From the Editor

The New Wine Country

    California is a wine-drinking state, and Oaklanders, including this one, do our part to keep grape growers and winemakers in business.
    Now it’s even easier to enjoy quality wines closer to home in the East Bay, thanks to the efforts of the East Bay Vintners Alliance, a fledgling organization of artisanal winemakers who are promoting local urban wineries—and their high-quality, low-volume varietals—from Emeryville to Alameda. More than a dozen winemakers banded together in 2006 to elevate the locally produced vintages to higher status, Napa and Sonoma in their very distant sights. Making wine here, it turns out, is not so new, with Kent Rosenblum of Rosenblum Cellars and Steve Edmunds of Edmunds St. John doing so for 20 years, though more folks have recently taken up
the art.
    Regular contributor Wanda Hennig traces the evolution of the alliance, introduces its members and their products in “Uncorked!” and offers an easy-to-do tour of the wineries in “East Bay Wine Crawl,” all in the name of putting the East Bay on the wine-lover’s map.
    Oakland Magazine also has a new development on its own wine and spirits front, bringing aboard Liza B. Zimmerman to cover the topics. A wine, cocktail and food journalist for 15 years, she’s worked or freelanced for publications such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine & Spirits, The Magazine of La Cucina Italiana and the Seattle Weekly. She graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Florence with degrees in American history and Italian language and literature and has firsthand experience visiting many of the world’s major wine-producing regions. In her inaugural column, she offers sound advice on pulling off a successful wine-tasting event at home.
    Music goes well with wine, so Oakland Magazine’s newest editor, Derk Richardson, who joined the staff in February as senior editor, pens an opus on the music department at Mills College, the Oakland liberal arts women’s school. Something of a secret in the East Bay, the Mills music program is world-renown as a powerhouse of new and experimental music.
    It’s a real coup to have recruited Richardson to the magazine. An Oakland-based, award-winning book author, writer and journalist, he has two decades worth of experience covering the Bay Area food, arts, entertainment and music scenes and now adds his expertise in those areas to the mix of Oakland Magazine. Watch for more of Richardson’s writing on food, music, entertainment and other topics in upcoming issues.
    What do you want to read about? Let me know—after you enjoy reading the rest of this month’s issue.