After two years of discussion and more than a dozen public meetings, Placer County has a winery ordinance.

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Now the most widely used wine textbook on for colleges and universities. Also popular with serious wine enthusiasts for home study. Provides a 12 week program for learning about wine in-depth, from sensory evaluation to the science of viticulture and winemaking. Written and organized in a user friendly style. Includes chapter exams and answers, study guides, lab exercises, final exams and extensive references and bibliography. Illustrated with aendixes on Wine & Food, Label Reading, Do-It-Yourself Labs, Student tasting notes and more. Dr. Baldy is a USDA award-winning professor of sciences who has operated her own vineyard and winery and has taught wine areciation for academic credits to university students for over 20 years. 8 1/2 x 11 inches, illustrated, glossary, maps, aendixes.

Customer Review: Great textbook

I bought this book with the further intent of attending to become a sommelier here in California. This is a very well written text with lots of science within, I'm glad I picked this up before jumping into an expensive school.

Customer Review: An excellent primer

For personal use, I think it's too extensive for the average Joe. Well thought out and informative. I own a cheese and wine shop and intend on using this for new hires.

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Many European traditions showcase hot spiced wine. One of the first signs of fall in Germany and Austria are open air markets serving hot spiced wine, Gluhwein or Glow-wine. This fragrant holiday drink will make you glow with warmth. Make it at home now with CuisineMentor German Gluhwein Gourmet Spice Blend. Enjoy steaming wine or juice infused with flavors of ginger, cardomom, cinnamon, cloves, lemon and orange. Delicious! Also a delicios, refreshing hot weather spiced wine (or juice)drink when served cold. All natural, no preservatives, fillers or additives.
Twin pack. Each pack will spice 2-750ml bottles of wine or 1/2 gallon juice, making 10 servings.

Customer Review: great service

I am impressed with the quickness, and the personalization of the service...real people ..communicate with we who purchase...I would recommend this business in a heartbeat.!!!! and the product is the absolutely delicious!!!

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A winery tour guide pleaded guilty today to robbing 20 banks throughout the state and in Utah in a spree that netted him more than $45,000 and earned him the name "the Highway 101 Bandit" because many holdups took place along the freeway corridor. Arthur Eli...

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A rollicking wine country travelogue paired with the only comprehensive guide to Napa’s public tasting rooms

Hank Beal is a wine pro–the executive wine buyer at an upscale supermarket chain. Rick Kushman is an ordinary joe–a guy who enjoys wine but doesn’t know a lot about it. Together, Hank and Rick set out to visit all 141 public tasting rooms in Napa during the course of a year. The result is A Moveable Thirst–an engaging, often hilarious book that’s one part Sideways, one part Frommer’s. The first part recounts their uproarious adventures on the road as Rick learns to sniff and spit like a true oenophile (but never stops asking stupid questions). The second part offers the most complete and detailed guide ever published to Napa’s wine rooms. For wine lovers and the more than 5 million people who visit Napa every year, A Moveable Thirst is a great read and an indispensable guide.

Customer Review: Funniest Wine Book Written

What a funny book. A 12 month journey visiting all wine tasting rooms in NAPA. Not a review of the wines, but a review of the tasting rooms. If you are into NAPA Wines, then this is the book to read. Each chapter is a short story. I would have given anything to be able to take their year long journey. Very well written....

Customer Review: Informative and Engaging Read

I loved this book! Not only is A Moveable Thirst an informative read, it was a pleasure to read. The writing mirrors the rollicking ride these two authors obviously enjoyed while on their "Quest" in the Napa Valley. Highly recommend this to both the wine obsessed and anyone planning a wine tasting trip. Great fun!

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On the outskirts of Vicenza, Zuccato has been packaging some of Italys most enjoyed pickled vegetables and antipasti since 1898. We think these Italian kitchen essentials are the finest in their price range.

While the powerfully piquant unopened caper buds pack the punch behind much of southern Italian cuisine, mature caperberries, the blossomed fruit of the caper, impart a rounder, milder and fruitier palate.

Cured traditionally in Italian wine vinegar, these caperberries should be rinsed prior to usage to remove excess brine.

Garnish your cheese trays or spreads of Italian charcuterie and pate. We also suggest perfecting your martini italiano with Italian caperberries.

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Customer Review: fantastic

It's strange to read a book that you wished you had read years earlier. If I had read this book 20 years earlier, there would've been so many times I would've reflected on it.

Customer Review: ghostly

The introduction to My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, the first book in this two-for-one volume, makes you think that it's an anthropological work for class, not a story you're reading for fun. That's a shame, because these two stories are worth reading in their own right. But in comparison to the standard Western literary format, they are unquestionably different.

