Located about 26 miles from downtown Salem in the heart of Dundee on Highway 99W, Argyle Winery is one of the few Oregon wineries that produces sparkling wines. Their Brut Rose has graced the menu of the White House on several occasions. The country-style winery offers indoor and outdoor seating with a garden that buffers the sound and view of the busy highway.

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At the turn of the century Charles Maynard created a new confection. Using fresh fruit flavors and gummy candy he created a delicious chewy candy which he called wine gums. Now available in a easy open roll style pack. They have been a favorite ever since. There is no alcohol in wine gums

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Aloha Island Coffee is to coffee aficionados what the Aston Martin is to James Bond; supreme and exclusive!' - (Brentwood Magazine)

Kona coffee is considered to be the best coffee in the world and coffee aficionados rate Aloha Island as the ultimate, the most luxurious, of all Kona coffee. We select only the top grades from our beautiful Kona plantation and our Master Roaster roasts to just the right depth to create our exclusive Aloha Island Gold coffee. Very smooth and naturally low in acid with never a bitter aftertaste. Very rich, with the robust depth of flavor and full-bodied texture only a superb espresso provides.

Customer Review: Wonderful product; even BETTER company!

The espresso: Smooth, not a trace of bitterness. If you even think you 'like' espresso buy this...you will LOVE espresso!

The company: I ordered two items; this one was missing from the box when I opened it. Aloha Coffee OVERNIGHTED a bag of espresso for me! WOW! I was so impressed! These people are truly nice people who sell an OUTSTANDING product! Aloha coffee products are definitely worth their weight in gold! Thanks for making this Christmas special:)

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Roberta Avery Special to the Star MEAFORD, Ont. – In a community that's as down home as apple pie, it's a surprise to drive down a gravel road and trip across a chic new winery with all the sophistication of a California vineyard.

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Customer Review: Best History of California Winemaking

I bought this book thinking is was all about the 1976 Tasting in Paris but it turns out that this book is really the history of California Winemaking and all of the characters that have put California Wines where they are today. For the lover of California wines, this is a must read. Once you start reading, you can't put it down.

Customer Review: "I Was There" Book About The Wine World's Tasting Heard 'Round the World

After far too many ghastly vintages from 1963 - 1974, and with the quality of backward French winemaking going unchallenged, the victory of New World California wines over their prestigious French counterparts in 1976 was, in hindsight, no surprise. Yet it was as great a shock to the French wine world as the collapse of the Maginot Line was to the French military establishment in May 1940. Unlike Andre Maginot, who never lived to see the tragic consequences of his and France's folly, French wine's top champions faced choosing between unbearable humiliation or dismissing the results as an aberration.

"Time" journalist George Taber, who had the wine scoop of the century and to his credit knew what to do with it, here returns to his moment in the sun, developing the storyline into a full book. He chronicles the persons who were at the tasting and who were most impacted by the results. Taber reveals their ongoing struggle absorbing the unthinkable, whether for the winning Californians, who at the time made up the new wave within their own industry and were given a grand opportunity; or in the case in France, where no such young wine Turks had credibility, and the fall out from the tasting was an unacknowledged PR nightmare. Unable to accept the cultural implications, many French refused to countenance the results - indeed at the actual tasting one desperate taster tried rewriting votes! To this day there exist Europeans who adamantly look down their - often Gallic - noses at wine from outside Europe. Yet increasingly, along with the tired fruit of those aging Bordeaux wines, such chauvinism more and more fades from respectable wine debate. Winemaking has moved a long way from the crude days of Napoleonic Minister of the Interior Chaptal's policy of using the French sugar beet crop for 'improving' the country's wines.

This book's major focus is humans, not the wines; Taber discusses the repercussions of the tasting far more than the actual event, though the curious secondary stories leading up to the tasting receive the sort of attention usually saved for more serious historical moments. The larger themes - of not resting on your laurels, and the facades that can be the reality of institutional image - emerge with an inexorable - and some might say, overdue - inevitability.

Perhaps it was fated these two birthplaces of democracy, France and America, should be the players in this most democratic-driven event: a blind tasting. (Lady Justice - by contrast - keeps one eye open just to avoid such unacceptabe results, and since the tasting any number of European wine advocates have sympathized and even embraced such a fallback.) Not surprising, too, that the more capitalist country and can-do Americans should triumph over the less egalitarian 'old world' of the more rigid and stratified hierachical universe of French wine estates, with their aristocratic trappings.

