lgsjr – Page 2 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Tasting in Sonoma County – A Status Report

The pandemic is in the rearview mirror in Sonoma County. So are the fires of 2017 and 2020. There are some landmarks that will never be replaced but there is plenty of building and expansion, especially regarding tourism. Which is to say, wine-tasting tourism. There are new restaurants in the obvious places, such as Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, but also in tiny Geyserville. All in all, times are good.

Healdsburg Plaza. Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Tourism.

But there are a few cracks in that pretty picture. Wine consumption is in decline in the United States and worldwide, according to reports in Decanter magazine and the Guardian. As a result, some wineries are feeling a financial pinch. One winery that we know and enjoy is letting fruit rot on the vines, because the cost of picking them wasn’t justified by the wine they couldn’t sell.

Mature grapes rotting on the vine.

The crackdown on immigration is also having an effect. It is no secret that California’s agricultural industries are built on the backs of immigrant laborers. The inbound flow of workers has ceased and many already here are afraid to show up for work. Raids on vineyards have left many people afraid to come to work.

For the most part, none of this is evident to the average wine taster. There appear to be more wineries opening their doors (or are we just noticing more that we used to drive past?). Restaurants are crowded, even off-season, although there seem to be more locals dining there than in summer. As an overall statement based on an admittedly limited sample, Sonoma County is maintaining and even expanding its place in the world of fine winemaking.

Almost without exception, Sonoma County wineries have adopted the seated-tasting-by-reservation model that appeared after the pandemic. This does enable the wineries to gauge the amount of staff they need on any given day, although we did enter quite a few where two servers were chatting with each other because we were the only visitors at the time. To be fair, the ones that have always been tourist favorites, such as Domaine Carneros (in Napa Valley, just over the county line) or Dry Creek Vineyard are as crowded as ever. And we were able to simply walk into almost all tasting rooms without a reservation.

Certain things haven’t changed and probably won’t. Dry Creek still is the place to go for Zinfandel; Russian River for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; and Alexander Valley for Cabernet Sauvignon. The rolling hills are gorgeous in every season and expansive fields of vines will always tug at our heartstrings.

And one thing seems even more pronounced. The people we meet at the wineries are so friendly! They seem equally appreciative of the life they lead amidst the vines and of the visitors who enjoy the wines they produce. We encountered none of the snobbism that typifies other (not to be named) regions in California. From temporarily employed servers to winery owners whom we met, they all seemed genuinely pleased to see us and share their wines with us. That alone is sufficient reason to visit Sonoma County in these troubled times.

Editorial: Bring Back the Bars

Seated tastings are the norm in California wineries these days, especially in Sonoma County and Napa Valley. We understand the rationale from the wineries’ perspective. Perhaps some wine tasters prefer to be waited upon, rather than simply having their glasses filled. We are not really opposed to seated tastings, but we would like to have the opportunity to choose.

The bar at Limerick Lane in Russian River. They also offer seated tastings. Bar tastings are less expensive.

Of course it’s nice to sit rather than stand while tasting wines. (Bar stools do alleviate this problem.) This is, after all, the way most of us enjoy wine at home. But there are drawbacks as well.

We don’t get to chat with other tasters. We’ve frequently met nice people this way, and they also enjoy wine tasting or they wouldn’t be there. Sometimes we could get a different take on certain wines than just our own.
At the bar, we could sip and pour off wines at our own pace. If, for example, we only wanted to taste a winery’s Zinfandels, we could focus on these and leave the Merlots and Syrahs untasted. This enables us to sample a winery’s wares in less time, so we could visit more of them, without overconsuming alcohol.
There is less pressure to join the wine clubs when we were at the bar. In part because we were moving long more swiftly, the server usually didn’t bring it up unless we asked.
The bartender/server is always present. The waiters at sit-down tastings come and go. Sometimes they are at another table, which happens in a bar setting as well. But other times they are chatting with their colleagues and we have to wait to be served.

We don’t want to take away seated tastings from those who enjoy them. But we’d like to have the choice to sit at the bar and be served as well.

