Wine

DRINK – V. Sattui at 125 years

What can you say about vintner Dario Sattui? He’s full of passion, whether he’s talking about wine, or his castle winery, Castillo di Amorosa. Listening to his story at an event to mark the 125th anniversay of V. Sattui, he just comes alive telling his most improbable story of how he made it in the wine industry. Suffice it to say he went from sleeping in his car to running the wildly successful winery in St. Helena. He’s done it his way, from selling direct to consumers, to building on the east side of Hwy 29 so that it’s an easy right turn off as visitors drive through Napa Valley. He would even pay customers to sit at the picnic tables to entice people to stop in at the winery. He doesn’t have to do that now. Most of all, Sattui’s story is inspirational, and after listening to him talk, you feel anything is possible too.

Here’s a clip from the story we did on Sattui and his castle on In Wine Country

DRINK – Play Winemaker for a Day

Conn Creek Winey in Napa Valley has a cool program where you get hands-on experience blending wine. It takes place it their AVA Room (American Viticulture Areas), where you step into the role of winemaker as you sample 15 single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon wines straight from the barrel. These 15 wines are all from the 15 appellations, or wine growing regions, that are in the Napa Valley. Conn Creek uses many of them for its signature Cab blend, Anthology. Blending is a critical tool in the winemaker’s toolbox, because often a blend will turn out to be way better than a single vineyard wine. These barrels are grouped according to flavor and body, going from soft and light to big and bold. As I taste and make notes, a few favorites pop out. Once I’d decided on the Cab components, I still had more decisions to make. One is choosing…

DRINK – Barrel tasting in Livermore Valley

ll Livermore Valley is one of my favorite wine growing regions in northern California. It’s easy to get to and is not over run with traffic and tour buses (not yet anyway!) If you’re not familiar with this area, it’s south east of San Francisco, in what the locals call the East Bay. As in many wine regions, there’s an annual barrel tasting weekend, where you can visit the wineries, talk to the winemaker and taste barrel samples. The first stop was at Bent Creek Winery, where they were not only offering samples, they were also doing a blending demonstration. You first tasted samples of Cab from barrels with two types of wood — French and Hungarian oak. There is a difference, one was rounder and softer (French oak) the other much bigger in tannins (Hungarian oak). Then you blended the two samples and the result — it tasted better…

DRINK – Wine Around the World #80sips

Do you know about Bottlenotes? It’s an online wine social media community, and totally unpretentious.  Here you can share your own tasting notes, learn about and buy wine. They have a well-edited selection in their wine portfolio. You can also get The Daily Sip, the wine equivalent of Daily Candy. Bottlenotes also organizes wine tasting events, where you can meet up with other members and taste and talk about wine (yes in person!). Called Around the World in 80 Sips, it’s a great opportunity to taste wines you may not ever come across — like a passionfruit wine from Thailand. This event was held at Crushpad, the custom crush facility in San Francisco.  Crushpad is relocating to Napa Valley, so this was probably my last time for visiting the city location.  The tasting takes place amid all the barrels of wine aging. These wines stood out for me and should…

Drink – Premiere Napa Valley #premiereNV

It’s the beginning of the wine social season if you will — Premiere Napa Valley.  This past weekend trade and media descended on the valley to taste special barrel lots created by Napa Valley winemakers that are auctioned off on Saturday afternoon. It’s a chance to meet the winemakers and owners, and to network within the industry. There are winery open houses, dinners, wine and more wine. This is when you get a good feel for the vintage.  Here, the 2008 reds made their debut.  There were many issues with that growing season, including frost and fires.  Yields were low.  Winemakers who’ve been holding their collective breath can breathe a sigh of relief.  Almost everyone I talked to is very pleased with the wines.  To me, they are restrained but complex, with long finishes. PNV is also about buying wine.  All the auction lots are exclusive to the Premiere Napa…

