Most people, when they come visit me in San Francisco and ask to be taken to wine country, assume that they're going to Napa, but at least half the time, that's definitely not where we end up.

These well meaning tourists aren't the only ones who seem to forget that Northern California has many different "wine countries." Napa casts a long shadow, as it were.

I've got lots of love for every piece of wine country we've got, and a special place in my heart for Sonoma County, both because it is the place of my birth, but also because I think sometimes it gets short shrift compared to its more famous neighbor.

Sonoma County is several different wine regions rolled up into one -- from the chilly fog of the Sonoma Coast and Carneros, to the cool Green Valley and Russian River Valley, to the warmer climes of Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Alexander Valley, and the Sonoma Valley -- there's something for everyone in Sonoma.

The main problem however, is that all these regions are spread out over a wide area, much wider than the relatively (in comparison) compact Napa Valley. So experiencing the breadth of Sonoma can be time consuming, no matter how fulfilling it ends up being.

So while it's a good idea for wine lovers to pay more attention to Sonoma in general, there is one weekend this year when any self respecting wine lover shouldn't be thinking of anything else: The Sonoma Wine Country Weekend.

The first event of its kind, this weekend celebration of Sonoma County wine is a combination of what have been two separate annual events up until now: The Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food and the Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction. These two events have been combined into a single weekend that is the single best opportunity in existence for anyone to learn a thing or two about Sonoma wine.

The weekend starts on Friday August 29th, with winemaker lunches at various wineries around the valley. On Saturday the 30th, the grand tasting will take place from 11 AM to 4 PM, where more than a hundred Sonoma County wineries will offer their wines for tasting along with food from more than 60 of the regions top chefs and artisan food purveyors. Sommeliers (apparently some of them famous) will be conducting wine seminars, and almost every wine that you might taste is available for sale (or shipping back home) with the help of the event staff.

The evening of Friday the 29th and Saturday the 30th will also involve winemaker dinners at some of Sonoma's most spectacular wineries, including Pride Mountain Vineyards at the top of the Mayacamas mountains.

And if that weren't enough, on Sunday the live Harvest Wine Auction, whose proceeds go to local charities, offers chances at bragging rights and some amazing prizes (and wines) for those who can afford to be generous, as well as a blockbuster meal cooked by some serious Sonoma culinary heavyweights. Rumor has it that there will be just a tad of wine poured at this event as well.

While attendance at the auction and dinner on Sunday is a somewhat pricey proposition ($650 a head) the rest of the weekend's events are a relative steal at between $75 and $150 bucks.

This is a huge opportunity to soak in the breadth and depth of Sonoma County wine without spending 4 days and 8 hours in the car zipping all over the place. It comes highly recommended by yours truly.

Find out everything you need to know on the event web site.

Sonoma Wine Country Weekend
August 29-31, 2008
MacMurray Ranch, Cline Cellars, (and individual wineries)
MacMurray Ranch
9015 Westside Road, Healdsburg, CA 95448

Tickets, which can be purchased online, are priced as follows:

Friday Winemaker Lunches: $75
Friday Winemaker Dinners: $160
Grand Tasting: $150
Saturday Winemaker Dinners: $160
Sunday Auction: $650

Additional VIP packages are available.

This event will almost certainly sell out, so purchase your tickets now. September just before harvest is one of the most beautiful times to be in Sonoma County.

It's the dog days of summer for baseball and two-a-days are here for NFL teams as they get ready for the upcoming season. Most sensible folks are on vacation somewhere, and I'm not one of them. I've been doing my own version of two-a-days here at the office, busy plowing through two flights a day over the past several weeks, hence my rather quiet blog lately.

I have recently read a number of comments on the Internet about Sangiovese, and how it can't make dark-colored wines with ripe tannins and full body. But it just isn't true. Sangiovese can and does make wines with a depth of color, fruit and tannins, and anyone who says it can't just doesn't know what they are talking about.

The birth of a wine region is a fascinating thing to watch, and I'm sure an even more fascinating process to be a part of. Much of the wine that we drink comes from regions that have been established anywhere from decades to centuries ago, but the quest for great wine and great places to grow it (not to mention the changing whims of the global climate) means that there are always new frontiers when it comes to wine growing.

All new wine regions begin the same -- with a pioneering spirit and a hell of a lot of determination. Someone decides that a certain place is the right spot to grow wine grapes, and they stake a lot of sweat and money on whatever knowledge they've got backing up that decision, whether it be a hunch, or a GIS enabled geologic survey.

Eventually, the initial prospector may be joined by others, especially if he or she manages to survive and produce a product that doesn't suck.

For a time, these early farmers and winemakers operate out of sheer passion and determination. They need no more organization than their own collegiality or happenstance might offer. It is enough that they are growing and making wine in the place they dream of doing so.