Dealing with Reserved Seated Tastings

Wine tasting these days in California, at least in Sonoma County and Napa Valley, almost always consists of sitting at a table, with a server coming by to pour wines on a preset list. Depending on the winery, it can feel like an elegant way to taste or an arduous process of tasting what the winery wants you to taste versus what you want. Also, almost all of the wineries say that you must make a reservation and that tastings will last 90 minutes. That can be rather limiting if you want to make a day of sipping (not drinking) fine wines.

There are some tips to regain control of our wine tasting experiences.

Reservations may matter. Yes, there are some places that are serious about the reservation policy. For the most part, these are wineries that make very high-end (i.e., expensive) wines and often entail a tour as well as a tasting. Do a little homework in advance if you’d like to try one of these. A rough rule in this regard is that the ones where you must be on the list to be admitted will say “By appointment only” rather than specifying reservations. Ramey in Healdsburg is one of these.
For the rest, reservations don’t matter. We have pulled into wineries with signs outside saying “Only by reservation”, to find an empty room with a bored employee waiting for customers. There are even signs popping up these days saying, “Walk-ins Welcome”. We think that the restrictive policies were meant to manage labor cost of servers but have resulted in keeping visitors away. Maybe a phone call while you’re on the way would be polite; still, if there’s a winery you want to explore, just go in. The worst that can happen is you’ll just get back in the car.
In-town tastings are more likely to be open. These too are likely to be sit-down affairs, but so many rely on walk-ins that there is rarely a need to reserve in advance. Most of these are relatively unknown, so the curiosity of passers-by is their marketing strategy. There are also some well-known labels in the towns. For example, if you walk around Healdsburg, you might encounter Hartford Family or Siduri, which have significant reputations. But there are also some relative unknowns, such as Lurton, which also serve pretty fine wine.
You don’t have to follow the list. If you see that there are wines offered on the tasting list that you are uninterested in, skip them. If, for example, you only want to sip red wines, say so. In that case, you’re likely to get not only the listed wines but a selection of others that they make. And if you’re only interested in a varietal, you may go through their entire inventory of that grape.
Hurry the server along. In some cases, they want to leave you to yourself. In others they want to chat. If your interest is tasting and then moving along, keep the server filling your glasses. Of course, if you prefer solitude or conversation, ignore this tip.

Ask for all the wines to be served at once. This not only shortens the interaction with the server, it also gives you a chance to compare wines side-by-side. Also, it’s pretty to see so many glasses of wine in front of you.

Saini Vineyards

It all started at Baci, a restaurant in Healdsburg. [If you visit Healdsburg, we recommend you dine at Baci. Ask for Lisbeth, the owner and the hostess, and by the time you finish dinner you’ll feel like you have a new friend.] We thought that Zinfandel would go well with our meal but didn’t recognize any on the list of locally made wines. When we asked the waiter for a recommendation, she immediately said, “Saini”. We ordered a bottle and loved it, so the next day we drove to the winery to see what else they had to offer.

The Saini tasting room.

We found an attractive wooden building, at once rustic and modern, a theme that is continued inside. The first two things we saw as we entered was a long granite bar, perched on wine barrels, above which was a huge, elegant chandelier. The other was a small brick shack, of which more later.

The chandelier above the bar has more than 1600 Swarovski crystals.

There is a high likelihood that you will meet a member of the Saini family when you visit. We got to meet the owner John Saini (pronounced SA-ini), his daughter-in-law Laura and his grandson Angelo. Three generations at one time! John is there often and sometimes leads tours of the vineyard. We had a chance to chat with him and his business manager, George Christie. We learned how his grandfather established the vineyard in 1917 and planted vines that are still producing. He had built a brick shed for storing his wines. When the current tasting room was built, it was hoped to incorporate the old shed, but it was structurally unsound. So they demolished it and rebuilt it into the entrance of the building out of the original bricks.

John Saini with his grandson Angelo.

