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May 21st
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Wine Reviews

Dining - Wine Reviews

Loma Prieta Winery

Loma Prieta Winery

Viognier 2010—Sweet Smell of Success

A trip to Loma Prieta Winery is well worth a visit. Situated at about 2,600 feet in the Santa Cruz Mountains, it is like being on top of the world—and the view of the Monterey Bay is spectacular. Loma Prieta’s wines are pretty spectacular, too, which makes it even more worthwhile to take a jaunt to their tasting room.

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Vine & Dine

Vine & Dine

Wine and Dine and more ... 

Half Moon Bay Food & Wine Fare

Get away to the Oceano Hotel & Spa in Half Moon Bay, known for its beautiful views and great food, to an annual food and wine event organized by the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association.

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Hunter Hill Vineyard & Winery

Hunter Hill Vineyard & Winery

Sauvignon Blanc 2011—A brand new release from Soquel’s Hunter Hill

I first tasted Hunter Hill’s Sauvignon Blanc at the Capitola Art & Wine Festival in September. On a particularly hot day for our neck of the woods, this was perhaps one of the lightest and most refreshing wines around, and I went back for another tasting.

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Frederick William Cellars

Frederick William Cellars

Syrah 2009—A Beautiful Wine to Savor

Aptos resident Fred Scherrer is very involved in the wine business—both making it and marketing it, but it was a long path that led to that point. Scherrer so loved good wine and wanted to make it under his own label that he volunteered at Kathryn Kennedy Winery for two years, working with one of the best winemakers in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Marty Mathis. “Marty taught me to make wine and emphasized the key issues when doing so, and some common pitfalls to avoid,” says Scherrer.

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Vine and Dine

Vine and Dine

 

Solaire Restaurant in the new Hotel Paradox  

I am so excited about the opening of Hotel Paradox. I was taken on a tour about two weeks before it officially opened by Executive Chef Ross McKee and Food & Beverage Outlets Supervisor Guy Freshwater and was greatly impressed. 

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Pierce Ranch Vineyards

Pierce Ranch Vineyards

Albariño 2009

Trying a lovely bottle of wine in a new restaurant is always high on my list of things to do. My husband and I spent a night in Carmel at the Hofsas House, a delightful boutique hotel about five minutes’ walk from the center of town, and as we were looking for an interesting place to eat, the hotel recommended Mundaka—an upbeat little tapas restaurant with a terrific vibe.

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Dining - Wine Reviews

Soquel Vineyards

Soquel Vineyards

Pinot Noir 2010

We picked a good day to go on a wine-tasting trip to Soquel Vineyards. The winery had released their Estate Pinot Noir Partners’ Reserve 2010 ($40) that very day, and I immediately fell in love with it.

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    The Maya-Ixil Move Forward

    Local nonprofit works to educate and create opportunity for indigenous communities in Guatemala In an isolated region of the Guatemala mountains called Ixil, the indigenous Maya population was devastated by a civil war between the government and leftist guerrilla factions that spanned 1960 to 1996. During that 36-year war, the Guatemalan military eradicated entire Mayan communities. In what amounted to genocide, soldiers burned Mayan farmlands and homes, raped and tortured the people, and scattered families. By the end of the war, 200,000 Mayans had been killed, 7,000 of whom were Maya-Ixil.

     

    Public Thinking

    Watsonville teens host TEDx event Santa Cruz County is no stranger to the TED brand. TED—which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—talks have come to the area through independently organized events 10 times since 2011. This month, the gathering returns to the county with a new twist, thanks to the Watsonville Youth City Council. TEDxYouth@Watsonville, which will take place Sunday, May 19 at the Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville, will feature only speakers younger than 19 years old and will traverse topics from racial stereotypes and renewable energy to traditional Mexican dance.

