lgsjr – Page 39 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

The 100-Point Taste

When we go wine tasting, we tend to visit the better wineries in the regions we visit. What’s the point of travelling such long distances just to sample the ordinary wines we might find at a store back home? But even the best wineries are reluctant to open bottles of their most expensive, rarest wines for casual visitors, and we are not accustomed to buying the highest priced bottles. So we hardly ever get to taste the wines with top scores granted by Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, or Wine Enthusiast, and certainly nothing rated 100. So here’s how we got to try a 100-point wine.

In 2002, we were visiting Bordeaux at the vendange, or harvest time. Wine tasting there is a lot different than Americans are used to. We may be used to names that are Chateau This-or-That, but in Bordeaux the famous wines are really grown in the estates surrounding actual castles. They do offer tastings, but not to just anyone who happens to be driving by. There are “appointment only” wineries in the US, but if they have an opening, most will accommodate the casual visitor. Not so in Bordeaux.

So if you plan to visit, make appointments months in advance or use a broker. These brokers charge a hefty fee just to get you into the best-known chateaux. We used one on our trip, and she spread out our visits around the region: Macon one day, St. Emilion the next and then Sauternes. The latter is probably the world’s best known producer of dessert wines, named after the village of Sauternes. What most people don’t know is that there is only one winery, Guiraud, that is actually in the village. The others are in the outskirts or in another nearby village, Barsac. Even with France’s strict appellation rules, wines from Barsac are allowed to use the name Sauternes.

After a memorable lunch at a relais in the village, we pulled up to a winery in Barsac named Doisy Daene, where the broker had arranged a tasting. This was no grand castle, but a working facility. “Okay”, we thought, “we have an appointment so let’s go in”. There was only one person in the winery, a rather elderly gentleman. We introduced ourselves and he immediately recognized Lucie’s Quebecois accent. “Nous adorons votre accent”, he told her (We adore your accent). This was amusing because the French are usually rather proprietary about their accents, so Lucie was pleased to hear him say it.

It worked out that he was the former winemaker, now retired, and he was filling in for his son, the current winemaker that afternoon. He took us for a tour and let us try some white table wine right out of a fermenting tank. Because it was the harvest, the grapes had been pressed only a few days previously. It was horrible, and we two visitors looked at each other disappointedly. We hadn’t visited Bordeaux to drink lousy white wine.

Then he took us into a small room to sample what we had come for, their dessert wine. This was no tasting room, just a little office off the barrel room. First he offered us a 2000, which was very good but still a bit young. Then he poured some Sauternes from the 1990 harvest, known to be a millesime. This was a really excellent wine, amber in color, round in the mouth, deliciously sweet. Finally he opened a little refrigerator and took out an unlabeled half bottle, with no cork but a piece of aluminum foil on top. This was the as yet unreleased, unbottled 2001, just a year from its harvest. He told us that he was offering us this special treat parce que vous êtes Canadienne (because you’re a Canadian girl), with what might have been a wink at Lucie.

With the first sip, fireworks went off in our mouths. This was the most magnificent Sauternes, in fact any dessert wine, we’d ever tasted. (It still is.) We wanted to buy some, but since it wasn’t even in bottles yet, how would we get it home? Sadly, we let the opportunity slip.

As you might have guessed, when the wine was released a year later, Wine Spectator gave it 100 points. You never know.

Chateau Canet

Most wine lovers who think about visiting France would normally head towards Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne or the Rhone Valley. But France has winemaking areas all around the country and it can be quite enjoyable to discover some of them in regions that can only be considered out of the way. One such is the Languedoc in the southwest of France, which for many years was known for rather rough, rustic table wines of (to be generous) uneven quality. It is a pleasure to report that these days that is no longer true.

We have been particularly taken by current vintages of Minervois, a region that produces wines that until recently we have avoided. When we visited Carcassonne and its environs, we took the opportunity to drive to Minervois and do some wine tasting. [As an aside, Carcassonne is a well-preserved medieval city that was central to the crusades against heretics in the 13^th century. Though very touristy today, it is certainly worth seeing.]

Carcassonne

For the wine tasting experience, we recommend Chateau Canet (http://chateaucanet.com/). Located in the aptly named village of Rustiques, it is only a 20 minute drive from Carcassonne, along some small country roads. As you arrive at the winery, you drive up a long lane bordered with vines. You then see a pink manse that brings to mind the chateaux you dream about after seeing a movie set in the French countryside.

Chateau Canet

As you enter the tasting room, you are likely to be greeted by one of the owners, Floris and Victoria Lemstra. We figure that they saw one of those movies, and actually bought and refurbished a French chateau. And of course they make wine there. They make – and you can taste – whites, a rosé and reds.