It is evident that family means a lot at Saini. But it’s more than genealogical heritage. John Saini refers to George and Lisbeth of Baci as “family”. We happened to be there for a member event, and all those guests were family, too. We believe we are now, too. That sense of connectedness – to the soil, to the vines, even the trees and the Dry Creek neighbors – suffuses the Saini experience.

The sense of family is even there in the wines. The list includes Nonno’s Bianco and Rosso (Nonno being Italian for grandpa). There’s Valentina Marie’s Rosé and Angelo’s Paintbrush, a blend of just about every grape they grow. Even the trees get into the names: Apple Block and Olive Block Zinfandels, the latter being the one we tried at the restaurant and still our favorite. Overall, there is an Italianate tinge to the wines, one more connection to the Saini heritage. We can’t guarantee that anyone else will get to meet so many family members as we did, but it’s a high likelihood that every visitor will encounter the warm welcome we got at Saini. We at Power Tasting don’t review wines, although we can say we enjoyed what we tasted at this tasting room. We do write about the wine tasting experience, and all we have to say is that we left Saini Vineyards with big smiles on o

Plaza Mayor

Among the things that any first-time to Madrid must do is to visit the Plaza Mayor. That’s sort of like saying that first-time visitors to New York City must see Times Square. There’s no way any visitor would miss it. It is the principal meeting place in Spain’s capital city and it has had an interesting history.

The Plaza Mayor in Madrid, at night.

There has been a marketplace in that spot since the 15^th century. It wasn’t always called the Plaza Mayor (Major Square in English). The name has changed in the winds of Spanish politics; for instance it was called Plaza de la Constitución off and on depending on the strength of the monarchy. It has stayed as the Plaza Mayor only since the end of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, but it seems the name will stick.

Today it is a grand square completely surrounded by four-story buildings. Mostly they are occupied as private residences, except for the plaza-level, which is almost completely commercial. The plaza is a magnet for tourists and so it is filled with people every day, all year long. Where there are tourists, there are sure to be vendors spreading a blanket and selling handbags, tchotchkes and Real Madrid tee shirts. There are also acrobats and street musicians, about the same as may be found in almost every popular tourist destination, worldwide.

That said, the Plaza Mayor is a marvel of architectural harmony, designed as we know it today by Juan Villanueva, who also was the architect of the Parado museum and other grand buildings in Madrid. In the middle of it all is a statue of the Spanish king Philip III on horseback. It is quite a pleasure to sit under one of the restaurant umbrellas surrounding the plaza, sipping a glass of wine and munching on tapas. Just taking in the hubbub is a part of the Madrid experience.

It is also worth exploring the shops that surround the Plaza Mayor. There is an arched portico around the square and the shops are easy to access, even if the day is hot or rainy. Many of them are full of tacky souvenirs, but there are some interesting ones, such as the hatmaker and vendor of Spanish almonds.

The Mercado San Miguel. Photo courtesy of Tourism Madrid.

Just outside the northwest corner of the Plaza Mayor is the Mercado San Miguel. It should be experienced on an empty stomach. It was an actual food market for nearly a century, until the growth of supermarkets rendered it obsolete. In 2009 it was re-opened as a mammoth gourmet tapas food hall. The game plan for a visit there is to walk around and locate the food to buy. This is difficult because everything looks (and is) delicious. One person hunts down some empty stools at the long tables that are located throughout the hall. Another person finds the bar and purchases glasses of wine. Then they take turns buying portions to share from the various kiosks. When sated – this can take hours – they repair to the bar and finish off the meal with their grand selection of sherries.

Freixenet, Today

This article is meant to be the companion piece to “Freixenet, Back When”, published in the Experiences section of Power Tasting’s April 2025 edition. As published, we had consistently misspelled the name of the winery, which we have since corrected. And while we’re at it, the name of the winery is pronounced FRESH-eh-net. We apologize to our readers and to the people at Freixenet.

There are often wine tasting destinations near big cities. Napa Valley is an hour or so from San Francisco. It’s a few hours’ drive from New York City to Long Island’s North Fork. Wine is being made inside Vienna’s city limits and nearby as well. And just outside Barcelona, there’s Penedes, where Cava is made. An easy train ride from Barcelona to the village of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia brings you directly to Freixenet.

