lgsjr – Page 26 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Lunch

When you are out wine-tasting, lunch is a necessity. Don’t even think of sipping wine on an empty stomach. Breakfast is important too, but the morning meal does not lend itself to lazy luxuriating quite as much as does lunch. One thing that almost all wine-making regions have in common is the availability of superb cuisine. Why travel all that way to Wine Country and deny yourself the pleasure of a leisurely meal at midday?

Caffés in Montalcino.

In Europe, you have no choice. On that enlightened continent, a two-hour work stoppage is de rigeur, as they say over there. So you pull into a town or stop at a French café (or an Italian caffé) surrounded by vines and do like the locals do. We can’t open a bottle of Brunello without thinking of warm afternoons on the piazzas of Montalcino. The same goes for St. Emilion, Greve in Chianti and Chateauneuf de Pape.

When visiting California’s sections of Wine Country, you have the option to gulp down a Big Mac and keep on tasting. We Americans are all go-go-go and that does have some business advantage. But if you are on a wine tasting trip, you’re not there on business (unless you’re a distributor). Just because you can try three wineries between noon and 2:00 doesn’t mean that you should. Not when the bistros of Calistoga, Healdsburg, Paso Robles or Santa Barbara are calling out to you.

It’s all a matter of attitude. If you just happen to be passing through and you only have a little while available to you, then eat something quickly and then stop by at a winery or two. But have you ever just happened to be passing through Yountville? Or Pauillac?

Another argument is that wine tasting should be about wine and a fancy lunch is just an unnecessary use of your mouth. If your objective is just to taste as much wine as you can in as short a time as possible – a highly dangerous goal – you’re better off picking up a few bottles at the store and staying home. For us, at any rate, a large part of the reason to go wine tasting is to be in Wine Country, to soak it all in (not just drink it all in). And that means eating lunch where the locals go.

Photo courtesy of the (San Jose) Mercury News.

You’ll never dine anywhere where there are no tourists, but there are many places where you can sit with people from the neighborhood and from the wineries. That doesn’t necessarily mean white tablecloths and fine fare. For example, if you’re tasting in St. Helena, there are few places that scream WINE COUNTRY like the original Gott’s Roadside. Oh, there are all the attributes of the fancy places, such as locavore purveyors and Ahi tuna, but at the end of the day, it’s about the burgers. And if you want some wine, Joel Gott makes that too.

The point is that you should make a good lunch a part of your wine tasting adventure, not a diversion from it. Be careful how much you drink with lunch if you’re going to keep tasting all afternoon, but remember wine was made to go with food.

Shopping

The idea of a winery as a shopping mart is almost exclusively a California thing. We have never encountered non-wine related merchandise in a winery anywhere outside the United States. We have encountered an establishment in the Central Coast that bills itself as a gift shop and winery, in that order. (In keeping with Power Tasting’s speak-no-evil policy, they will go unnamed, but let us assure you that the wine in a self-described gift shop is likely to be awful.) Many wineries sell a few items – shirts, baseball caps, coasters and wine glasses – emblazoned with their name or logo. We aren’t talking about those; we mean wineries with sizable retail establishments.

The shop at Robert Mondavi Winery.

Most of these are in Napa Valley, with a few in Sonoma County. There are some where we make a point, whenever we visit, to see what they’re selling because we have occasionally found things we like and bought some gifts. Among these is Robert Mondavi Winery, where our primary interest is the wine, of course. They have an extensive gift shop that is particularly attractive at Christmastime. The shop has an interesting selection of books, mostly of the coffee-table variety, on wine and wineries. Besides books, we have bought Christmas-tree ornaments and decorative ceramics there.

Beringer Vineyards also features beautiful wares for Christmas. Their shop is not very large, but they do have quite a few beautiful things. Once again, the reason to visit is not for the shopping, but for the wine and the architecture. Still, there are lovely items available for sale.