Most Western literature I read focuses on a cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle and end, a specific plot, and rich descriptions of characters, places, and emotions. That's not what happens here. Rather, the story unwinds in a very linear fashion, bit by bit, as the character passes through the ghost world he has stumbled into, seemingly at random. There is no surprise expressed by the protagonist when, for example, he meets a ghosts with televisions on her hands, or is transformed by a ghost into a monkey to go climb trees and pick nuts for the ghost to eat. These things are just stated as given, a part of the ongoing adventure. The passage of time is also a very fluid thing. A chapter, or several, can describe the events of a single hour and then a single sentence can describe the passing of a decade. It's a loose, free-flowing narrative built on the imagination of the author, and his ability to dream up ghosts wild, unexpected, and grotesque. It's an enjoyable ride but it takes some getting used to.

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Through a dream sequence, you (the reader) go back in time to 18th century Paris where you meet Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. In the comfort of Jefferson's residence on the Champs-Elysees, you sit down with these two great Americans, and in response to your questions, they tell in their own words the most interesting stories of their lives. There are extensive citations of authority to support all of their comments.

Customer Review: BORRRING and disappointing

Was hoping to get something a little more historical but it turned out to be a fantasy dinner loosely based on history. I intentionally left the book on the airplane.

Customer Review: Dinner with Two 18th Century Gourmets

DINNER WITH TWO 18TH C GOURMETS
A Book Review
by Wilson G. Duprey / Gail Unzelman