The Freixenet winery.

In case you weren’t aware, Cava is Spain’s sparkling wine. At Freixenet, it is made the same way as French Champagne, except that the primary grapes are Macabeo, Paralleda and Xarelo (or Xarel·lo, as the Catalans spell it). Their wines range from the well-known Carta Nevada and Cordon Negro to some interesting wines at the other end of their spectrum, such as Gran Reserva Brut Nature (with no dosage) and an Extra Brut. They also have a rosé sparkler that is made of the Trepat grape. Finally, there is a dessert sparkling one made from Malvasia grapes.

Reproduction of a Freixenet advertising poster of another era.

All these are the wines served on their wine and cheese tour, which we recommend. If you do take the train there, you will find the winery right at the station. Externally, it looks very much like a Spanish hacienda, which we guess isn’t unintentional. The area in front of the winery has some ancient presses and a golden 1950 Chrysler. Once inside, the reception area is sleek and modern, decorated with art that recalls Freixenet’s history. There’s also the Freixenetmobile, in the form of a bottle of Cordon Negro.

The Freixenetmobile.

The tour begins with a film about Freixenet’s history and current presence in the world. Not only are they the best selling Cava, the company sells more sparkling wine than any other producer globally. They have a long history, having been founded in 1914. They survived the Spanish Civil War that took the lives of the founder and his son. His widow kept Freixenet going through the Franco years. In 2018, they were bought out by the German Sekt maker, Henkell, so now they are not just Spanish but international

If you’ve seen how Champagne or California sparkling wine is made, there’s not much new on the tour of Freixenet. One fun extra is an array of antique bottling equipment. The high spot, naturally, is the tasting. There, Freixenet flexes its muscles a bit and shows of what Cava is capable of. As always, Power Tasting doesn’t review wine, but we can say that we did enjoy what we were served and were quite delightedly surprised by Freixenet’s range.

Sadly, their better Cavas aren’t available in the United States and only sparingly so in Canada. So there’s nothing else to do than travel to Spain and take the Freixenet tour.

All Those Grapes

As detailed in another article in this edition, Spanish winemakers use a lot of grapes that are unfamiliar to most North American wine lovers. Perhaps most people don’t care but the readers of Power Tasting are a demanding bunch. They don’t just want to enjoy what they’re sipping but also know about it. In California, wherever they go, they know they’ll find Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel in the reds, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc in the whites.

Tasting wine at tapas bars in Barcelona.

Not so in Spain. A lot of it is geographical. In the north, there will be Tempranillo; in the southwest, near Jerez, there will be Palomino and Pedro Ximénez in the sherry. Macabeo in Pinedes, Mencia in the Priorat and in Galicia Albariño grapes go into the wine of the same name. It would take a lot of travel to experience them all at the vineyards.

That’s where wine bars come in. The fact that the bars also double as taparias doesn’t hurt. Here are a few tips for diving into the various grapes that are used in Spanish winemaking.

One option is pot luck. There’s nothing stopping you from sitting down with a tapa and asking for a glass of tinto or a blanco. Then ask the server what wine was served. Crude but effective, if you go to enough tapas bars you’re likely to get a selection. But it will also likely be a selection of mediocre wines.

Skip the sangria. A pitcher of fruit juice, red wine and fruit is (may be?) fine for a picnic. If you’re interested in learning about Spanish wines, you won’t learn anything with sangria.

A better plan is to go to the slightly better tapas bars (for the most part, you can tell the better ones just by looking at them) and order wine by region. Even better, order several glasses from different regions and compare them. In that manner we found that we prefer wines from the Ribero del Duero to those from Rioja. Maybe that’s because Riberos are often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Riojas with Spanish grapes. In the whites, we found we prefer Albariños to the Macabeos of Rioja.