Inglenook Vineyard, once known as Niebaum Coppola, is a testimonial to the life, career (and ego) of Francis Ford Coppola, the film director. Despite that, Inglenook makes some top-end wine, especially their Rubicon blend. The architecture and grounds are attractive and the selection in their shop is, for a winery, extensive and idiosyncratic. On several occasions, we have bought tablecloths there; like many of their items these evoked Mr. Coppola’s Italian-American heritage. The products on sale differ every time we have been to Inglenook, so other than corkscrews and coasters, don’t expect to find the same things twice.

Photo courtesy of Darioush.

The most opulent winery shopping experience is to be found at Darioush (which to our opinion is way too much.) In keeping with their Persian temple architecture, the items they sell are luxurious, perhaps extravagant. Many of them are Iranian-themed, such as a pomegranate plate or Persian cookbooks. The handbags and clothing, housewares and backgammon sets are all beautiful and well-made. Management at Darioush has made it clear to us that their intended market for their wines is interested in luxury items, which they also extend in their non-wine wares.

You may notice that we haven’t mentioned prices. None of the winery shops are inexpensive. Likewise, all the shopping locations we mention are also producers of top-quality wine. That’s probably not a coincidence. People who like great wine are also likely to be customers for beautiful goods. At the same time, there are many other wineries with excellent wine who only focus on the wine-tasting experience, not merchandise. Our advice is to visit wineries for the wine. If there are pretty things to buy, why not look them over?

Towns

Many times when you go wine tasting you find yourself way out in the country, with all stores and restaurants a considerable drive away. In other cases you’re either near a town (sometimes a city) or you’re visiting in-town tasting rooms. Sure, you came to taste the local wines but the towns themselves are so much fun. Many of them are historic and all have their own charm and beauty.

In no particular order, our favorites are:

Beaune in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or
Emilion in Bordeaux
Narbonne and Béziers in the Languedoc
Montalcino and Montepulciano in Tuscany
Radda in Chianti (which is also in Tuscany)
Porto in Portugal (actually in Gaia Nova, just across the Douro river)
Sonoma, Healdsburg and Santa Rosa in Sonoma County
St. Helena, Calistoga and Yountville in Napa Valley
Paso Robles and Santa Barbara in the Central Coast

Narbonne.

So what should you do when faced with the temptation to see a town’s attractions rather than going to more tasting rooms? Our recommendation is to give in. Here are a few tips to enjoy Wine Country towns without giving up too much of your wine tasting experience.

If you have the time, take a day to focus on visiting one or more towns. In California, this is definitely a good idea for weekends, when the wineries in the vineyards are awfully crowded. Most European towns have a number of plazas, often built around a cathedral or a castle, that are themselves well worth a visit. Some California towns are built around central squares that are pleasant to walk through. Healdsburg and Sonoma are among those with town squares.

Radda in Chianti.

Take advantage of the tasting opportunities in the towns. In many California towns, wineries have opened tasting rooms for passers-by. In the past these were all rather second-rate, but in recent years top producers have opened up rooms, in addition to the ones at their wineries. In some European towns, such as Beaune, major wineries have established their headquarters and tasting facilities. And in many others, wine shops offer degustaziones (tastings) for a small fee.
Enjoy being a tourist. None of these towns were crawling with visitors in the past, as little as a few decades ago in some cases. As more outsiders came to see the vines and sip the wines, sleepy agricultural villages transformed themselves into “attractions”. There’s no need to sneer. The cafés do serve authentic regional fare; the handicrafts are usually made by local artisans; the houses and churches are picturesque. What’s not to enjoy?
Stay the night…or a few days. That’s when you get a true feel for Wine Country. The day trippers are gone and when you step into a wine bar, you’ll be rubbing shoulders with the people who tend the grapes and make the wines you came to enjoy. If you keep your ears open, you’ll hear conversations about yields and trellising that let you know that the people around you get their hands dirtier than you ever will, just so you can enjoy a bottle of wine.
You never know who you’ll meet. We were having an after-dinner drink at Willi’s in Healdsburg when we got into a conversation with the fellow sitting next to us at the bar. It turns out he was the executive chef at some of our favorite American restaurants, including Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen nearby. We told him how much we admired Mr. Palmer’s restaurants and then he went back to talking with his pals. A few minutes later he turned back to us and introduced one of his friends: “Hi, I’m Charlie Palmer” said the friend, his hand outstretched.

