The Wine Knows

We have launched a new wine events calendar on winepressnw.com.

We'd like your help testing it out.

Our old system consisted of wineries, wine shops and organizations submitting their items on a form, then us adding them to a page in chronological order. When an event passed, we had to manually remove it. It was an arduous system that wasn't exactly friendly to us or to you.

Last week, we created a Facebook fan page for Wine Press Northwest.

If you're on Facebook, you can get to it here or by searching for "Wine Press Northwest" once you're on Facebook.

I've been working on a new feature that compiles feeds from a variety of blogs whose posts focus on Northwest wine.

I put this together with Yahoo! Pipes, a tool I'm still fooling around with, trying to learn. So I have some refining to do still, but I wanted to share this with you.

It was another year of interesting stories and big news in Pacific Northwest wine country. Weather was a big issue for growers and winemakers throughout the region. Wineries and vineyards came under new ownership, a giant in the B.C. wine world stepped away, and we lost Papa Pinot.

Eric Degerman, Wine Press Northwest managing editor, also serves as unofficial food editor, as he researches and writes our quarterly Match Makers feature and annual Great Northwest Wine Lists Competition. He has filed this report on a disturbing trend in Boise.

Over the past few months, we've been working on a better way to provide information on Northwest wineries. Our old Web site had a searchable database, but it was difficult to maintain. Our new system will provide a way for site visitors to provide updates, which then will be easy for us to upload.

We know we're missing a fair bit of information in this first release, which is why we're counting on all of you to take a look at your favorite wineries and provide us with any updates you might have.

Take a look:

Three of the Pacific Northwest's largest wineries have new owners.

Constellation, the world's largest wine company, sold several of its properties to newly formed Ascentia Wine Estates, including Columbia Winery, Covey Run Winery and Ste. Chapelle. All three were owned by Corus Brands before being sold to Constellation in 2001.

One item of note as we prep for our Riesling competition this weekend: The noble white wine grape of Germany and Alsace is produced throughout the Pacific Northwest. In fact, I'm a bit amazed at how many various appellations are represented on wine bottles.

For the second consecutive year, a wine from British Columbia has won best of show at the annual Northwest Wine Summit. This year, however, the victorious wine was more "traditional."

The winner was Mission Hill Family Estate for its 2006 Select Lot Collection Riesling Icewine.

Up here at Timberline Lodge, we ran into a bit of a mystery over Ste. Chapelle's Sparkling Riesling. On the bottle, it is listed as a nonvintage American wine.

Northwest Wine Summit Director Parks Redwine bet me $1 that it used California grapes, based on the fact that it says in small type on the back of the bottle: "Vinted & bottled by Ste. Chapelle, Madera, Calif."