Nova Cadamatre

Harvest 2011: How California became Italy

This year has had it all.  We started with heavy frost on the Central Coast, rain during bloom and spring hail.  The craziness continued with a long temperate summer which was punctuated by few heat spikes (if you can call mid 90s a heat spike out here).  Growers fought Powdery Mildew and numerous invasive insect ...

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The “Pirate’s Code” of Wine and Food Pairings

One of the most common questions I am asked when speaking to consumers (other than “What’s your favorite wine?” which is #1) is what food would go with this wine. The very basic “white wines with white meats and red wines with red meats” has served its purpose as a simple and easy way for the beginning wine consumer to learn about wine. It is also generally (VERY generally) correct. However at some point, people want to break outside the lines of the basic food pairing and experiment a bit.

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What is ripeness?

Everyone knows that when you have 5 winemakers in a room you’ll have around 7 different opinions on any given topic. Ripeness is one of those topics that bring up more discussion than most because the decision when to pick is one of the most important, if not THE most important, decisions that a winemaker will make during the vintage. I’m sure you’ve heard several terms thrown around to describe ripeness.

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