Complacency and arrogance are poor resources to contest with - and the French wine world got their ears boxed for just such attitudes. Instead of pulling out all the stops and setting bottles of '59 Lafite or perhaps a '61 Latour-a-Pomerol against the California cabs, or demanding the tasting include pinot noir, which conveniently was omitted because California didn't produce quality pinot noir, the French were snookered into permitting others a say in 'setting the table'. Prejudice and ignorance, kissing cousins of the small-minded and snobbish, got their comeuppance, and the French were hoisted by their own petard. Which in plain language means they foolishly set off the equivalent of a wooden wine crate bursting with gunpowder under their own carefully inscribed world of carefully controlled classes and prices. Generally unfamiliar with blind tasting's pecularities, where fruit and alcohol can trump more subtle qualities, the French tasters naively presumed an expertise they did not possess in comparing varietal wines from differing regions. They were blindsided. Almost none of the tasters had any idea which was domestic wine and which California wine. (Oddly enough, when the tasting was retried ten years later in America, the American tasters could not separate the wines by country.)

Recently the tasting was redone. Once again the French showed they haven't learned very much. French chardonnays, which from great vintages and the best sites can age and develop, were dropped. Once again pinot noir was absent. Chateau Haut-Brion refused to participate, but could not stop the tasting from buying examples of its wine in the marketplace. (Those evil entrepeneurs!) The original losing Bordeaux were trotted out again on the ignorant myth, long disproved by modern enology, that somehow wines with no great fruit when young would suddenly find some after twenty years of aging! The better made and fruitier California wines swept to total victory, sweeping the top placements. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

History was at work here. Yet this sort of challenge was not new for the California winemakers; for many decades avant-garde California wine makers, ambitious to compete with the very best, had been holding such tastings at home, measuring their Chardonnays against Puligny-Montrachets, Chassagne-Montrachets and Meursaults; while judging their best Cabernets against Pauillacs, St.Juliens, and Margaux. In the early seventies the influential English wine writer Harry Waugh, with an impeccable understanding of European wine, published a series of highly impressed tasting notes on these new esoteric California wines he had tasted in travels to California. A small handful of California's newest enologists were experimenting with a variety of new processes, especially in maintaining a wine's fruit. Now obscured, but then still potent icons for young winemakers, were extraordinary wines made by a few legendary wine-makers, such as Andre Tchelistcheff and the extraordinary Martin Ray. (You can read about Ray's colorful career in: Vineyards in the Sky: The Life of Legendary Vintner Martin Ray Those of us who tasted the best wines made by Tcheslistcheff and Ray were perfectly aware of just how good the best California wines could be.

Thus the potential for great wine in California was largely proven long before the '76 tasting - what needed to change was a scaling up so that more great wine could be produced, and this in fact was already well under way. By the the time the French were sitting around dishing the Paris Tasting results California was already bottling the watershed Cabernet vintage of 1974.

Talent's book makes stimulating reading for more than just wine snobs - what's in play here are larger issues, common throughout all levels of society.

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Chardonnay Wine Nuts Subtle in taste the delightful Chardonnay flavor or our Chardonnay Wine Nuts slowly develops with each gourmet peanut you put in your mouth. Perfect for the cocktail party and as a casual snack. We take the best quality large gourmet peanuts and add all natural ingredients, then slow cook to perfection. National Award Winner! Blind Taste Test of all Snack Nuts entered in the National Competition for 2003. Chardonnay and Merlot stood out among the best for their subtle Wine taste. All Natural, Gluten Free, No High Fructose Corn Syrup & Certified Kosher.

Ingredients: Peanuts, Vegetable Oil, (contains one or more of the following oils: Canola, Coconut, Peanut), Sugar, Salt, Natural Chardonnay Flavor, Chardonnay Wine.

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I don't get the vitriol of the first three reviewers. Concerning their complaints that this book is full of Neal's opinions and rants: yes, it is. If they were looking for nothing but raw facts perhaps they should have selected a book that wasn't autobiographical. As for the quality of the writing: while Neal does tend to be a little over-the-top with his comparisons, his use of the English language is quite good albeit old-fashioned.

Personally, I really enjoyed this book. It's a quick, fun read as long as you take it for what it is: a collection of recollections and musings on wine and personal history by Neal. I found him to be relatively even-handed in his treatment of most subjects and it was refreshing to hear from someone in the world of wine who doesn't worship at the temple of numerical scores.

Customer Review: Thin and bitter...

Perhaps this is an exercise in piling on, but it must be said... this book is a tremendous disappointment. Mr. Rosenthal vents his spleen on a variety of topics and people, with little in the way of real insight to offer. The prose is sometimes comically stilted and reads like bad legal writing. Often a single sentence rambles on for a good part of a page, bearing the weight three or four sentences should carry.

