Why am I blogging about wineries and vineyards?

There are lots of different ways for people to connect and do business out in Wine Country, bring guests out on one-day tours to visit all of them.

Gracious guests, Exhibit A

Some folks buy land and farm grapes, then sell them to a winery, or bring the grapes to a "custom crush" facility where the wine can be made. Some build a winery and buy (source) grapes from a grower. Some with a bigger investment do it all at once. Some open a "tasting room cooperative" like Silenus Vintners<www.silenusvintners.com> or Savour St Helena <www.savoursthelena.com> and offer wines for tasting and sale from a number of local growers and winemakers who otherwise wouldn't have exposure to the public. Then, of course there are all the other people; like tasting room staff, cellar rats, wine sales reps, sommeliers and...tour guides.

I started working in wine tourism two years ago, came from event production, publishing and education. When I lived in Italy in the nineties I got introduced to wines and eating well (no offense to Dad who raised us on a good, clean diet of 3 squares-a-day peppered with the occasional kosher delicacy). Back in college I got a summer job hauling tomatoes in the Sacramento River Valley, been a commercial driver on-and-off hauling lots of things, paper, food, mail, horse manure from the racetracks, and now people?!?!...to and from the wine destinations of Napa and Sonoma. 

I am not a sommelier, or as some incredibly seem to say "Sommalier", a nomiker I would reserve to the expert of the inner workings of a certain East African country. I also hear people simply say "somm". I might try it some day. There are a seemingly endless supply of enigmatic pronunciations in the industry up here, not least of which is the mysterious addition of a second ghost n popping up between the i and g in Benziger or a softening of the g. Thousands are doing it. No one even at the vineyard offers a reason for this.  Another good one is "Ferrarrrr", as though it were an exotic Italian car with a missing final vowel sound. I can't explain it.

I will try my best to refrain from the excessive use of flavor-profile adjectives, although my friend said something about this being an industry of adjectives and we must all use them well. Sometimes I will use adjectives which are obviously not mine. Other times I will use adjectives which you wouldn't believe are mine, but they actually are mine. If you don't like them, then they are in fact not mine. 

Tasting notes are generally developed not by one person, but by consortium. So please consider many of the notes I write here, largely agreed upon in that way. Truth is, it's hard not to write something, however dimly perceived,  about the quality of the wines I/we taste.  

It's not my goal to necessarily tantalize you with adjectives as much as to share my stories with you; news of the cost of tastings and wines, how the local economy is treating the different businesses, what offerings these remote locales are cooking up for their guests and wine club members, and maybe more than all of this, what is happening on my tours and off-duty visits. I will hide names to protect the identities of my mainly-gracious guests. 

These people all just finished taking turns dancing on that pole
in the middle as I wound along the Silverado Trail . I insisted they stop
 and they refused flatly until they had all finished. Slightly less gracious. 

Winelog #1 Clos du Val

I have the day off from touring today, so am visiting wineries with some other guides, Brett and Greg: many thanks to Brett for his expansive sommelier insights and connections in the valley and to Greg for being such a sport and hauling us around!

Where did we go? 

Clos du Val/ Chappellet/ Joseph Phelps/ Regusci

Clos du Val: 5330 Silverado Trail, Napa, CA. 94558 (707) 261-5251

Fantastic tasting! If you have been driving by this spot in favor of smaller, lesser-known wineries and vineyard tasting rooms, drop in next time. Call ahead for better service. There's a good reason why some wineries get famous. 

Clos du Val, only 2 years after French owners Bernard Portet & John Goelet's first grape purchase and with their very first vintage, entered in the Judgment of Paris and placed #8 for Cabernet, behind only Heitz, Martha's Vineyard 1970 and Stag's Leap 1973! 

Jim Wilkinson is cool! He's a farmer here in the Valley. He and his partner own their own farm down the Silverado Trail, Omi's Farm. He hunts with a bow and arrow; killed 10 boar and 22 turkeys last January. He came to wines from trucking. He had worked for the military. Intending to go into special ops, he had a bit of a fall and, unable to keep driving, found a job here doing something he loves; wine hospitality. He knows his wines and the terroir of the plots where they grow them.

Jim and me. He bagged 10 boar last January, bow and arrow.

CDV offers four tiers of tastings. 

1) Harvest Whites for white wine lovers. Good one to know in the valley!

2) Current Releases Tasting 15 bucks. 

3) Reserve Reds Tasting 25 bucks, includes a mini vertical of the Stag's Leap District Cabs '07 and '06.

(I have lately taken to starting with the more recent year in vertical tastings, rather than starting with older vintage, so as to follow the aging of the wine. Maybe that's the way it should be done, but I have seen it the other way 'round).

2000 Reserve Cab

1997 Reserve Cab Bernard Portet Signature. Yes!

4) Romance package for two in the private olive grove paired with chocolate and roses. I figured since there were three of us, we would skip this one today.

Here's what we tasted. 

   

Three Graces Chardonnay: This is a very friendly and approachable white blended from 3 of the vineyard's Carneros blocks. It's a 50% malolactic, stopped halfway through the 2nd fermentation with sulphur (guess that's how they do it); 10 months french oak, 20% new, creamy enough to enjoy on it's own and not at the expense of good acidity. At 35 bucks, I'd take it home. 

Merlot '08- Napa Valley- Bright red cherry notes on the nose with a little smoke to back it up on a nice solid mid-pallette. Little earth and fungus. About an eighteen to twenty-second finish. I counted on the second hand.;-) 12% cab franc.

Reserve Pinot Noir '07-  earthy and light violet, red fruit, fussy, hay, mustard and white pepper on the nose. (I am not copying tasting notes, I promise!) 

Vertical 06 and 07 Stag's Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon - A rich, deep nose of black fruit, lilac, earth and tobacco on the 07. Complex, generously open tannins are soft enough to enjoy without food. 20 second finish. -06 is surprisingly more open, softened and mellow after just one year. (When you do a vertical, be sure to mark the years with a dry erase on the base of the stem to avoid confusion. Brett did this and I was really glad;-)).

2000 100% Reserve Cabernet. Gone so much in the Bordeaux style, green peppers, olives, wet clay, and volcanics seem to rule the nose, which was described by a friend as a rain shower over damp earth on a hot day. I like that! French would say "petroleum", Jim says, which he would describe as raisin oil. One thing I could definitely pick up both on the nose and pallette is graphite...pencil lead!?!? 

Jim says that our nose picks up alcohol, then barrel flavors, then toast. Now there's a test for you! First, try to pick up (through the alcohol) whether the wine was aged in french (predominated by vanilla and spice) or american (caramel, as evidence by the higher sugar content and oxygen of american oak). Then behind that try to pick up the toast on the nose and pallette. Easy to confuse the barrel flavors with the toast, and the toast with the more primary notes that may come from smoke on the fruit, but possibly discernable from the order on the nose where we pick it up. Ahhaha!!!!

If you are thinking that you would like to be more familiar with the wines of Stag's Leap District but you don't want to run around so much, Stag's Leap District Winegrowers Association is currently offering through Clos du Val an eighteen-bottle sampling from all the core wineries called "The Appellation Collection", 18 Cab Sauvs from the member wineries. $1450.00

Ulysses is the Marketing Director here. I have to extend thanks to you for the invitation and to Jim and Debra for the tasting. Hope you like your picture, Ulysses!!

Thank you for the invitation, Ulysses!
I promise to come back with many guests;-)

Thank you for reading and stay tuned as I chase the vine?!?!