Joel Peterson and his son Morgan Twain-Peterson own one such vineyard, called Bedrock. Twain-Peterson, currently writing his Master of Wine dissertation on field blends, calls it one of the four greatest old vineyards in Sonoma Valley, along with Monte Rosso, Old Hill Ranch and Pagani Ranch.

Those vineyards are the source of some great wines: Ridge “Pagani Ranch” and Ravenswood “Old Hill” are two of my favorite Zin-based wines because of their complexity. But Bedrock has the most interesting history.

It was originally planted in 1854 by William Tecumseh Sherman and Joe Hooker, who would become better known in the next decade as Civil War generals. After the root louse phylloxera treated the grapevines like Sherman treated the South, in 1888 the vineyard was replanted by George Hearst, father of media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

It’s a really terrific article. Read it all.

Lap up this hard and hairy monster with something soft and simple and fried–eggplant Parmesan, immersed in good olive oil and glistening with melted mozzarella, a faint fairy dusting of cheese crystals and a pair of white cotton underwear, lodged in the backseat for sopping.

That gives me the idea of naming bottles after actresses. Google proves conclusively that you can find anything on the web, at which point I lose interest in the project because it’s immature even by my low standards.

But I think Joe’s readers will probably make it funny, so read the comments.

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Wines & Vines reports an attempt to quantify just how well by market research firm Information Resources, Inc.. IRI looked at 98 wine brands selling more than 100,000 cases a year in the U.S., scoring each in 10 categories, including dollar and volume sales, sales growth and market share of sales in drug and grocery stores. The result is the ”Top 30 Momentum Brands,” wines between $3 and $15 a bottle that are gaining the most traction in today’s nearly traction-free economy.

The winner is Ménage à Trois.  The rest of the list can be found here.

Find out for yourself what Girl Scout Cookies pair best with selected wines

More than anything else, it’s the winking emoticon that scares me.

UPDATE: Link was broken. Now the link is fixed.

La Vida Buena Vineyards is not a Time Share or Fractional– you receive a Deed Fee Simple to your vineyard. But because La Vida Buena Vineyards comprises fifteen small vineyards on 108 acres it can collectively offer many things a stand alone 5 acre vineyard cannot, for example low monthly vineyard maintenance fees starting at USD$175.00 that include on-site 24/7 Workers, Worker’s House, Vineyard Manager, Agronomist, Argentine Accountant to handle all aspects of owning a vineyard…

It is, the website says, a “turnkey operation.” Pony up and you’re in the wine business “confident that there will always be a lovely residence to stay and enjoy one’s efforts and investment.”

The one legislator who decided to try to counter my testimony was a good looking gentleman in his late 30’s who, like most legislators, asks questions in order to make a point…What this tall, young politicians wanted to know of me was how I could claim that there would be enough shipping into the state (Maryland) to generate significant tax revenue, but that these shipments would not take food off the table of local retailers who would be hurt by the competition?

What I’m sure he heard me explain, but didn’t care about, was my belief that Marylanders were probably just as smart as wine consumers in other states where they are unlikely to pay substantial shipping charges on wine they could otherwise obtain locally.

In response to his query, I repeated my contention about the intellect and reason of the average wine lover Marylander. He was not satisfied with my response: “I don’t’ drink wine but I can’t believe they’ll be buying wine both on-line and at local stores.”

This forced me to explain my own proclivity for Austrian Riesling, how I can’t find much of it in Sonoma, how I buy it on-line, yet how I often patronize local grocery stores as well as wine stores to procure other wines.

“Well, I think you must like wine more than most people,” he replied.

Which is, of course, missing the point entirely.

“We have 250 vintner clients saying this downturn is the worst in 20 years,” Bill Stevens, manager of the bank’s wine division in St. Helena, California, said in an interview. “Anybody who was late to the party won’t have staying power.”

There are also 30 wineries for sale, more than ever before, according to the bank. Those properties fit into three general categories: they’re carrying too much debt, bought at the height of the real estate market or have owners who are cashing-out as competition rises and profit margins fall.

According to a survey conducted by the bank, seven percent of vintners called their finances “very weak” or “on life support.”  Land values in Napa have dropped 15 percent from the 2007 peak and 71 percent said credit was hard to get.

A study by Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates in Woodside, California, concluded that while American wine sales rose almost 2% last year, spending on wine dropped 3.3%.

The study carried out by researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital surveyed almost 20,000 women and asked them about their drinking habits over the course of 13 years. The group which gained the most weight were the alcohol-free women.

Alcohol-free women were also the least likely to have participated in karaoke or had sex in a moving automobile. OK, I made that last part up.

Anyway, as soon as the researchers published their findings, scolds came out of the woodwork to remind us that good news should never be taken at face value. You know: just in case there’s someone out there who decided this study granted license to drink a gallon of wine a day.

Experts, however, are quick to remind women that the study does not change documented evidence on the affects of heavy drinking…Catherine Collins, a spokesman for the British Dietetic Association, told The Telegraph that wine should not be viewed as a dieting tool.

“If these women have a healthy diet and lifestyle and are having one or two units of alcohol a night then that has less calories than someone who instead has a chocolate bar to unwind,” Collins told the newspaper. “It’s a question of ‘what’s your poison?’”

Except, of course, that the study had nothing to do with substituting wine for a candy bar. It was an attempt to measure the affect of moderate drinking on weight gain all other things being equal.

But we can’t let people feel good about things, can we? We’re experts. It’s our job to ruin everything.