Rely on sommeliers. While this is good advice anywhere, having someone guide you through the mysteries of a Spanish wine list is very helpful. A better restaurant will offer wines from smaller producers of higher quality that are probably unknown to foreign visitors. Always with consideration for the food order, you can ask a sommelier or a server to suggest a wine specifically from regions other than the best known ones and from less well known grapes as well. That’s how, in the past, we discovered Priorat wines and Verdejo from Castille.

Try as many as you can, then decide. It is easy to fall back on Tempranillo as a favorite because these are the most widely available wines back home. But if you’re in Spain, experiment. You may never get to taste wines from some grapes again. And if you find one you do like, you can search for it in wine stores around where you live. You may get lucky.

Discovering Spanish Wines

Our earliest wine drinking experiences were with (inexpensive) French wines. We don’t remember for sure whether our parents knew about these first sips. By the time we got to California wines, they were in big jugs, mostly opened at parties. We have moved up a bit from those days, but still our table usually features wines from France, Italy and the United States.

Photo courtesy of 8Wines.

We came to Spanish wines much later in life. In one way, that was too bad, since we missed out on some fine drinking. On the other hand, we were able to appreciate quality when we tasted it. Even so, most of our experience was in Spanish restaurants, where the wine lists were not too deep. Mostly, we ordered Montecillo and Torres Sangre de Toro; nothing wrong with them but not a real introduction to what the Spaniards are capable of.

Little by little, the restaurants we frequented featured more robust wine lists. By then, we knew that the better wines (or more accurately, the better wines we had heard of) came from Rioja and were made of Tempranillo grapes. (We didn’t drink much Spanish white wine.) And indeed Rioja makes some fine wines, but then we discovered that off to the west, there were excellent wines being made in the Ribiero de Duero. And there were other grapes, such as Garnacha and Monastrell. (Only much later did we learn that those grapes were the same as – and maybe the predecessors of – what the French know as Grenache and Mourvèdre.)

Little by little, we started drinking wines from Zaragoza (made of Cariñena, the same as Carignan), Catalunya and the Priorat (made of Mencia grapes, the same as nothing else). For the most part, these were still consumed in restaurants, though there were a few we found in local wine stores. We still stayed with inexpensive Spanish wines, since we didn’t know much about what to buy. And some of those less pricey wines, such as Borsao’s Tres Picos from Aragon were pretty good.

Then we began to travel in Spain and our wine tasting adventures went in both directions. At tapas bars, we would order a tinto (occasionally a blanco) and got a glass of whatever and a little bit to eat. We certainly didn’t expand our understanding of quality Spanish wines.

But we did eat in better Spanish restaurants and, ignorant as we were of their wines, let the sommeliers help us. Now our eyes were opened, along with our noses and mouths. For one thing, we found out that mass producers such as Torres and Marques de Riscal made some top end wines we couldn’t find back home. For another, we discovered wine makers such as Muga, Pesquera and Vega Sicilia that made excellent wines that we could find in North American stores.

We still drink more wines from other regions than we do from Spain, but we have a greater appreciation of the quality of Spanish wines. We are also impressed by the variety of wines made there. We enjoy the wines we have with paella at local Spanish restaurants and we have much better knowledge of what’s in the bottles.

The Heat Is On

We get to meet many people on the wine trade, including wine makers and vineyard representatives. In recent years, these people have all expressed a consistent worry: Climate change is changing the conditions in which wine is made and, in some cases, the wine itself.

Wine grapes love warm, sunny weather. They detest frosts once the vines begin to bud. Of course, they want to be watered by gentle rainfall, but only at certain times of the year, in spring and summer. But not at harvest time! Yes, changing climate changes are making for hotter days over longer periods. But it is also resulting in unexpected cold in the spring months and long-lasting deluges at, so it seems, all the wrong times.

Photo courtesy of AccuWeather.

Hotter summers lead to greater sugar content in the grapes, which in turn can be harvested sooner. These sugar-laden grapes produce wines with higher (and ever higher) alcohol levels, but without the acidity slower ripening would produce. When tasting wines in the year or two after scorching summers, visitors to wineries should be alert to power-hitting wines that seem to lack any liveliness on the tongue.

