moving to California in 2004, I got a harvest job with Chateau St Jean. I would still visit GunBun as often as I could.
It was a day at the CIA at a Women For Winsense conference that I actually met Linda Trotta for the first time. We began talking and found out that we were from the same area back east. The more we talked about our families the more we realized that we could be distant cousins.
It was women like Linda Trotta who inspired me. I later launched my own brand Passaggio Wines and am one of the winemakers for Crushpad in Napa.
I am just a small town girl who took a chance to follow her passion.

By: LisaH

LisaH — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:12:28 +0000

Just wondered — the Claremont Hotel used to be in Oakland. Did they move it?

By: LisaH

LisaH — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:03:11 +0000

My own best wine tasting experience to date happened just last month. I’ve been to Napa and Sonoma dozens of times over the years and had some really fantastic wine experiences there (including my own Francis Ford Coppola sighting once, as well as some fabulous winery dining experiences). But unemployment pretty much brought that to a screeching halt a couple of years ago.

I’m now living in Tracy, CA. Tracy has three small family-owned wineries under the “Tracy Hills” appellation and they recently hosted a Valentine wine and chocolate tasting event. It would have been a bargain at the advertised price of $5/person to taste at all three venues, but one winery (La Bonne Vie) sent out an e-mail offering recipients a free admission. I talked an also-unemployed friend into driving over from the San Francisco Peninsula about an hour away to go with me.

It was fabulous! The weather was beautiful, the wine flowed like water and all of the wineries put out tons of chocolate in every conceivable form. Windmill Ridge Winery had live jazz playing and some barrel tastings. And we finished the afternoon sitting at a table out in the back of the Ramon Rios Winery, nibbling delectable brownies and drinking their port-like wine. It was the best freebie event I’ve ever attended and it was incredibly welcomed after a long drought of great wine experiences (actually, of ANY great culinary experiences). The event was free, but its spirit-lifting effect was priceless.