Bottle Rock: Napa Festival's Attempt To Combine Food, Wine, and Music Falls Short

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Anna Roth
These $15 wine pouches were a huge hit at Bottle Rock yesterday.
It seems like a good idea on paper: Throw a music festival in wine country where guests can go wine-tasting and sample some of the region's best restaurants in between musical acts. That was the focus of Bottle Rock, a new festival thrown in a park in downtown Napa that combines stadium-filling rock groups like the Black Keys and the Flaming Lips with high-end restaurants and wineries. "What we're trying to do is a connoisseur's festival -- a rock show for people with a palate," one of the event organizers told SF Weekly music editor Ian S. Port last month. But unlike Outside Lands, a music festival that just happens to have really great food and drinks that you can grab between acts, Bottle Rock seemed to have trouble integrating the two portions, and ended up with without a clear emphasis on either and a crowd that seemed more interested in partying than enjoying the finer points of connoisseurship.

See also: Bottle Rock: The Black Keys and Flaming Lips Can't Break Through Distractions at Napa Valley's New Fest, 5/10/13
Rock the Wine Country: Bottle Rock Festival Is an Odd New Addition to the Bay Area


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Matchmaking At The 2013 Oyster Wine Competition

Categories: Wine

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Anna Roth
The judges' setup at the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition
Every year I look forward to judging the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition put on by Taylor Shellfish Farms and oyster expert Jon Rowley. The setup is simple: through an extensive selection process, Rowley and a team of preliminary judges comb through 124 California, Oregon, and Washington wines submitted as "oyster-friendly" prospects to create a final lineup of 20. Then judges like myself in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle get to play matchmaker: We try each wine with at least one Kumamoto oyster to crown the winner of the best oyster wine that year.

Rowley calls it an "annual dating service for West Coast wines and oysters," and the list of winners is given to restaurants with oyster programs to influence their white wine selections on offer.

See also: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Oysters
The Return of the Dollar Oyster List


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20 Spot Brings Wine and Mid-Century Design To The Mission

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20 Spot/Facebook
20 Spot has clean, mid-century design.
Punk rock enthusiasts may mourn the loss of Force of Habit, the record shop that inhabited the space that is now wine bar 20 Spot, but the winos in town can rejoice. The wine bar, from owners Bodhi Freedom (owner of Bacchus) and chef Anthony Paone, opened in March, and boasts a list of North American as well as French, Italian and German wines as well as local beer.

See also: Pica Pica Brings Venezuelan Arepas And Other Staples to the Castro
Flour & Co. is an Oasis in the Nob Hill Pastry Desert
Mission Picnic Is Open For All Your Dolores Park Sandwich Needs

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The World As You Know It Has Ended: Trader Joe's Raises Price of "Two Buck Chuck"

Categories: Wine

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Trader Joe's
It's a sad day indeed for those who drink the beloved Charles Shaw wine from Trader Joe's, affectionately nicknamed "Two Buck Chuck" for the $1.99 price tag. According to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, the wine's parent company, Bronco Wine Co., is raising prices because of bad crops in 2010 and 2011 that affected its 45,000 acres of vineyard land.

The new bottle price is $2.49, which, let's be honest, is still pretty goddamn cheap -- especially since the $1.99 price has stuck around for the past 11 years.

See also: This is Why Everyone Shopping at Trader Joe's Hates You

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Wine Kitchen Proves Western Addition's Growing Clout

Categories: Divisadero, Wine

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Pete Kane
And you thought Bi-Rite 2.0 was the only major development on Divis these days.

Newly open between Fell and Hayes, the warm, capacious and unpretentiously named Wine Kitchen may not rival the gourmet market opening across the street as an anchor tenant of a neighborhood in transition, but it's set to become a local jewel just the same. (No disrespect, Popeye's.)

See also:
- First Look: Trick Dog Bar
- See Your Beer's True Colors With Beertone
- 4505 Butcher Shop: Chicharrones Nachos, Chorizo Con Queso-Topped Sausages, and More


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Drink of the Week: Know Your Sparkling Wine

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Lou Bustamante
Glass of Cremant d'Alsace with pomegranate seeds
The end of the year brings many things: family, parties, and lots of sparkling wine. While we love cocktails, it's this time of year we simply give in to any and all excuses for bubbly. It's like wine that got bedazzled.

While our mental image of sparkling wine mostly stays fixed on Champagne, the renowned French region responsible for some impressively amazing wines, enjoying a glass of something festive doesn't require a load of cash.

See Also:
- Is Your Champagne Unworthy of a Toast? Turn It into Cocktails
- New Champagnes by Moët & Chandon
- Recovering From a Holiday Food Hangover


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35 Champagnes in 3 Hours at Arlequin's Bubbly Tasting

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Arlequin Wine Champagne Tasting
Where: Arlequin Wine Merchant, 384 Hayes (at Gough), 863-1104
When: Thurs., Dec. 6th; 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Cost: $65 per person; pay at the door

The Rundown: We love our booze. Cocktails? Certainly. Wine? Uh huh. Beer? Sure. While we enjoy all those equally, it's sparkling wine we love the most. It has versatility, variety, bubbles, pairs well with most food, and you can enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you were stuck on a desert isle, and you had a stash of sparkling wine, you'd just call it vacation.

See Also:
- Is Your Champagne Unworthy of a Toast? Turn It into Cocktails
- New Champagnes by Moët & Chandon


More »

Stock Up on These Three Wallet-Friendly Wines From Costco

Categories: Wine

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Flickr/willscrit
There are fine wines. And then there are the ones to bust out on a near-daily basis: the
end of the day. Today SFoodie strolls the aisles of Costco,
where it's make room on that flatbed cart for drinkable and beyond decent wines
from red to bubbly. Here are three of our favorite picks that are suitable for winter
and casual holiday soirees.

See also:
- Talking Holiday Wines With Bi-Rite's Trac Le


More »

Tags:

Costco, wine

Le Truc in a Delicious Collaboration with Alameda's Rock Wall Winery

Categories: Street Eats, Wine

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The Dapper Diner
The East Bay is the Rodney Dangerfield of the San Francisco Bay Area; it gets no respect from people in San Francisco, the people of the Peninsula, the people of the South Bay, and even people who live in the East Bay. Of course that doesn't mean it doesn't have something to bring to the table. In fact, lots of good things come from the area on the other side of the Bay, like Cal students who feel the need to prove themselves, St. George Spirits gins and absinthes, hyphy dancing, MC Hammer, car sideshows, Bubb Rubb and whistle tips, and now an interesting collaboration between a winery and a food truck.

See also:
- Boozy Events Round-Up: Mustaches, Micro-Distilleries, and Barback Games
- NYC Brings its Balls to the East Bay
- Pop-Up Planner: Best Temporary Restaurants, Nov. 26-Dec. 3


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Good For the Wallet, Good for the Glass: Talking Holiday Wines With Bi-Rite's Trac Le

Categories: Wine

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Mary Ladd
Trac Le of Bi-Rite Market
There are fine wines. And then there are the ones to bust out on a near-daily basis: end of the day. Your widescreen TV is glowing. Maybe your friends are headed over. Or you decided to cozy up with that furry pet of yours... all relevant cases for a glass or two of decent and not overpriced wine. Today SFoodie talks with Trac Le, who has been the wine buyer for Bi-Rite Market for three years.

See also:
- Bi-Rite's Got Your Back for the Holidays
- San Francisco's 10 Best Wine Lists

More »

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