Day: November 1, 2018

Fruit of the vine. Yum. I’m guilty of not really paying attention to what it takes to get a bottle of wine to my table. So I asked a prominent California Delta wine grape grower and vintner if I could tag along while they labored to bring in their crush-ready crop of pinot noir grapes. For several fall harvest seasons I’ve been wanting to chase the odd looking machines that trundle up and down rows of wine grapes in the California Delta starting in early evening. The Clarksburg area, just south of Sacramento, has a state-wide reputation, and beyond, for the quality and variety of grapes and wines produced there. It’s a part of the Delta that I wander from time to time and when I see these unusual machines on rolling stilts at dusk, headlights blazing, I’ve made mental notes to ask permission to ride along. Unfortunately mental notes aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. But this season I say to myself, if not now when?

San Francisco’s morning fog is lifting as the Delta Dragons do warm-up exercises prior to running 300 meter sprint practices on Lake Merced. Whether they

Autumn Migration is for the Birds Sunup Lift Off, Sandhill Cranes, Staten Island – photo by Rich Turner If you consider the Sacramento-San Joaquin River

Story and photographs by Eric Best It has been said by someone wise that you never step in the same river twice. Whatever you touch

Tugboat Engineer with an Artist’s Eye Zacate It might be mid-morning, when the sun finally breaks through the diffused glow of the San Francisco Bay

1862 Sacramento Flood Most of the first American settlers of the Delta came to California to quickly acquire a pile of gold. Few succeeded in the