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My 100th post + 5 goals and promises for The Wine Fairy blog
It’s my 100th post on the wine blog! One hundred posts is a small start, but a good one. Also: Phew! Now I can talk about the wine blog. There’s a productivity tip I try to live by, one that’s served me well: Don’t say anything about what you’re going to do. Instead, do the…
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Exploring Texas’s Bay Breeze Wine Trail
Bay Breeze is Texas’s newest named wine trail, Texas Wine Lover blog reports. It was organized in 2017 and currently includes five wineries in Southeast Texas. What’s a wine trail? Basically, it’s a group of wineries that are close enough to hop around on a day or a weekend. Bay Breeze is one of the…
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Texas wines and good times at Salado Winery Co. (Salado, TX)
Texas country highways in the springtime are idyllic, all blankets of wildflowers and baby cows. The April rains have made the grass tall and green. The smell of hickory and mesquite smoke hovers faintly in the air. And if you tire of the ever-thickening traffic as you pass through growing cities like Temple and Waco,…
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DFW Wine Events: May 2025
The weather is perfect and the calendar is lively in Dallas this spring. Wine lovers, let’s get out there, discover new pours and make new friends! Every month at The Wine Fairy, we assemble a list of 10 (or so) local happenings you won’t want to miss. From wine dinners to educational classes to outdoor…
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Travelin’ the Grapevine Spring Wine Trail (Grapevine, TX)
Wine Fairy here, reporting from the 2025 Spring Wine Trail in Grapevine, Texas! The 33rd annual festival took place on Saturday, April 12. The sky was Easter-egg blue and it was in the low 60s all morning (cellar temp)! It could not have been a lovelier day to explore Grapevine’s downtown wineries on foot. Here,…
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Texas Wine News Roundup: Spring 2025
If you’re tired of doom-scrolling, have you tried wine-scrolling? That’s when you try not to consume any news unless it’s related to wine. I have been wine-scrolling most of this year. I set up my devices to take me directly to wine content, instead of regular economic and political news. Sure, I’m less informed–but much…
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Wine and Turkey Legs: The Wine Fairy’s Guide to Scarborough Faire
Hear ye, hear ye, winos of North Texas! April 5-6 was the opening weekend for our own Renaissance festival, Scarborough Faire in Waxahachie, Texas. The Wine Fairy was there, tasting (almost) all the wines so I could report back to you. (Aye…’tis a tough job.) Scarborough Faire (a.k.a. Scarborough Renaissance Festival) has more than 15…
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Total buzzkill: Total Wine’s rewards program devalues its best perk
It’s dark days in Dallas, y’all. First, we gave away Luka Dončić to the freakin’ Lakers. Then, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines started charging for bags. Now–because crappy things come in threes–our largest and best chain liquor store appears to be seriously scaling back their rewards program. Will the disappointments never end? Just a couple of months…
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Mixing it up with Clos du Val’s blending seminar
It was a fab Cab lab at The Wine Authority this past Saturday. Napa Valley’s Clos du Val was in the house with barrel samples from the 2023 vintage–and one very special finished wine, the 2021 Yettalil blend ($200 retail). I booked the blending seminar for “educational” purposes. My wife (and fellow Cab lover) Sarah…
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DFW Wine Events: April 2025
Ah, April. When spring is in the air, and a wine lover’s thoughts turn gently from Sherry to rosé. This month, we’re debuting a new monthly feature on The Wine Fairy blog: Local events! These are our top ten picks for viniferous April happenings in our wonderful city of Dallas and nearby areas. Events are…
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How to taste great wine (for less than $5000)
There’s a winery in Napa that now has a $5000 per person tasting fee, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in February 2025. The culprit is Ghost Horse, the same attention-hungry winemaker that is preparing to release a $25,000 bottle of Cabernet. I’m all for people doing whatever they want with their money. But I think…
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Not a bubbly mood: 4 ways Prosecco lovers can cope with tariffs
It has not been a festive year for the wine industry. Climate-related worries, buzz-killing medical research, and an overall decline in drinking among young consumers are just a few of the worries keeping wine people up at night. Now, the wine business is bracing for the possibility of Trumpian tariffs on European imports. Winemakers of…