But with enough success, and enough producers, questions of legitimacy and marketability inevitably arise. That is to say, eventually, it seems to make sense to make the wine region "official" and to use its name as a way of distinguishing the wine grown in that region, from wine grown elsewhere. At the very least, it makes sense to agree on a name for this place that everyone can use. At the most, it may make sense to establish rules and regulations that determine the quality and nature of the wine made in the region.

But when exactly does it make sense to do this? In the case of new regions emerging within or alongside existing ones, there are legislative answers to this question already.

But when the region is entirely new, this question gets very interesting. The winemakers of Guadalupe Valley and the Mexican government are currently wrestling with the issues surrounding this question at this very moment.

The Government of the State of Baja has suggested that the fledgling wine region adopt regional appellations and a set of regulations along the lines of the Denomination of Origin laws in Spain, Italy, or France.

It's easy to see how the region could benefit from such laws. They add credibility to any wines that carry the designation on the label, and the wines can be marketed to the world under specific regional names, with guarantees of quality. In short, such regulations could help increase prices and demand for Guadalupe Valley wines.

On the other hand, say many of the vintners, no one has any idea what the boundaries of the region should be, what the wine regulations ought to require or forbid, or how to measure the quality of this new region's wines.

And frankly, they have a point. We wine lovers are so used to the codified traditions of our global wine regions. We know that Brunello is required to be 100% Sangiovese, and that Burgundy must be 100% Pinot Noir, but at some point people had to decide that this was so. Of course, those decision makers had many decades (or more) of winemaking traditions to back up their regulations.

Who is going to decide what the permitted grape varieties are in the Guadalupe Valley? And more importantly how on earth could someone decide that so early in the region's evolution as a wine locality? And what is the definition of quality in a region where only in the last couple of years have global critics even suggested that there might be high quality grapes being grown there? These are tough questions, and scary ones to contemplate a bureaucrat or some other ministry official forcing on a burgeoning wine region.

For now it may be best to simply make the geographic region more official, and wait for the perspective of some history to guide more definite judgments about what will make for great Mexican wine.

Read the full story.

For the last 18 or so hours, and for some people it may still be so, Vinography has been deader than a doornail, thanks to a botched network upgrade by my hosting provider. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I thank you for your patience. This is only the third or fourth time Vinography has gone down in about 5 years, so while it's incredibly annoying, I'm trying to keep it in perspective.

The irony of this downtime is that just two days ago I upgraded my Movable Type installation to the new release which dramatically improved the performance of the site for you, my readers. In particular, I know many of you have suffered through waits of 30 seconds to sometimes 3 or 4 minutes when posting comments to the site. This performance problem has now been resolved, and comments post in just a few seconds now, which is a huge relief to me and hopefully to you as well.

Thanks for your continued readership. I now return you to regularly scheduled programming.

Well, I've gone and stretched eight weeks into 11 awesome months. That is in part due to me being so slow with the blog but hey, I'm working at it! Since my last installment, I've been pondering what to do with this one, my final of this run.

I told Luca Sanjust of Petrolo that I would throw him a birthday dinner tonight, and what started as a small meal for a half dozen people is now up to 17 people! I had to clear out the furniture from my living room to make more dining space because we can't eat outside tonight and use the big tables I have in my courtyard.

Heritage plays out in many ways in the Napa Valley. There are only a few remaining families that have been farming in the valley since Prohibition, and even those that have tenures lasting more than three decades are increasingly being supplanted by new blood or corporate interests.

Some of those families that have left the valley after decades often move on to other enterprises after cashing out on their vineyard investments. However, it's tough to abandon Napa Valley once you've lived and loved there for so long.

Winemaker Justin Meyer moved his family to the Anderson Valley in 1999 after more than 35 years of making wine in Napa Valley with a vision of producing world-class Port-style wine and establishing a family estate that could be carried on by future generations. Despite this move, the family never truly left Napa, as it continued (and still continues) to farm the same vineyard that in some ways is responsible for the fate of the entire Meyer clan.

Justin Meyer was one of the great icons of the modern California wine industry and one of its greatest success stories. Meyer thought he was destined for a life of prayer and service when he joined the Christian Brothers religious order in the late 1950's, but a twist of fate led to him being sent to work at the order's winery in Napa in 1964. That fateful move was the beginning of a forty-year career in the wine industry. After working for several years at Christian Brothers with the famous Brother Timothy, he left the order to marry a woman named Bonny that he had fallen in love with, and with literally a dollar to his name, he co-founded a little winery that he and partner Ray Duncan decided to call Silver Oak. The rest, as they say, is history. Justin spent 28 years at Silver Oak and built it into one of the world's most sought-after wine brands.

During that time, Meyer, who was a lover of Port, purchased some bulk tawny port on the market and started to make small batches of the stuff under a new label: Meyer Family Cellars. The port was for friends and family, and was also sold in small quantities at the Silver Oak winery to those in the know.