Editorial: Virtual Visiting

It’s just about a year now that the Covid-19 pandemic has been upon us. As with most people, we at Power Tasting have been staying home in order to stay safe. Wineries in the United States and Europe have been closed, open, closed, open depending on the current state of infections in each locality. For those of us who enjoy travelling for wine tasting, 2020 was a barren year and 2021 isn’t starting any better.

And yet we have published Power Tasting every month as though the pandemic had never happened. [Actually, that’s not entirely true. Our May 2020 edition was about wine tasting during the lockdown.] That’s because, as we say in our mission statement on our home page, we are writing to the vacationer, not the connoisseur. And since few people can go on vacation all the time, our monthly articles are intended to give readers a virtual visit to Wine Country on the device of their choice.

We’re going to continue publishing these wine tasting vignettes every month. Since the governor of California has just lifted restrictions on public gatherings, our mailbox has been full of announcements for tastings at our favorite wineries. Sadly, we won’t be going and unless you live nearby, you probably won’t be either. Please continue to travel with us, all the while staying safe, until we all can get on the road again.

The Hess Collection

The Hess Collection winery (https://www.hesscollection.com/) is a little out of the way, up on Mt. Veeder. It’s worth the trip, for two reasons. The obvious one is to taste their wines. The other is to see their art.

The winery was founded by one of the Napa Valley pioneers, by Donald Hess of Switzerland back in the 1980s. He had already made a fortune in Swiss sparkling water and had started collecting art. So when he opened a winery in California he also used the location to house his paintings and sculptures. And he continued to collect more widely. For a visitor to Napa Valley, a trip the The Hess Collection is both an aesthetic and gustatory experience.

The Hess Collection winery. Photo courtesy of the winery.

The art gallery adjoins the tasting room. There are other wineries, especially in Napa Valley, that also exhibit fine art. But The Hess Collection has a museum of modern art with artists and pieces of the highest quality. Many artists are quite well-known: Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella to name a few. All the works are from Donald Hess’ personal collection. (The Hess Collection, get it?)

Photograph courtesy of Incollect.

As you enter the gallery, the first painting you see is an enormous portrait entitled Johanna II by Franz Gertsch, a Swiss artist. It is photorealistic and is the most widely featured artwork in publicity for the museum. Perhaps that’s to entice visitors who are not as familiar with abstract art, which makes up the majority of the paintings and drawings on display.

There is much sculpture shown as well. Some are easy to relate to, such as the full length male nudes by Deryck Healy, a South African artist previously unknown to us. And others, such as the enormous oak log by Polish artist Magdalena Abakonowicz…well, you just have to see it.

Oh, yes, you can taste wines, too. At one point, there were two quality levels available for tasting, Hess Select and The Hess Collection. The former was (and is) intended for the mass market. These wines are still available at retail but not at the winery.

The strength – and in some ways, the weakness – of the wines you can taste there is the enormous variety of wines they make. Their top wines, in the Icon series (a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay), are quite refined and really only for connoisseurs. It is rare that these will be available for tasting. Those bottled under The Hess Collection label are the ones you might see in a quality wine shop and they lean towards Cabs. There’s also a Lions Head series with the same mix of grapes. Then there are the wines they source from nearby and distant vineyards, which they call Small Block wines; these are only available at the winery.

Overall, you might not like everything in the Hess Collection museum or the winery, but that’s all right. We don’t like everything in the Louvre, either. But there is much to admire, and an hour or so spent at this museum is as much a part of the Napa Valley experience as their wines.

The Eiffel Tower

One of the features of Power Tasting is a monthly article on a Place to Visit that isn’t about wine but is in Wine Country. And since this edition is about the beaten path, there’s no path in all of France that’s been trod more often than the one that leads to the Eiffel Tower. But wait, is Paris really in Wine Country? Surprisingly, the answer is “yes”. You can make a day trip to Champagne or the Loire and amazingly, there are still a handful vineyards in Paris itself. None of the urban vineyards are very big (one has only ten vines) but they qualify the city for inclusion.

The Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero. Photo courtesy of the Hotel Eiffel Trocadero.

So about that tower. For one thing, it’s one of those iconic structures, along with the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and the Kremlin, that are emblematic of their entire country. Its story is pretty well known, so we’ll recount it here only briefly. It was named for Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built it for the 1889 World’s Fair or Exposition Universelle. It was derided in its own time but has become beloved ever since. You can ride to near the top for a great view of Paris, with restaurants on the second and third levels.

The issue is not whether you’ll see the Eiffel Tower. When you go to Paris, you can’t miss it and you’ll take your picture in front of it. We’d like to give you some ideas as to how to see it.

The Eiffel Tower is located in the 7^th Arrondissement, on the Left Bank of the Seine. This sector is one of the more elegant residential areas of the city and worth walking around in. The tower itself is in a park, the Champs de Mars, where royal troops used to train back in the time just before the French Revolution. In pleasant weather, you can join Parisians in stretching out, kicking a ball or listening to itinerant musicians. Or you can walk up to the Eiffel Tower, lean your head back and try to take it all in. Maybe that’s why Eiffel’s contemporaries couldn’t appreciate it; they couldn’t really see it properly.

For us, the best place to see the tower is across the river at the Place du Trocadero. Sit at a café on the place and soak in the view. From there you can see the tower in the perspective we believe Eiffel intended, massive but contained within Paris. Keep in mind that only a few decades before the fair, Paris had been completely renovated into the gorgeous city we know today. The Eiffel Tower added an exclamation point to the city. Viewing it from the Trocadero puts it in context.

Hovering over the city.

As you walk around the sector where the tower is, you’ll see it above many of the rooftops. There’s no better way to enjoy this kind of view than sitting in a café with a coffee and a French pastry or with a glass of wine. And do see it at night. Since the Millennium celebration, the Eiffel Tower erupts in a symphony of flashing lights, for five minutes every hour on the hour. The Parisians have never lacked for a sense of the dramatic.

The Importance of Being There

It’s always fun to discover that an unknown wine from an obscure location is really pretty good. But with all due respect to the Mavrud grapes of Bulgaria or the sparkling wines of Brazil, there’s a reason why the world beats a path to Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa Valley, Burgundy, the Rioja and Sonoma County: They’re the best. If you want to be a knowledgeable wine taster. before you get off the beaten path, you’d better be familiar with some if not all of the premier sectors of Wine Country

What’s the big deal about being there, in the most famous locales?

For one thing, there’s a pleasure when you open a bottle in remembering what the region looked like or even better what the winery was like. There’s nothing like the experience of touching the actual grapes (or maybe filching one to see what they’re like) when you pour what they made from them. Except for winemakers themselves, most of us couldn’t tell a Cabernet Sauvignon grape from a Pinot Noir, but it’s fun to believe you could. And you can only pretend to do so if you’ve actually been there to see them.

Of course, you can look at grapes anywhere they grow them. But when you’re standing in front of Château Margaux touching the grapes (which we have done) you know that these are among the greatest grapes in the world. You have to be there.

Château Margaux. Photo courtesy of Forbes.

Wine is made of grapes but people make wine. It’s a wonderful experience meeting these people in their own environment. For the most part, they’re very nice. And why shouldn’t they be? You’ve come a long way to taste their wines and you chose their winery for the purpose. If you’re serious about wine tasting – and you must be, because you’re there – they are as eager to know something about their customers as you are to engage with the winemaker.

We were in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or many years ago, having a picnic in a churchyard. A man walked by and spotted us and came over to talk. We thought he was going to tell us to move but, no, he wanted to see what we were drinking with lunch. When he found that a couple from the other side of the Atlantic was having a premier cru with our jambon and baguette, he was quite pleased. “Quelle pique-nique!” It turned out that he owned a few rows of vines in the adjoining vineyard. We think of him every time we open a top Burgundy. To do that, you have to be there.