Bibliographer, novelist, and wine historian James Gabler has pro-duced another capital book. An Evening with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson-Dinner, Wine, and Conversation is a marvelous mix of biog-raphy, travel, American diplomatic his-tory, and wine history. The author has used a dream device to place a professor of American history, Jack Osborne-who is also a well-versed wine historian and connoisseur of wines-in the dining room of Thomas Jefferson's elegant mansion on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. His fellow dinner guest is Benjamin Franklin. Prof. Osborne is informed of the evening's menu and then asked to choose the wines for the dinner. Jack is familiar with the wines that Jefferson had acquired for his cellar and is honored with the request. The wines and the menu:
1783 Dorsey's Champagne Aperitif
1784 Meursault Goute d'Or Normandy oysters
1784 Montrachet Spaghetti, tossed with olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and an-chovies
1784 Haut Brion Beef ? la mode, served with
1784 Ch. Margaux potatoes & two kinds of peas
from Jefferson's garden
1784 Ch. Yquem Ice cream in puff pastry.
The dinner produced lively conversation on into the night.
One of the most interesting parts of this book is Thomas Jefferson's story-mostly in his own words taken from his voluminous papers, both archived and published. He tells about his 3? month trip through southern France and into northern Italy, over the icy Alps (part of the way by mule back), tasting wines and keeping meticulous notes on the wines and their histories. He canvassed the wines of Burgundy, the M?doc and Bordeaux, and everything in between, whether grand ch?teau or tiny vineyard. He checked the composition of the soils, met the owners and asked about vineyard practices, and often ordered wines to his liking for his Parisian cellar and his cellar at Monticello. He of course met many of the wine merchants, some of whom he had dealt with for years. He soon learned that buying wine bottled at the vineyard provided more certainty of getting what he ordered, for there was much blending of wines by the merchants. In Italy he learned of the wine Nebiule (today's Nebbiolo) among many others new to him. He was also able to smuggle out in his pockets some of the supposedly superior Piedmont rice to send home to a South Carolina friend-who planted it, and found Carolina's rice more to his liking.
Throughout this journey Jefferson visited all the natural, architectural, and historical elements, including ruins, arenas, temples, and the famous Roman aqueduct near Nimes. Wherever he went he attended the plays, operas, and other local entertainments; he ate in fine restaurants, if possible, and tasted the local wines. Like other travelers of the time, he suffered the indignities and barbarities of the taverns and hotels along the rural roads. But nonetheless, he enjoyed his time and received a first-hand glimpse of much of France and northern Italy.
Jefferson made a wine tour through Germany as well, again tasting and taking copious notes while he experienced the fine wines of the Moselle, Johannis-berg, Hochheim, and Rudesheim. In addition to buying German wines for his cellars at Paris and Monticello, he bought vine shoots that he planted in his Paris garden, intending to transplant them to Monticello.
All through the evening, Professor Osborne im-parted current (21st century) information to Jefferson and Franklin about the vineyards in France, Italy and Germany, and let them know that many of the great vineyards of the 18th century were still producing superb wines.
The professor asked many questions of his dinner companions. Their answers were straight forward, despite being asked often-intimate details of their lives, and those of their wives, children, friends, and enemies.
Jefferson was born an aristocrat, a Virginia planter, with thousands of acres of productive land; he owned slaves, and was an important figure in the often volatile Virginia legislature. Jefferson considered his three most important legacies (1) the Declaration of Independence (helped write it, and signed it), (2) the American Constitution (helped create), and (3) the founding and development of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.
Franklin, on the other hand, was born in Boston and struggled to become a printer's apprentice at age fourteen. Eventually he arrived in Philadelphia and found success in the printing business. He went on to become postmaster, invent the Franklin stove and bifocal eye-glasses, do his electrical-lightning experiments, and become a first-class entrepreneur, able to retire at age 42. In 1754, now aged 48, he began his long and illustrious career in public life. He was appointed in 1776 as American minister to France, where he served until 1785 when he then asked Congress to allow him to retire so he could return home, now an elderly man.
Jefferson succeeded him as minister. The two statesmen had been friends in Philadelphia at the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence; Franklin enjoyed his new duty of introducing young Jefferson to the French ministry, intelligentsia, aristocratic and social circles-all vitally important in diplomatic relations. Jefferson stayed on at Paris as American minister until 1789, when he came back to the U.S. with his two daughters. He intended to return to Paris; but he became involved in national politics, was elected President, and would never see France again.
Conversation flowed during the evening. It seems that a favorite topic was the lady friends of both men. Jefferson, a new widower when he arrived in Paris, told of only one emotional affair, with Maria Cosway the famous artist. Alas, it did not survive. Franklin reminded the professor that he had married in Philadelphia, but his wife had a mortal fear of sea journeys and never joined him for his overseas assignments. Franklin's life in London suited him so well that he returned to Philadelphia only once, for two years. When he returned to London, his loving wife carried on his business affairs at home until her death. Franklin enjoyed the company of a fine lady friend, and named three: his London landlady, his neighbor in Passy, and the third was one of the most beautiful ladies in France (according to Abigail Adams). None of the ladies succumbed to his amorous eye, but all were extremely attentive friends.
We get a good picture of John Adams, the Massa-chusetts signer of the Declaration, and one time friend to Jefferson-they would become dire opponents in later presidential campaigns. A 700-mile journey with Jefferson's close Virginia friend, James Madison, is taken through the Revolutionary battle fields in New York and surrounding areas. Naval hero John Paul Jones is newly introduced in coastal English waters, and the Marquis de Lafayette is revealed in cloak and dagger activities.
Both Jefferson and Franklin speak long and well of George Washington, both as general and as President. While in France, Jefferson was honored to send French wines to the capitol for Washington's table. Later on Jefferson wrote a most informative letter to newly elected President Madison about the wines he should import for the White House, with names, dealers, agents, cost per bottle, and directions for bottling and shipping abroad. Among the wines Jefferson recommended was the famous Italian wine, Montepulciano from Tuscany.
There are almost one hundred vignette photos scattered throughout the book-views of cities of France, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States, and portraits of individuals- all reflecting the late 18th century scene of Jefferson and Franklin.
Following the elaborate and detailed bibliographic notes for the text, are a few extra bonuses: (1) the fascinating story about the bottle of Ch. Lafite 1787 with the embossed initials "Th.J." that sold for $156,450 at a New York auction; (2) recipes for Jefferson's Beef ? la Mode, Browned Flour, and Mushroom Catsup (all from a new cookbook, Dining at Monticello).
In this fictional, but fact-based imaginative and fascinating journey, James Gabler provides a vivid portrait of Jefferson and Franklin as true gourmets, enjoying the finest of food and wine. Jefferson's almost four-month tasting extravaganza through the vineyards of France and Italy surely classes him as the 18th century's wine connoisseur par excellence. In a sense, the two gentlemen were the jet-setters of the eighteenth century!

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Very limited Quantities. Just arrived from Japan! Catering to refined tastes with their 'Meets Wine' series of Pretz stick pretzel snacks, Gilco is wooing palates everywhere with this delectable gourmet Pretz line. Since they're a baked snack they make a great alternative to fattier potato chips, plus they are easy to sneak into the movie theater with. This is the Mozzarella flavor, composed of 7% mozzarella cheese. Feast on these tasty treats! Positively delish. From Glico, the fine winery of snack companies

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BELVIDERE -- With the price of gas, food and so many other things having skyrocketed, the local Four Sisters Winery at Matarazzo's Farm on Route 519 in Belvidere is offering fun for the entire family at a minimal cost.

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