DRINK – Drink wine around the world in 80 sips

Bottlenotes, an online wine community, puts on the coolest wine tasting events.  Don’t miss the next one, in SF on 2.27.10   Bottlenotes offers $10 off the ticket price for “Around the World in 80 Sips” for my blog readers (loyal fans that you are!).  Last year’s event was lots of fun — and there were interesting wines from South Africa to New Zealand, plus lots of gourmet goodies to try. The event takes place amid the wine barrels at Crushpad, a micro custom crush facility, from 6pm-9pm. To get your discounted ticket, visit Bottlenotes and enter the coupon code SHOPEAT at checkout.  I look forward to seeing you there! If you do attend, please add any tasting notes, etc to the comments section of the blog.  Would love to know what you think about the wines!

DRINK – #CaliCabs Tweetup

On Thursday, Feb 11, I took part in the #CaliCabs Community Tasting Tweetup event that was created by St. Supery winery’s resident social media guru, Rick Bakas. The event started at 5 pm PST, with Cabs from Paso Robles south to San Diego tasted from 5-5:30pm. Then Cabs from Monterey to Lodi were up. Finally, at 6-7 pm, northern Calif Cabs. My contributions…Eden Canyon “Jolie” from Paso Robles, and cabs from Livermore Valley, a Retzlaff Vineyards and BoaVentura de Caires. The tweets came fast and furious. At times hard to keep up with the volume. According to Rick, 172 of us on Twitter took part, generating about 2,000 tweets to 1,000,000 followers. Many of the folks were at St. Supery winery, or at Judd’s Hill winery in Napa. I have to say that even though I was in my living room in San Jose, I felt like I was part…

DRINK – One of the most breathtaking wineries ever

There are no vineyards. Instead, wine barrels on the edge of the coast signal that you’re at a winery. Welcome to Pacific Star, on the northern California coast in Mendocino County wine country. Pacific Star is north of the town of Mendocino and Ft. Bragg. While the remote location is remote, Sally Ottoson’s wines are accessible and highly drinkable. Choose from a number of varietals, including a few Italian grapes, such as Barbera and Charbono and Carignane. I highly recommend Barbera with a spicy tomato ciopinno stew. She also makes a lovely Viognier/Rousanne blend. Recently the winery learned that a fault line runs directly under the tasting room and winery, which has been named the Pacific Star fault. Sally made the It’s My Fault blend — Syrah, Charbono and Carignane — in honor of that fact. This is the definition of a destination winery. Plan a visit here with a…

DRINK – Mendocino wine

The Mendocino Crab & Wine Days festival is a great event in that you’re eating local Dungeness crab and drinking local Mendocino County wines with it.  I tasted many of them as a component of the wine competition for the Crab & Wine Days event.  The same five judges in the the crab cake cook-off sipped and spit 48 wine entries.  Our mission:  choose the wine best paired with pure crab meat. In the blind tasting lineup there were only white wines, except for one sparkling Rose.  Lots of Chardonnays were entered, but many were over-oaked or butter bombs.  The top three wines were #1 Graziano Chenin Blanc; #2 Navarro Vineyards Gewurztraminer; #3 Yorkville Cellars Sauvignon Blanc. At the public crab and wine tasting, my favorite discoveries were the wines from Toulouse Vineyards, and the wines from Elke Vineyards. I almost don’t want to tell you about Toulouse because he’s…

EAT DRINK – Dungeness crab

Mmmm – Dungeness crab, fresh and local.  Does it get any better than that?  Well yes it does, especially with a spot-on wine pairing.  In this case you’ve got the crab with its clean flavors and just a little bit of sweetness.  A regular Chardonnay esp w/ any oak will overpower the crab.  While a Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling are more reliable choices, why not try this? An unoaked Chardonnay.  Look for Chards that are fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks.  My choice for this evening –  Sarah’s Vineyard “Steel Blue” Chardonnay.  It’s zippy and bright, and really helps enhance the tasty crab.

Navigate