For us, wine is a beverage to accompany dinner, sometimes for meditation, a subject of eternal fascination and, in wine tasting, an avocation that has taken us to vineyards around the world. We can and do enjoy the wine from the store around the corner, but it’s not the same experience. The pleasure of wine tasting, as opposed to drinking, comes as much from the tastes, memories and feelings as much as from the wine itself. And to get that experience, you have to be there.

V. Sattui Winery

Sattui Winery (www.vsattui.com) is an American success story. Vittorio Sattui was born in a small town near Genoa and emigrated to San Francisco. He opened a winery there in 1885 and prospered, along with family members who followed him, until Prohibition closed the winery down. Then in 1976, Vittorio’s great-grandson Dario revived the family business in St. Helena. (As it happens, our first trip to Napa Valley was in 1977, so we thought that V. Sattui had always been there.)

The original winery in San Francisco. That’s Vittorio’s son Mario and brother Romeo out front. Photo courtesy of the winery.

Today, V. Sattui has become an institution. If you visit Napa Valley for only a few times, you are sure to wind up at their doorstep. Everybody does. There are several reasons why this is so.

The first is location. It’s right on Route 29, so anyone going to taste in the northern end of the valley has to pass by. Heitz and Louis M. Martini are just up the road, so we guess Dario figured back then this was a good spot for a winery, and maybe he knew that Flora Springs would open across the street in a few years. But he couldn’t have known that Pahlmeyer, Belle Glos and Hall would

someday be neighbors as well. You could do a day’s wine tasting in walking distance of V. Sattui.

Then of course there’s the wine. V. Sattui has always had an enormous selection of them, many of which were quite affordable. This is still the case, but they also have pricier wines sourced from some of the most reputed vineyards in California, including Morisoli, Ramazotti and Quaglia. Their wines include four white varietals, ten red varietals (plus blends), eight dessert wines, five rosés and four sparkling wines.

So how come you’ve never seen any of these in your local wine store? It’s because they don’t distribute their wines outside the winery. These days, of course, everything is for sale on the internet as well. But for decades, V. Sattui has relied on visitors to buy up their stock.

The picnic grounds at V. Sattui. Photo courtesy of the winery.

And the visitors have come, year after year, many attracted by the expansive picnic grounds on the property. Napa County has limited the number of wineries that can have picnic tables, with those that have long had them allowed to continue doing so. It is a common sight in good weather to see families gathered at the tables eating feasts, like you see in Italian movies. Somewhere, old Vittorio must be smiling.

The people are eating and drinking food and wine purchased on the premises. In addition to selling wines, V. Sattui has a very fine deli, or salumeria as Vittorio would have said. There are cold cuts, cheeses, sandwiches, salads, hot dishes and desserts. And of course, it all goes with V. Sattui wines. They have a rule that food and wine must be bought there, and that’s only fair.

Many visitors are new to wine tasting in Napa Valley, so they’ve never heard of, much less tasted, V. Sattui’s wines. So if you sit the shady picnic area and listen carefully, you’ll hear people saying, “Hey, this is pretty good”. And it is.

Dealing with Wine Country Crowds

One of the famous sayings that Yogi Berra was supposed to have uttered was “Nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded”. You may want to remember that if you should find yourself, say, on Route 29 in Napa Valley on a sunny July 4 weekend. Everybody knows (whoever everybody is) that it will be mobbed with wine lovers, tourists, partiers, kids, bachelorettes and assorted hangers-on. The roads are clogged; you can’t get near a server in wineries and as for getting an answer to a question, well, as we say in Brooklyn, fuhgeddaboudit.

So why go? That may be your only day in the area or you promised some people you’d take them when they were in town. Here are a few tips for making the best of it.

Avoid the big names. Sure, it’s fun to visit the wineries you’re familiar with but those are the ones that will likely attract the biggest crowds. Even in regular times, we’ve felt overwhelmed at places like Domaine Chandon and Silver Oak. So consider some of the lesser known, more out of the way wineries. For instance, if you really want to try some sparkling, you might want to go to Iron Horse in Sebastopol.

