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