We are not yet seeing great wines coming from northern-most climes. There’s no reason to expect great Norwegian wine anytime soon. But the temperatures are changing the grapes used in some familiar wines. For example, Merlot is becoming more prevalent in Left Bank Bordeaux wines, where Cabernet Sauvignon has reigned for centuries. Moreover, the Bordelais are now allowing the use of new grapes such as Marselan and Touriga Nacional in addition to the traditional five (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec). So what winery visitors will get in the glasses in coming years may be significantly different than the Bordeaux wines as they have been, even in recent years.

And it’s not just heat. Earlier springs lead to bud break in months that can still experience cold snaps and frost. As recently as 2022, there have been damaging frosts in California’s most famed grape growing areas, to say nothing of those affecting Oregon, Washington and British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Add to that the flooding that occurs when sudden spring warmth melts the mountains’ snow pack. Russian River suffers from these floods often; January of 2019 saw a record crest in that river as well as floods almost as high in 2023. Wine tasters should plan their travels accordingly.

All of this is to say that for those of us who love well-made wine and visiting wineries for tasting had better be aware of what changing weather patterns are doing to vineyards and wines. It is possible that there will be better wines in the future from places that are unanticipated at present. But there is more to great wine than great grapes. It took generations and fortunes to make Bordeaux, Tuscany, Rioja and Napa Valley wines and wineries what they are today. Speaking for ourselves at Power Tasting and, we’re sure, for our readers as well, we don’t have the time to wait for superb wines to come from Trondheim.

Trefethen Family Vineyards

Somehow, in ten-plus years of publishing Power Tasting, we’ve never gotten around to writing about Trefethen. Shame on us, because Trefethen is a great winery, a pioneer in Napa Valley and a winery that offers a memorable experience to visitors. We have tasted there numerous times over the years and are pleased to look back on our visits there.

The Trefethen winery. Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

Trefethen is located in Napa Valley on Oak Knoll Avenue, just off of Route 29, and is one of the first wineries encountered as you drive north. (Think of that, day trippers.) As you approach the winery, you see a very large farmhouse, which is a tale in itself. There has been a winery on this property in this building, off and on since 1886. The building you can see today has been used, abandoned and restored several times. When the Trefethen family took over the property in 1968, they had to restore a bat-infested, leaky old edifice. There they made wine and welcomed the public to taste it.

Then in 2014, the old winery was badly shaken in a 6.0 earthquake. Rather than tear it down, the Trefethens decided to make heroic efforts to restore the building once again, in a more seismic-protected manner. They significantly changed the tasting room as well. Prior to 2014, the Trefethen tasting room had a rustic look and several bars, dispensing generous pours to visitors. While the restoration work was going on, we once had a tasting under a plastic tent, which was not the ideal tasting ambience. The décor of the rebuilt tasting room has gone from rustic to what we would call elegant antique. And like almost all Napa Valley wineries, tastings are now sit down affairs.

A legacy tasting. Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

One of the reasons we are including Trefethen in this issue of Power Tasting is their commitment to sustainability. They have actually won awards in that regard. As an organization that has thrived under three generations of the family, they express a desire to keep it going for at least another three. They encourage biodiversity with resting places for native species of birds (including those old bats, even if they’re not birds). It works out well, because the flying friends capture rodents and insects who would like to make a meal out of grapes. They keep much of the area where they have vineyards wild and free. Trefethen is also invested in carbon capture to keep the air fresh and soil controls by composing everything but the grape juice.

Does any of this show up in the glass? We’re not viniculturists and Power Tasting doesn’t review wines, but we know that Trefethen’s wines have been award-winning for decades. They do make whites and a rosé, but Trefethen has built its reputation on wines made from Bordeaux grapes, especially Cabernet Sauvignon (it is in Napa Valley, after all).

As most wineries do, Trefethen offers some reserve tastings of older and limited distribution wines as well as a tasting of recent releases. With no disrespect to the quality of the reserve wines they serve, we have found that the overall experience of wine tasting at Trefethen is more pleasant in the big house with the newer wines.