Word: sonoma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Grape growers in Northern California have not one but two of these hungry bugs to contend with. About 30,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, site of the state's most prestigious vineyards, will eventually have to be replanted because of infestation by minute root lice called phylloxera. Now many of those same vineyards, as well as others in Lake and Mendocino counties, are battling even more dangerous pests: tiny insects called "sharpshooters," which spread a bacterium that causes Pierce's disease...
...organized according to American Viticultural Areas (AVAS), the U.S. government's muddled system of classifying the nation's wine-growing regions. Halliday, who is Australia's leading wine critic, writes with considerable zip and has a fine eye for the offbeat. Profiling the imaginative "Gunny-Bunny" team from Sonoma County's Gundlach Bundschu winery, for example, he notes that they once donned masks, waved toy guns and hijacked the famed Napa Valley Wine Train, forcing its startled passengers to sample Gundlach Bundschu wines...
...Meyers, a middle-aged Jewish English teacher who can't sleep, wanders down to the kitchen of her ritzy Long Island home to grab some nonfat yogurt and trips over the body of her estranged husband, the millionaire Richie, stabbed through the heart with a carving knife from Williams-Sonoma. Because he cheated on Rosie for 25 years and then dumped her, some might say the bum deserved every stainless-steel inch. Nevertheless, Rosie tries to pull the knife out of Richie's body. With hers the only fingerprints on the murder weapon, and plenty of reasons to want...
...Napa and Sonoma counties, heartland of California's $730 million-a-year wine industry, prospects are promising for a bumper harvest this fall. Beneath the deceptively lush surface of the peaceful vineyards, however, an expensive disaster looms. Billions of microscopic parasites called phylloxeras are munching away at the roots of the grape-bearing stalks. While no threat to human health, within a decade the tiny insects could eat their way through 50,000 acres of the nation's finest vineyards. Estimates of the total damage, including the cost of replanting with Phylloxera-resistant stalks, range from $500 million to more...
...crisis will force growers to replace their diseased vines with new, better quality grapes that can flourish in the region's wide range of microclimates, which feature coastal fog as well as baking heat. Some unprofitable and marginally successful varietals will probably disappear, at least in Napa and Sonoma. But vintners insist that they will soon be able to produce more of the premier wines consumers want -- notably Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon...