El Bloggo Torcido - Twisted Oak Winery

Twisted Shoe is Top Shoe

Our apparently now-famous Twisted Oak River of Skulls shoe managed to be a top ten shoe on Zazzle.com yesterday.

I can now personally attest to both their style and comfort, having stood on them for the duration of the FurBall Soiree last night in Modesto. (See? Fashion doesn't always have to be painful!)

If you haven't yet, cruise on over to our Zazzle.com store and check them out!

Stumbling Around the Web with Twisted Oak

It's always nice to stumble into folks mentioning Twisted Oak on their web sites and blogs. Here's a smattering of our recent stumbles...

Our friends at Vintage, A Wine Shop in Reno tell the tale of a tasting session with Gary Vaynerchuk - which included our 2007 The Spaniard!

The Vin65 blog mentioned the product review feature we have on our Twisted Oak website. (Have you posted a review?) 

A web site "borrowing" content from other web sites reminded us of a crush video produced by Twisted Oak and American Winery two years ago.

Twisted Oak Farm in North Carolina does dog rescues.

More crush photos at Twisted Oak by Gary Crabbe.

Here's a Grape Stomp video that popped up, see what it's all about! (I've got to get my video posted too!)

Esther (not a rubber chicken) endures optometric trials and tribulations before finally making it to the winery just in the nick of time.

And finally, Esther (is a rubber chicken) and Eunice are back - they traveled to Southern California, took the 26 mile trip to Catalina Island, had um cocktails in Irvine, and went to a travel conference.

Random Cave Loot photo randomly selected and photographed by El Jefe.

A Bloggo Post About The Spaniard!

An interesting thing happened on the way to the Internet. Somehow, it got so easy to post things onto Facebook that it became easy to forget we also have a blog.

OK, it's maybe not that interesting... but forgetting the blog means leaving out anyone interested in Twisted Oak that isn't on Facebook. It also means we have fallen into a place where it's all sound bites and no real meat.

Anyway, enough with the blathering. I wanted to point out a cool article by Steve Heimoff of the Wine Enthusiast about California Tempranillo:

Go ahead, read it now. I'll wait.

A pretty fair and informative article on the state of Tempranillo in the state, I think. (It didn't hurt that he said some pretty nice things about The Spaniard, of course - to which, by the way, he gave a 93 point score.)

What was left out of the article, however, was all of the great Tempranillos that are being made outside of California. This is no criticism of Steve, who is after all the California editor of WE and is just covering his beat.

Tempranillo is also now being grown and produced in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Texas - and probably in one or two states I haven't heard of yet**. In fact, Earl Jones of Abacela Winery in Oregon can arguably be considered the prime instigator of the growth of Tempranillo production in America in the last several years.

A great place to start if you want to find more American Tempranillos is the new and improved web site of the Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society (TAPAS), where you can find a listing of all member wineries that produce Tempranillo and other varieties that are native to Spain and Portugal. Go check them out!

Have fun! - El Jefe

**I mean, states with Tempranillo. I've heard of all of the states. I think.

Is the punch down paddle too long or is the winemaker too short?

sent from El Jefe's small annoying device