SantaFe.com

When July and August roll around and temperatures heat up, most wine aficionado’s taste turns toward zippy whites, like a Loire Sancerre or a Basque Txakolina. So when the Editor asked me to do a feature on Doc Martin’s restaurant and their new chef, I could hardly restrain my amusement at his name...Zippy White.

Born Gary White, Zippy grew up in Marin County in a household where food was not a big thing, often cooking simple fare for his mother and younger brother. College then led him to Colorado University in Boulder, where he found the environment even more woo-woo than in Marin.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Tom Hill • localflavor magazine

We all know that behind the scenes, there’s a lot of hard, unglamorous work required in the production of wines. For any who have ever picked grapes here in Northern New Mexico, you know that this is some of the hardest, stickiest labor around. Now imagine being a producer of ice wine–picking grapes in the dead of winter at 5:00 in the morning, the temperature below 20° F, balancing on a steep 45 degree slope, a little miner’s lamp attached to your head–freezing your kiester off!! Now, that is what you call hard labor!

Yet that is what the producers of ice wine (Eiswein in German) do...

Thursday, February 1, 2007
by Tom Hill • localflavor magazine

The standard industry joke: How do you make a small fortune in the wine industry? You start with a BIG fortune!! Actually, there’s a lot of truth to that adage. Most wineries these days are started by people who made their fortune in other endeavors and now wish a change of pace, a different lifestyle, living in Wine Country, or some such reason. As long as they have that big fortune to support that dream, they mostly succeed.

However, if you’re two young guys, just out of college, and want to pursue your dream of having a winery, and don’t have that big fortune to back you up; things can...

Sunday, May 1, 2005
by Tom Hill • localflavor magazine