It was billed as “The Great Cork Debate.” It pitted representatives of the cork and screw cap industries against each other, plus a confirmed screw cap user and an authority on cork taint.

Mendocino Hotel is holding “Malbec, Merlot and Mushrooms” on Nov. 10-11 and will include a forage for mushrooms through nearby Mendocino forests where guests will learn how to identify mushrooms and which ones are safe to eat.

“Napa Valley represents only 4 percent of the wine produced in California, but we get 30 percent of the revenue from that wine.”

Napa Valley, CA—Chateau Haut Verwelm, a new super-luxury winery in an exclusive part of the Napa Valley, is proud to release its first bottling, a remarkable Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon, which will soon be the most talked-about wine in the world.

As harvest 2007 wraps up in the valley, we thought we’d share photos from a different view point: These were taken by Jeff Hansen, the talented winemaker at Amici Cellars, a Napa boutique winery.

When George Taber was working on “Judgment of Paris,” his book on the 1976 Paris tasting, he traveled to many wine producing areas around the world to determine the global impact of the event. But winemakers weren’t talking about that as much as they were about the problems they were having with cork taint. “They were talking about the subject of closures,” he said.