“I want a 90 point wine,” Peter Koehler tells me. I think to myself that it’s certainly good to have goals. “I want to be one of the twenty most recognized wineries,” he adds. His comment sinks in and, yes, that’s more specific. After all, Koehler Winery sits on the “Fifth Avenue of wines” in Santa Barbara County. He is referring to Foxen Canyon Road, just north of tiny Los Olivos, a beautiful stretch of pavement that is home to many well-known wineries in Santa Barbara wine country.

The Rhone Report: About Rhone and Rhone-Style Wines and Winemakers is part of an ongoing series. Like many lovers of Rhone style wines from America, we have just returned from the 2008 edition of the annual Rhone Rangers tasting event at Fort Mason in San Francisco (March 18). This was the 11th year that the Rhone Rangers , a group of about 200 American producers of wines using 22 varietals traditional to France’s Rhone Valley, have shown off their wines at this public tasting event. This year, about 138 wineries presented approximately 520 wines. During the tasting, we enthusiastically tasted as many wines as we could within the 5 hours (3 public and 2 trade/media) the event was open. We tasted 30 white wines first, and then we tasted 50 reds. We skipped the rosés, not because we don’t love them, but because we didn’t have time. Kudos to Rhone Rangers for providing eco-friendly paper spit cups instead of the plastic cups so common at other tastings. We divided our attention between wines and producers we have known previously, producers new to us, and specific bottlings we didn’t already know. While we found many wines to admire, we are sure we missed other gems.

Let’s pretend this is Burgundy. It’s the peak of what would be the best week of your Chardonnay harvest. It’s been over one hundred days since the fruit set on the vines. In an ordinary year the grapes would be perfect, but it’s raining. It has been raining for weeks and you are beginning to taste water in the berries as you walk through the vineyard. If you try to wait out the rain, the grapes may be so dilute that making a memorable wine from the saturated grapes would be difficult.

This is the first in a series of articles about the people, places and events that helped shape Napa and Sonoma as we know them today. After watching the atmospheric rise of popularity and quality in California wines over the past thirty-odd years, it is not a stretch to assume that Napa Valley as a tourist destination is a relatively new phenomenon.

You can hardly find Priorat , or Priorato in Spanish, on a map, it’s so small. This tiny Catalonian wine region covers just 4,151 acres – Rioja, in comparison, is over 150,000 acres in size – but Priorat’s impact on the world of wine is large.

Perhaps the most obscure wine making region in all of Italy is the region of Molise. Molise is surrounded by Abruzzo, Lazio, Campania, and Apulia. Until 1963, the region of Molise was part of the same political region as Abruzzo ( Montepulciano d’Abruzzo was discussed in a previous article). In fact, the food and traditions here are closely associated with Abruzzo. Yet, its closeness to both Apulia and Campania lend it a bit of a southern influence. The wines of Molise achieved their own independence in the 1980’s with the creation of two DOCs: Biferno (named after the largest river in Molise) and Pentro di Isernia. These hillside areas receive wonderful sunshine and are sandwiched between the Apennines Mountains and the Adriatic Sea. Biferno wines can be red, white or rosé. The whites are predominantly made from the Trebbiano grape along with the Bombino in smaller proportions. The reds are a blend of mostly Montepulciano with some of the Aglianico grape. Wines from Pentro di Isernia can also be red, white or rosé. The whites are the same Trebbiano-Bombino grape blend, while the reds (and rosé’s) are usually a blend of Montepulciano and Sangiovese. More recently, in 1968 a DOC also called Molise was created. This DOC encompasses the region and allows for white, red, rosé and even sparkling wines.

Last fall, I discovered the Nahe wine region for myself. It’s easy to overlook the Nahe when the wine regions along the Rhine are so close by, but I highly recommend this beautiful part of Germany. I’m already planning my next trip to the area.

The Rhone Report: About Rhone and Rhone-Style Wines and Winemakers is part of an ongoing series. The classic red wines of the Northern Rhone Valley are some of the world’s greatest. Hermitage, Côte Rôtie and Cornas reds are the finest expressions of Syrah on earth. But the best of them have gotten to be very expensive, especially in American dollars. Recent vintages of Hermitage from Jean-Louis Chave are now more than $200 per bottle (and his scarce, top cuvee, Cathelin, is over $1,000). Guigal’s Côte Rôtie La Landonne, La Mouline and La Turque are nearly $250 per bottle, and even the Guigal Côte Rôtie Brune et Blond bottling is over $75.

One of the best parts of making wine in a professional setting is being able to see what wine is capable of – both its negatives and its positives – on a large scale. In some sense a branded wine is one that has achieved more positives than negatives and has therefore carved a niche within the industry for its particular style of winemaking. In recent years, however, scores of exceptional wines have come from very small producers who literally made their first wines in a garage. Pomerol garage wines, as well as some from California and Washington state have found acclaim in their respective markets, proving that the big producers don’t always turn out the best wines.

In the last article, I discussed Recioto della Valpolicella Amarone . While most of the feedback that I received (and I love to get some feedback) was positive, apparently, there is still some confusion on differentiating Amarone from Valpolicella. Based on the name, such confusion is understandable. Although Amarone may be the superior wine, “simple” Valpolicella, however, is a wine worthy of its own discussion and understanding.