A couple of delicious wines from the Wente Estate in California

Discovered some great new wines in Friday's wine tasting at City Beverage. We were tasting various wines from California but my favourites were from the Wente Estate Vinyards, which double up as a yoga school apparently. Wine and yoga, what an amazing life!

Myself and my buddy both loved the Morning Fog Chard Chardonnay from the Livermore Valley, so we bought a bottle to accompany our Vietnamese dinner (many of the restaurants around this area allow you to bring your own). I also bought the 2004 Shorthorn Canyon Syrah up there. It's actually 83% Syrah and the rest is a mixture of other grapes. It's incredible - both smooth and interesting. Stuart compared it to the really expensive Chateauneuf du Pape, and this is about a tenner a pop! It has a tiny, tiny amount of an unusual grape called "Counoise" in it - a very intense little fella and, in Stuart's words, this kind of addition "separates the men from the boys". Et voila, I have found my new favourite red! I must admit that I never thought to look in California