The Iron Horse tasting “room”. Wine tasting as in the old days. Photo courtesy of shop.ironhorsevineyards.com

Take your glasses outside. An advantage of Iron Horse is that their tasting “room” is and was outdoors, even before Covid forced that on every winery. Many wineries have terraces or picnic areas where you can sip under the blue skies. We enjoy the combination of wine and good weather under any circumstances. We remember well a visit to Etude one Martin Luther King Birthday weekend when we sat outside in a pair of Adirondack chairs, while a nice server came by periodically and made sure we hadn’t run out of Pinot Noir.
Use the auxiliary tasting rooms. Some top wineries, such as Chateau Montelena or Beaulieu Vineyard, maintain secondary tasting rooms specifically to deal with crowded days. If you make it clear that you’d prefer some relative peace and quiet instead of being in the middle of the action, they will be glad to accommodate you.
Make appointments. This is a good idea on weekends, much less holidays. During the pandemic, most wineries are by appointment only, anyway. But when it’s over, the masses will return, perhaps in greater numbers after being away for so long. With an appointment, you usually will get a seated tasting, which by itself limits the size of the crowds.
Don’t try to visit too many wineries. The less time you spend on the road, the better off you are. So limit you tastings to a few places, preferably fairly close to one another. Think about the places you’d like to stay for a while, for both wine tasting and other reasons. Some wineries have beautiful gardens. Others have outstanding art collections. And some are just lovely places to be. Take advantage of them.

“Downtown” Calistoga. Photo courtesy of TripSavvy.

Consider in-town tastings. As a general rule, we prefer to be in towns, such as Calistoga or Healdsburg, on weekends rather than out in the vineyards. There are an increasing number of top wineries opening tasting rooms on the streets. Even if they’re crowded, and they are sometimes, you can stroll around a bit until you can find a spot at a bar.

These are all Napa/Noma tips, but the same ideas apply in European wineries, if you happen to be there for their holidays.

Frog’s Leap Winery

There are some wineries in Napa Valley that are intended to awe their visitors. They may have long histories, or architecture designed to replicate castles and temples, or they’re highly modern glass palaces. Frog’s Leap Winery (https://www.frogsleap.com/) has the history, having been established in 1980. It has the grapes, much of which they sell to other winemakers. What it lacks is awesomeness. It was designed and built to make visitors feel like they’re going to visit their country grandma, albeit a grandma with money and good taste.

Photo courtesy of Wine Travel Eats.

The winery building itself still looks like a barn, a very big one. It’s painted the shade of red that seems to be reserved for barns. You can take a tour and still see all the equipment and the barrels, but we think you’ll be drawn back to the visiting area. Of course, that’s where they serve the wine.

While Frog’s Leap makes a broad selection of red wines, it seems to us that they’re best known for their white wines. Maybe that’s because their Chardonnay is so widely available in wine shops around the country. Taking nothing away from the Chard, we’re impressed that they still make a Chenin Blanc, which used to be much more prominent in Napa Valley.

These days of pandemic-induced changes, all of Frog Leap’s tastings are seated affairs, by appointment only, out on the lawn. In better times, both in the past and just ahead, tastings are also seated, in a parlor where you perch yourself on a settee. Now, settee is a word your grandma may have used and it’s that sense of old-style hominess that is for us the premier attraction of this winery. You feel like much more than a customer; you’re a guest.

This feeling is reinforced at Christmas-time. There’s always a beautifully decorated tree erected in the parlor. It puts you in a holiday mood as soon as you walk in the door. They’re not going to offer you egg nog; you’re limited to wine. But there is a sense that you ought to leave some milk and cookies behind when you leave.

Now don’t get us wrong. The wines are modern: crisp whites and robust reds. Unlike many Napa Valley wineries, including many that are quite nearby, Frog’s Leap still making wines at a price point that the average person can afford on a regular basis. Nothing among their recent releases costs an amount that requires three digits and that’s quite okay with us.

Oh, and about the name. We always thought it was a play on Stag’s Leap and that may indeed be the case. But according to the people at the winery, back in the ‘70s, the location was a frog farm. A frog farm? Now, John Williams, founder of the winery, was working at Stag’s Leap when he bought the property. So believe whichever story you prefer.