     

    Transoceana

    Danny Moriarty’s musical influences have been known to impact his life beyond his local rock band, Transoceana. “I went through two periods,” confesses the singer, guitarist and songwriter. “I borrowed Bono’s mullet look from the ’80s for a while, and then I dressed like I was from the ’70s and had big hair like Jimmy Page.” Bono and Page are also symbolic of Transoceana’s evolution as a band during their three years together.

     

    Cruzin’ for Inspiration

    Former resident pays homage to Santa Cruz with locally shot thesis film When he left Santa Cruz for the University of Southern California’s graduate film program in 2010, Christopher Guerrero had completed the film major at UC Santa Cruz in 2008 and worked on campus in the film and digital media department. It wasn’t until he headed south, that Guerrero began to reminisce about the coastal town. “It was really really hard when I moved to L.A., to acclimate and find friends,” he says, adding that—counter to the philosophical, conversational culture of Santa Cruz—he found nowhere in his new town where he could simply sit and talk about life with someone. “I didn’t really realize why I love [Santa Cruz] so much until it was gone.”

     

    Beck to the Future

    In celebration of Beck’s solo acoustic show at The Rio, GT explores Song Reader, the alternative rock icon’s most ambitious interactive art piece yet. Here’s an odd little paradox of the digital revolution: The more sophisticated our technology gets, the more our musical milieu begins to resemble that of a bygone era, when song ideas were passed around from musician to musician, perpetually taking on new twists. Dozens of different YouTube users might try their hand at setting somebody’s rant about cats or double rainbows to music, or you might hear the Belgian musician Gotye turning the many and varied covers of his song “Somebody That I Used to Know” into a virtual orchestra (see below).

     

    Growing Berries Without Bromide

    Researchers test a new alternative to a controversial chemical The scarecrows perched in Santa Cruz strawberry fields do little to scare away the birds, much less the insects and fungi harbored in the soil. Everything likes to eat strawberries, which makes growing them a risky business. This predicament led UC Santa Cruz professor Carol Shennan to take an unconventional approach to pest management. Nine years ago, the fatal plant disease Verticillium wilt was wiping out strawberry plants at the university farm. Chemicals hardly phase the pathogen, and Shennan saw little improvement with crop rotation, which is typically used to treat infested fields. A visiting plant pathologist from the Netherlands recommended a little-known organic technique called anaerobic soil disinfestation, and, with so few other options, Shennan decided to give it a try. 

     

    Uniting All That Has Been Separated

     

    Legal Battles Drag On

    More than a year after the 75 River St. occupation, four defendants remain embroiled in ongoing case  More than a year and a half since a group occupied the former Wells Fargo building on River Street in an act of protest, felony charges linger on for four of the original defendants and a trial may be imminent. Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, Brent Adams, Cameron Laurendeau and Franklin Alcantara were scheduled to begin trial May 13 in connection with the late 2011 protest. That trial now has been pushed back to September due to scheduling conflicts. The four face a felony charge of vandalism and a misdemeanor for trespassing.

     

    Bringing the Message Home

    Former mayor and UCSC student recap their experiences at the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women While traveling to New York for the 57th United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), seasoned local activist Jane Weed-Pomerantz had a notion of what to expect. But, with the vast scope of worldwide women’s rights violations presented at the commission, she knew she would still be taken aback at times. “I was worried because I had a feeling I would be finding out what I did find out about women and girls in the world,” says Weed-Pomerantz. “I was trying to brace myself for the knowledge of the reality, because we are really very protected in this country.”

     

    The Tilt

    Although Jesse Malley, lead singer of the outlaw country, blues and rock ’n’ roll band The Tilt, no longer lives in Santa Cruz, she was born and raised here and this is where her love of music and performance began. “My dad worked at The Catalyst for 27 years, so I got to see a lot of music acts come through town,” she says. “Music always seemed to me to be such an incredible way to express yourself that I just stumbled upon my voice and jumped into it.” That jump eventually led to Malley heading down to San Diego to pursue a music career, and her band The Tilt has just released their full-length debut, Howlin’.
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