The tasting room is two pleasant rooms, much more like being in a home than a bar. There is a table-top on a wine barrel, where you will be served whatever they have and whatever you want. All very civilized.

One of the things we learned on our visit is that to be called a Minervois AOC (appellation d’origine controlee), a wine must, of course come from the region but also that it must be a blend. Thus, if you see a bottle with the name of the chateau and Minervois AOC on the label, it will contain Rhone-style grapes, for example Viognier, Rousanne or Marsanne in the whites; Carignan, Grenache or Syrah in the reds. At Chateau Canet, they bottle Minervois AOC but also, in the American style, individual varietals under the name Domaine Canet. These cannot be called Miinervois but are vins de pays (country wines). Because of the breadth of Chateau Canet’s production, you can have quite an introduction to the different tastes of the wines of the Minervois region, both AOC and VDP.

Chateau Canet’s olive grove

When you go, make sure to take a few minutes to walk around the grounds. Aside from the vines there is an olive grove and pleasant views to take in. Though we haven’t stayed there, Chateau Canet also offers vacation accommodations, including a swimming pool. It is not only off the beaten path, you can barely see the path from there.

The Back Streets of Siena

The city of Siena in Tuscany has a particular advantage for wine tasters. It is in a central location with Chianti to the North, Montalcino and Montepulciano to the east, Bolgheri to the west and Maremma to the south. Of course, it has the drawback of not being close to any of these famous winemaking areas, so visiting any of them entails a bit of a drive. But beyond access to vineyards, Siena is a special place to visit if you are going to go wine tasting in Tuscany.

The city has three great attractions that should not be missed: the Piazza del Campo and the Duomo or cathedral. The famous horse race, the Palio is run in the piazza, with the winner gaining local renown for the rest of his life. But it is very crowded and doesn’t give you the real sense of Siena.

We said three attractions; the third one is everything else. By all means, have yourself an apertivo in the piazza at sunset and admire the warm color of the campanile. Stand in awe of the richness of the cathedral, not only above you but at your feet. And then walk around the town.

A good starting point would be the Shrine of Santa Caterina (or Saint Catherine), Italy’s patron saint. This is the house she grew up in, today decorated by murals of her life and works. Even non-Catholics should be impressed. Then, when you walk out, turn left and then left again up the step-street called Costa Sant’Antonio. You’ll pass – or better yet, you won’t pass – a tiny restaurant called Osteria La Chiacchera – perched on the stairs. It is so steep that front legs of the tables are six inches longer than the back ones. At La Chiacchera they are dedicated to keeping the rustic cuisine of Tuscany alive, so you can have rabbit with olives or pork riblets and potatoes that you won’t find elsewhere.

If you turn left down an alleyway called the Vicolo Campaccio from the Costa Sant’Antonio, you’ll come to the Basilica San Domenico, which is the repository for relics of Santa Catarina. Frankly, we think it has much more to admire from the outside than in the interior. Now turn around and admire the view of Siena stretched before you. There’s a row of restaurants straight ahead, all pretty popular. Among them is Pomodorino, our favorite pizzeria in Siena (in fact, in all of Italy). We’ll leave the quality of the pizza to you, but it has unquestionably one of the best view of any pizzeria in the world. (Other opinions are welcome.)

The view from Pomodorino

Siena’s main drag is the Via di Citta, which runs behind the Piazza del Campo and can be reached from it up a little staircase to the Piazza del Campo. At that intersection is a gelateria called La Costarella that Steve liked better than any other in Tuscany. Then turn right onto the Via di Citta and you’ll come to the massive and forbidding but nonetheless inspiring Banca Monte dei Paschi. The recent financial crisis has not been kind to the bank, which is now endangered. It would be sad if it doesn’t make it because it has been there since the Renaissance. As pretty as it is by day, it is magnificent at night.

Banca Monte dei Paschi at night

The antiquity of Siena is evident in the fact that it is still a walled city, perhaps still awaiting another barbarian invasion. What amazes us is the countryside comes right up to the walls. More so than in our other travels, it gives us a sense of what it must have been like to live in a great medieval city. And as with so many Italian cities, there is art everywhere, on piazettas, on the sides of buildings, on any random street corner. The trick for the visitor is not to get jaded, to realize that ancestors from another age so loved their city that they adorned it everywhere.

A Sienese street by night

Because Siena, like many Tuscan towns, is built on a hilltop, many of the streets are very steep which by night makes them very romantic or a bit scary, depending on your mood. Either way, you know while you are there that you are amidst something very ancient and very rare.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 5 – The Educators

We finish here Power Tasting’s Field Guide to Servers, our exclusive introduction to the fauna found in tasting rooms. We have saved the best of the species for last. You may read the entire series: the Pourers, the Hosts, the Sellers and the Retainers.

