a) Digital Link on colorandaroma.com.

b) Website Advertisement Posts.

c) Social Networking and Promotions through Facebook and Twitter.

d) Exposure through Tendril: The Color and Aroma Blog.

e) Discounted product and service offerings through Color and Aroma media outlets.

Two Months for Only $35.99!

Send us an email to wineries@colorandaroma.com or call us at 949-887-2260 to receive this offer that starts today, Thursday, July 29 and ends Friday, August 6th, 2010.

All Aboard!!

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Join us this Summer for a season you will never forget…

Our 2010 Summer Editorial Calendar:

a. Wine and Surf

- Seafood

- Surfing

b. Wine and Travel

- OC Beach Cities

- San Francisco

- Seattle

- Chicago

- Sydney

- The Maldives

c. Wine and Boats

- Yaughts

- Pontoon

- Houseboats

- Many more…

Safe Travels!

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We know that there has been plenty of wine consumption in the studio. But has there ever been anything official?

Here is the beginning…

Join us for Phase Two…

Cheers,

colorandaroma

Photo by Eric Stoner: San Gabriel Mission

Join us for a Southern California Wine Experience! 

Go online now and buy a single ticket for either day, and enter Brandon into the promo code and you will receive $10 off of your event ticket. http://arestravel.com/4138_attraction-tickets_a872.html

Please tell all of your friends!

Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, CA

5300 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

2pm-6:30pm

LA Wine Fest 2010

Come Join the Fun! 

www.lawinefest.com

Do your best to make it up or out to Paso Robles, CA this weekend for one of California’s Best Wine Festivals! There are still tickets available! http://www.pasowine.com/events/winefestival.php

Make sure to visit Castoro Cellars while in town!

www.castorocellars.com

Live and Love Paso!

www.pasowine.com

See you there!

C&A

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Natasha Henstridge at Rosenthal - The Malibu Estate

Stay tuned for more details…

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We will be elegantly blending wine, art, music and entertainment from March 20 through June 20, 2010!

Stay tuned for our special guest contributors…

Cheers,

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Cheers!

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River Ave. Newport Beach, CA

In today’s gourmet food and fine wine world, the descriptor “artisan” gets rather overused, don’t you think? When the shelves of Costco and Trader Joe’s offer products with labels that announce themselves as “artisan,” what does it really mean anymore? Through such ubiquitous use, this once-illustrative word has lately begun to dissolve itself, its definition remaining so vague that one could argue it applies to food products of any quality as long as they’re produced by hand.

“Artisan”: a term in danger of carrying no measurable meaning due to a desperate urge to oversell in (American) marketing speak (“diva,” “epic,” “classic” anyone?). We make cheese at our home–are we artisans? Probably not, maybe, of course: it all depends on your perspective and your own definition of this nebulous term.

While a blurry vagueness pervades the Americanized concept of “artisan,” there can be no such confusion about the meaning of “artisano.” It calls to mind the Italian masters in the kitchens, studios, and workshops who have produced so much art with the skill of their hands. They have helped build the reputation of Italy as a cradle of design and flavor for centuries. Many Italianos possess a commitment to quality that pervades everything they create by hand, whether they work in the medium of food, wood, wine, or stone. “Made in Italy” still means something today because of the power and commitment of its artisanos.

An Ultra-premium Promise
And so did I follow that Italian siren song (an email, actually), promising an artisano sensory experience of wine, food, and art. On a lovely Saturday afternoon in mid-fall (made even lovelier for having passed through the morning drizzle of the Bay Area), this delightful event in Geyserville featured a collection of winemakers pouring their delicious small-lot, ultra-premium wines. Because they’re produced in such small quantities, these wines rarely get presented to the general public.

Tasting the wines of Garden Creek, Alexander Valley AVA

Many of the wineries represented at this inaugural Artisano event don’t even have tasting rooms. The back forty of the beautifully situated Geyserville Inn served as a communal tasting room for many of the wineries from this less-frequently visited winemaking landscape in the northern reaches of Sonoma County.

Do you know that feeling, when you’ve tasted through a whole menu of wines at a winery and you like every one of them, and some of them very much? That’s what happened at this event, again and again. “You’ve got to try Skipstone–they’ve got awesome wines. Oh, and Garden Creek, and Domenichelli, and….” So many wonderful things to taste, so many wineries to recommend.

Thoughtfully-prepared eats complemented the wines. The good-sized, well-behaved crowd enjoyed the cooking demonstrations, the auction, and the knowledge that monies raised will fund the Slow Food School Garden Project, one of the efforts of the Slow Food Sonoma County, North chapter.

(More information: www.slowfoodsonomacounty.org.)

Artisano Wineries 2009

Pouring a Favorite Child

Many of the winemakers pouring their wines at Artisano work for someone else during the day, contributing their enological skills to producing wine for their employer. Everyone who worked for a larger winery made sure to not mention its name.

The wines they brought to pour–these privately produced and nearly privately enjoyed wines–were favorites. Like proud young parents accompanying their child prodigy to a talent show, many Artisano winemakers seem so thrilled with how wonderful their small-lot, hand-crafted wines are tasting. Pride in their own finished wines beamed out from so many faces. Artistry layers every phase of the wine production process, from vineyard management practices to barrel production to winemaking. Overheard: “I don’t care about points.”

The Vineyard Calls the Shots
The most passionate winemakers seem super attuned to what the land and the fruit have to say about the finished wine. Demonstrating the powerful influence the fruit and vineyards exert on his craft, one winemaker described how the “fruit speaks to the winemaker: ‘blend me.’ Or, ‘leave me alone.’” With an intense look and the seriousness (without stuffiness) of one completely engaged with the winemaking process on a quasi-chemical-spiritual level, this winemaker explained how in the winery’s topographically-rich vineyards, “the vineyard calls the shots.” Based on the wonderful experience of these wines, I’d say it pays to listen to your vineyard. Holy cats, that’s a good wine.

The 2009 Artisano event certainly repaid in spades the effort of traveling to this lesser-visited corner of Sonoma County. The outstanding wines featured in this first iteration promise an even more wonderful (and likely more crowded) event next year. The taste of the wines and the images of the vineyards linger in the memory and imagination.

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[Rachel Duchak lives in the Central Coast of California and owns Language Artisans, a writing company specializing in wine public relations.]

– photo by Rachel Duchak

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More information:

Artisano

Chiarito Vineyard

Davenport

Domenichelli

Duxoup Winery

Forth Vineyards

Foursight Vineyards

Garden Creek

Godwin

Hughes

Icaria

Kelley & Young

Landy Family Vineyards

Leo Steen Wines

MacPhail

Medlock Ames

Miro Cellars

Montemaggiore

Palmeri

Peña Ridge

Pendleton Estate

Reynoso Vineyards

Saini Vineyards

Skewis Wines

Skipstone

Stromberg Vineyards

Verge