
Family of Friends Newsletter

Best Wine with Crab Cakes: Dry White Zinfandel
If you’re searching for the best wine with crab cakes, you’ve come to the right place. This Dry White Zinfandel crab cake wine pairing (actually a Rosé) is complex, sophisticated, and refined. And it is the perfect wine for crab.
It’s rare to find a food and wine pairing this good. The crab cake recipe is simple, yet elegant. This pairing will undoubtedly earn you the respect of the most seasoned sommelier.
This “Best-Ever Crab Cake”…
Best Wine with Salmon at Mourad in San Francisco
Among the best wine with salmon pairings can be found at Mourad, a San Francisco Michelin-star restaurant that fuses the rich and vibrant style of Moroccan fine dining with the local, artisan ingredients of northern California.
Currently, on the menu is smoked salmon in a tart tomatillo sauce, which pairs perfectly with the 2021 Halleck Vineyard Little Sister Sauvignon Blanc. Inspired and surprising, this is a pairing you won’t be able to recreate at home.…
Best Wine with Duck Confit: Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir
The best wine with duck confit and other duck dishes, according to wine aficionado Jennifer LaRue, is a little-known small-production Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from Halleck Vineyard, which is not available in stores.
When LaRue hosted an intimate wine dinner at her Colorado Springs home earlier this year, she set out to find the best duck wine pairing to serve with Duck Confit, Pear, and Fennel Bites, a recipe from Food52 that incorporates confit duck breast baked in crispy phyllo dough. …
Inner Circle Gathers at Sebastopol Winery Harvest Party
On Saturday Oct. 15th, over 100 Inner Circle Wine Club Members and their guests from across the US gathered at the Halleck Vineyard Sebastopol Winery Estate for their annual wine harvest party.
The Sebastopol estate winery – surrounded by a single-acre Pinot Noir vineyard whose maiden vintage in 2001 earned Best of Class at the Pinot Noir Summit – drew wine club members and their guests for a library tasting with local cheeses,…
Top 12 Sebastopol Wine Tasting Spots (with Map)
Located west of eight miles west of Santa Rosa at the intersection of CA-12 and the Gravenstein Highway (CA-116), Sebastopol is a farming and agricultural town in Northern California with a concentration of very small wineries.
Downtown Sebastopol is in the south-central portion of the Russian River Valley, which is usually enveloped in a thick layer of coastal fog that rolls in from Bodega Bay. Russian River Valley wineries are acclaimed for Pinot Noir,…
Best Wine for Peruvian Food at La Mar SF
If you’re looking for the best wine for Peruvian food, this post is for you. Executive chef Victoriano Lopez hosted a wine pairing dinner at La Mar SF, which included food and wine pairing with his delectable Peruvian recipes, showcasing some of the best wine for seafood with a Peruvian twist.
We usually imagine a Sonoma County Wine Tasting paired with a charcuterie board of hard and soft cheese, cured meats, pickles and olives.…
Sonoma Wine Tasting Prices Surge Post Lockdown
Since the California stay-at-home lockdown order was lifted, the average price of Sonoma wine tasting County rose 44% over average prices before the lockdown, according to the 2022 Sonoma Wine Tasting Report.
The average price of an entry-level Sonoma wine tasting was $25.75 before the lockdown on March 19, 2020. But since the lockdown was lifted on June 15, 2021, the average price of an entry-level wine tasting in Sonoma County has risen to $37. …
Best Time to Visit Wine Country
“The odds are against every farmer. All the time,” says Samantha Dorsey, president of McEvoy Ranch on the Point Reyes Petaluma Highway. And finding a way to overcome those odds in the age of climate change and create a top-tier, artisanal product has become increasingly challenging.
Over the last three years, two of the top ten costliest fires in the US – The Glass Fire and CZU Lightning Complex Fire were in Northern California,…
