A “warm embrace” is the feeling Laura Juhasz aims to evoke at Auteur Wines’ new tasting room in the Russian River Valley. The concept was an easy sell to her husband, winemaker Kenneth Juhasz.

Americans may associate the grape with white Zinfandel, an off-dry blush wine popular in the 1980s and '90s, but it has since come into its own as a serious red wine.

Hop between tasting rooms and riverside beaches in this expansive California valley region, brimming with vineyards and ...

It remains widely grown there today, but the variety became so popular in the 1970s that for a time it became nearly synonymous with "white wine" in the U.S. Today, almost every wine-producing region ...