His heart is in the right place: wines with character and sense of place, made for keeping. But between the small minded jabs at a pantheon of enemies, the rotten writing and the sheer superficiality of it all... No. Don't bother. Instant bargain bin material.

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POHATCONG TWP. | The owners of Villa Milagro Vineyards can continue operations and wine-related activities, but they are subject to some review. They must submit a site plan application for the land housing those activities by the end of August, board Chairman Marc Metzger said.

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This is a sweet low-alcohol (less than 1%) cooking seasoning that gives Yakitori, and Teriyaki and Sukiyaki the full-flavored sweetness and shiny glaze for which they're known. May be added in place of sugar or honey in your main dish recipes, and you only need a small amount so one 17 oz bottle goes a long way. We offer premium quality Kikkoman brand imported from Japan, in a 17 oz plastic bottle. Keep refrigerated after opening. Additional images, recipes and detailed description at ImportFood.com.

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The most comprehensive guide to matching food and drink ever compiled, by the James Beard Award winning author team of Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, with practical advice from more than seventy of America's leading pairing experts In a great meal, what you drink is just as important as what you eat.This groundbreaking food and beverage pairing reference allows food lovers to learn to think like a sommelier, and to transform every meal- breakfast, lunch, and dinner - from ordinary to extraordinary. Exceptional in its depth and scope - with over fifteen hundred entries - What to Drink with What You Eat is based on the collective wisdom of experts at dozens of America's best restaurants, including Alinea, Babbo, Bern's, Blue Hill, Chanterelle, Daniel, Emeril's, French Laundry, Frontera Grill, Inn at Little Washington, Jean Georges, Masa's, The Modern, Per Se, Rubicon, Tru, and Valentino. You'll find authoritative recommendations for stocking your cellar and kitchen with must-have beverages, from wines to waters.You'll also learn what to drink with everything from French toast to Chinese food, and what to eat with everything from Pinot Noir to green tea, to create mouthwatering matches.Follow the authors three simple Rules to Remember when making a match - or just dive into the wide-ranging listings in chapters 5 and 6. This incisive, hip writing team (Publisher's Weekly) distills history, geography, science, expert technique, and original insight to create a remarkably user-friendly and engaging reference.Lavishly illustrated with gorgeous four-color photographs, What to Drink with What You Eat is an instant classic essential to every connoisseur's bookshelf.

Customer Review: Best wine book I ever purchased

I have been "into" wine for a long time (before it became mainstream to
be "into" wine). I have tasted many different varieties of wines from all over the world, have many books on wine and love finding that perfect match between food and wine. I love having wine with my meals and when you can get that perfect match -- it can be heaven.

This wine book is amazing!!! In one section they go through every wine imaginable and tell you what foods will go with it -- HIGHLIGHTING those foods which will go VERY good with it. Then they have another section in which they do the complete opposite (I.E. given a food, what wine will go with it).

There are lots of comments by great chefs, recipes and a section where
each chef lists his favorite wines and what he likes to pair with it.

I love this book and highly recommend it.

Customer Review: The Best Food/Beverage Guidebook? That Depends . . .

(3 1/2 stars)

After reading the slew of five-star reviews for this volume, today I drove to Barnes & Noble fully ready to purchase it. After spending a fair amount of time in the aisle surveying its contents, I ended up not getting it, and thought I would explain why not for the sake of those Amazon readers whose considerations might be similar to my own.

I think the issues of relevance are 'who you are' and what you're looking for in a book like this. I certainly understand why great wine aficionados (presumably with plenty of money and time), critics, restaurateurs, sommeliers and the like would desire and benefit from a work of such sophistication and scope. But for the hobbyist (like myself), it was just too much. A little 'highbrow' for me -- and I suspect I'm not alone. I didn't find it nearly as accessible as, for example, Karen MacNeil's Wine, Food, and Friends (which I bought). MacNeil's book has a seasonal presentation, and, while evidencing an expert's range of knowledge, seeks not to lose sight of practical concerns (such as $$). In a nutshell, What To Drink . . . has a more encyclopedic approach (and does include beverages beyond wine), while MacNeil's is user-friendly and more what I was looking for. I wish it were possible to buy chapters 5 & 6 of Dornenburg & Page's book separately, because they comprise a tremendous resource for ongoing reference. The one surprise regarding Dornenburg & Page was that in a product of such erudition, it lacked an index.

So, bearing in mind the two questions I started with, I hope some of these thoughts will be helpful in informing your purchasing decision.

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