What is an Educator? An Educator is someone employed by a winery to explain to visitors what is being served, what aromas and tastes to pay attention to while sipping and generally how this wine fits into the winery’s past releases and its overall philosophy of winemaking. He or she may be working there to fill in the time until the release of his or her next book on oenology. An Educator not only knows wine but is excited by it and is eager to share his or her expertise with others. The hallmark of an Educator is his or her ability to gauge the level of knowledge and interest of the visitor and to adjust his or her discourse accordingly. You can expect an Educator to ask you some questions to figure out what you are interested in, not just what the winery wants you to hear…and buy, of course.

How can you recognize an Educator? Sadly, the Educator is the rarest form of the Server species, so when you encounter one you should be particularly attentive. There are young Educators but most have the maturity to have learned a great deal about wine. Telltale signs of the Educators is that that they listen first, then talk; they converse, not harangue; and while not opposed to selling you some wine, they realize that an educated consumer is their best customer. Particularly in wineries with a wide range of products – whites and reds, various varietals, different price points – an Educator will lead the visiting tasters where they want to go.

How to get the greatest advantage from an Educator? Listen. Ask questions. Learn. Think about what you’ve been told as you smell and taste the contents of your glass. Like a Host, the Educator wants you to enjoy your wine, but only an Educator wants you to gain an understanding of why you are enjoying your wine…or not, if that’s the case. Like a Retainer, he or she wants you to understand what makes the winery you are at unique. But he or she is not as impressed with the owner as with the vineyard manager and the winemaker who together craft a philosophy of wine that in the end winds up in your glass.

Where are Educators found? While in theory an Educator could be found anywhere, for the most part they inhabit the better wineries, the ones with high ratings in the magazines and high prices at the cash register. It isn’t only that those are the ones that can afford Educators. More important is that Educators have integrity and are uninterested in spending their days praising wines that don’t deserve praise. In some of those other wineries there may be people wearing little badges that say they are Wine Educators. At most, those have learned the descriptions written by their wineries’ PR departments. A true Educator not only knows about the wine he or she is serving, but can make comparisons with other vintages and other wines, not only from that producer or that region. When you encounter an Educator, treat him or her with respect.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 4 – The Retainers

It is important that empowered wine tasters be familiar with the fauna to be found in tasting rooms across Wine Country. Thus we are publishing Power Tasting’s exclusive Field Guide to Servers. Here we have the next entry concerning the Retainers. Previous chapters have include the Pourers, the Hosts and the Sellers.

What is a Retainer? A Retainer works for a winery, but appears more like a personal employee of the owner, whom he or she treats with a deference that approaches worship. Think Downton Abbey. Before mentioning anything about the wine you’re about to sip, he or she will regale you with the lord’s, um the owner’s, wealth, travels, highly-placed connections, occupation prior/in addition to wine, parent’s background, hobbies and children’s occupations. Many of the owners are self-made zillionaires, often from the software business, so there may also be an explanation of the app-that-made-all-of-this-possible. Expect to be pointed to a photo of the smiling owner surrounded by adoring spouse and charming children.

How can you recognize a Retainer? It’s not hard. A Retainer will almost triumphantly make you aware of the Owner before you’ve even had a chance to taste the wine. He or she is but a humble representative of the beloved owner, always referred to as Mr. or Mrs., never by first names. Outside the US – oh yes, Retainers are found everywhere – landed titles are often stressed.

How to get the greatest advantage from a Retainer? Try very hard not to laugh. If at all possible, express interest in the owner and his or her fabulousness. Because there is a story behind the wine – there is always a story – listening and nodding may well lead to more and better wine, all to show the owner’s largess and interest in giving to the poor. (That would be you.) Oddly enough, many retainers know a good deal about their winery’s production, so you can learn about wine from a Retainer.

Where are Retainers found? For the most part, Retainers are found in the grand palaces erected to house tasting rooms around Wine Country. You might find them in more humble edifices if the owner has been an owner for a long time. Interestingly, there may be a great deal to learn from a Retainer about some of the truly great men (and some women, too) who built Wine Country in America or kept up its traditions in Europe. There is a much of value to learn and admire about a Mondavi or a Winiarski, a Rothschild or a Quintarelli, so these Retainers deserve more respect than those who are just pumping up the nouveau riche.

