Wine corks are not something to be discarded, or dismissed as unimportant, not to artist Scott Gundersen, or to those who make a living from producing wine stoppers from cork.

Wine lovers looking for new taste treats would do well to investigate craft ciders, a fast-growing category of beverage that is still well below almost everyone’s radar.

At Napa Valley Commons in south Napa, wineries may be close to a few vines planted in the parking lot. Yet the setting is no chill factor to wine lovers who drive there to taste and buy wine and tour wineries, dock, tanks, barrels and all.

A longtime Napa Valley vintner has filed a lawsuit against an Angwin-based winery over the use of the name “Hillside Select,” according to a complaint filed in Napa County Superior Court in December.

Although sales of wine have recovered strongly from the depths of the recession, Impact Databank reports that the total U.S. wine market only grew 0.3 percent in 2014 to a volume of 322 million nine-liter cases.

Napa County’s wine country sometimes seemed at a crossroads in 2014, as people disagreed whether certain proposals for new wineries and vineyards should go forward.

Dozens of Mumm Napa employees gathered Wednesday morning to celebrate the start of the 2014 harvest on the winery’s crushpad.

Carl Doumani has sold his 6,000-to-8,000-case Quixote winery, vineyard and home in the Stags Leap District to a subsidiary of Le Melange, an American company owned by a Chinese firm. The story was first reported in the Wine Spectator blog by Napan James Laube.

Within the past decade, the life of a 43-year-old South African woman, Zelda Petrus, has taken a 180-degree turn. It’s been both a change in attitude and direction.

Lagrein, colombard, and pinotage were not the most uttered wine terms of 2009 — not even with the three winemakers who made the wines.