During this time, Meyer raised a family with Bonny, whose name was also applied to a piece of vineyard land adjacent to Conn Creek that Meyer purchased for his wife in 1974.

From an early age, this couple's son Matt Meyer knew that he wanted to be a winemaker and winegrower like his father. Unlike in his father's day, the way to do that was pretty straightforward for Matt, who went to U.C. Davis for a degree in Viticulture, and then began working immediately with his father on turning the family winery into something more than just a little port hobby.

The family purchased vineyards in the Yorkville Highlands in 1999 and planted Syrah. Justin Meyer passed away in 2002, leaving the winery under the direction of Matt and his new wife, Karen, a winemaker whom he met while working a harvest in New Zealand in 2004. While their primary focus was growing a business and a brand in the Yorkville highlands, the family took special care to maintain the vineyard from which Meyer had made some of the most famous single vineyard wines for Silver Oak (and for Napa Valley) for more than a decade (1979-1991).

As Meyer Family Cellars gradually settled into a working rhythm and predictable operations, the family decided that the time had come to produce a wine that would honor in equal parts Justin and his wife Bonny -- him with a world-class Cabernet, her with the honor of being its namesake. Bonny's Vineyard last produced a wine in 1991. Since then the family continued to farm it, and completely replanted the vineyard in 1999, making the first harvest of new fruit and inaugurating this project in 2003, the first time that the vineyard has produced a wine in 12 years.

Harvested in mid-September (notably early for Oakville) the grapes for this wine were selected from small bunches of even smaller berries, and destemmed before being crushed. After a day of soaking at cold temperatures to extract color and flavors from the skins, the grapes and juice began fermentation which lasted 10 days before the wine was pressed. It completed its primary and then secondary fermentations in stainless steel before being moved to 100% new American Oak barrels where it aged for a lengthy 34 months before bottling. During that time it was racked once a year (the process where the wine is carefully poured off the sediments that have accumulated in the barrel). The wine was not fined, but was filtered before bottling.

If the pedigree of this wine is not enough to pique a wine lovers interest, two salient facts about its winemaking should gain the attention of those serious about California Cabernet. The first is the daring choice to age the wine in only American Oak, a practice which is increasingly rare in California, and even more so in Napa Valley. The second is the fact that this wine weighs in at only 13.19% alcohol, which, like the choice of oak, is neither good nor bad in itself, but is certainly even more uncommon for Napa Cabernet.

Which brings me to the bottom line on this wine. Those looking for a wine that defies the stereotypes of Napa Cabernet while at the same time upholding its reputation for being some of the tastiest wine on the planet shouldn't miss their chance to experience the first example of what will likely be a highly sought after wine.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of luxurious chocolate and cherry aromas. In the mouth it is nothing short of gorgeous. Beautifully smooth and lithe on the tongue, the wine swirls with great acidity that carries flavors of cherry, mint, chocolate, cedar and tobacco across the palate in several waves of pleasurable, layered flavors. The finish soars off the back of the palate effortlessly and endlessly. An incredibly impressive first release that Justin Meyer could not help but be proud of.

Food Pairing:
This wine epitomizes the concept of delicate strength, which means it's rich enough for grilled lamb on rosemary skewers, but not likely to overwhelm more subtle dishes either. A very nice food wine.

Overall Score: Between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $135

This wine is being released on August 31st in limited quantities, and I believe it will likely only be available to members of the winery's mailing list. You can sign up on their web site to purchase up to three bottles.

Burmese Pythons may have chosen Florida as a vacation destination, but are unlikely to expand further, according to a new study. Although the United States Geological Survey earlier this year released "climate maps" indicating that the pythons could inhabit up to 32 states in the US, new research indicates that the snakes are unlikely to expand out of Florida.

I recently got a preview taste of the first wines from Oatley Estate. I 1 last year after sharing a few drinks with the principals, owner Robert Oatley and executive deputy chairman Chris Hancock. Those two started Rosemount Estate in 1976 and created the fruit-forward easy-drinking style that made Australian wines a hit with American consumers.

Bacteria ? like people animals and plants ? can become infected by a virus. Researchers have now unravelled a mechanism with which bacteria can defend themselves for a longer period against threatening viruses. Over the long term, this research offers possibilities to protect bacteria used in industrial processes against viral infections by giving them a 'flu vaccination'.

How the body regulates blood pressure in response to daily stress is the focus of a study geared toward helping people whose pressure is out of control.

Researchers have developed a method for converting crop residue, wood pulp, animal waste and garbage into ethanol. The process first turns the waste material into synthesis gas, or syngas, and nanoscale catalysts then convert the syngas into ethanol.

Genomics is accelerating improvements for converting plant biomass into biofuel -- as an alternative to fossil fuel for the nation's transportation needs. Now researchers lay out a path forward for how emerging genomic technologies will contribute to a substantially different biofuels future as compared to the present corn-based ethanol industry -- and in part mitigate the food-versus-fuel debate.