Hartford Family Winery

Hartford Family Winery (http://www.hartfordwines.com/) actually has two tasting rooms, one at the winery itself in the Russian River area and another on the plaza in the center of Healdsburg in Sonoma County. In keeping with the theme of this issue, we are reporting here on the in-town tasting room. It is on the corner next to the Healdsburg Hotel (specifically the Dry Creek Kitchen restaurant in the hotel) and catty-corner from the park. The interior is bright and sunny, with a bar area up front and large room in the back that would appear to be a graceful dining room in a country house. Except it’s not a dining room and you’re not in the country; you’re in a bustling town. Indoors or at their tables outside, all tastings are seated ones.

Here a server will bring you taste after taste from their list, which is actually a pretty concise one: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. 90% of their wines are from estate-grown grapes and while the winery is in Forrestville in the Russian River AVA, the vineyards are there, in Carneros, Sonoma Coast and other places as far afield as Oregon. So although they only deal in wine from three grapes, the choice of Hartford Family wines is actually quite a wide one.

(Just to confuse matters, many of the Hartford Family wines are marketed with the label of Hartford Court. For many years we thought they were two different wineries.)

We actually think the wines are very good, and we suppose we wouldn’t enjoy visiting Hartford Family so much if we didn’t think so. But to be honest, that’s not the reason we love this wine tasting experience. Taste indoors if you’d like, but the real joy of visiting Hartford Family is sitting at one of the tables that run along the pedestrian walkway between the tasting room and the hotel, facing the park. If it’s raining or very cold (which does happen occasionally), indoor tasting is your only option. But we were there recently on a sunny afternoon in February and found that a visit to Hartford Family’s Healdsburg location leads to the most relaxing wine tasting experience we have ever had.

There you are, looking up at the century-old trees in the town square, being served exquisite wines, not being rushed, people-watching the tourists and the locals alike. The thought that crossed our minds was simple: Life is good.

Since the service staff isn’t large and they need to keep going from table to table, there’s not a lot of time for questions and conversation with your servers. They seemed knowledgeable about their wines and were amazingly able to remember what wine came next for each table. But we found that the wine spoke for itself and that we were so busy not being busy at all that the time just passed away. Somehow we learned just about everything we wanted to know about the family, the winery and the wines.

The Healdsburg tasting room does take appointments for reserve tastings, but most of the visitors are walk-ins, tourists come to walk around a principal town in Sonoma’s Wine Country. If we were locals living in the Healdsburg area, we’d be there every weekend.

Healdsburg Then and Now

Healdsburg is the gateway to the Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County and a backdoor into the Russian River area as well. We think it’s fair to say it’s Sonoma’s culinary capital and it’s quite full of tourists at all times of the year. These days it’s also the home of many in-town tasting rooms of some distinction.

There is some controversy over how to pronounce the town’s name. Is it HELDS-burg or HEELDS-burg? For a long time we said the former but now some locals tell us that the latter is correct.

We remember when the town, however you pronounce it, was a sleepy, almost dusty farmers’ village. The first time that we visited Healdsburg together, in 2000, there was only one restaurant open where we could find lunch served at tables, as opposed a sandwich shop with fare to eat in the park. If you went wine tasting in those days, it was a good idea to pack a picnic. For the most part, we avoided going into Healdsburg when we tasted wines in Sonoma County.

Then in 2006 the New York Times published an article entitled, “Healdsburg, Calif., Emerges as a Dining Destination” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/travel/20choicesideweb.html . Was this the same place we knew? Indeed not; Healdsburg had grown, flowered and become a destination in itself. Of the restaurants mentioned in the article, Cyrus has decamped for Napa town, but Willi’s Seafood and Raw Bar is as good as ever and Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen is still sublime. Alas, Bistro Ralph and its heavenly short ribs is now a memory but it has been replaced by an Italian bistro, Scopa. Baci is another Italian choice down Healdsburg Avenue; Café Lucia serves nouveau Portuguese meals; and the Healdsburg Bar and Grill is there for a good, honest hamburger. And if you still want that picnic, you can buy your gourmet victuals at the Oakville Grocery or Shelton’s.

Although the aforementioned tasting rooms and restaurants are a more than adequate reason to visit Healdsburg, one of the great pleasures of the town is just walking around the plaza at the center of town. Okay, it’s touristy but it’s for a higher class of tourists, as snobbish as that may be. There are galleries, ice cream shops, a kitchenware store, a few hotels and some bakeries. No tee shirteries to be seen. In the center of all that is the plaza, a more than century-old park with towering trees and a bandstand in the middle. Often the square hosts markets, antique shows and summer concerts.

Photo courtesy of the City of Healdsburg

A not-so-subtle change has occurred in tasting wine in Healdsburg. There have been tasting rooms there for many years. But in honesty and with no disrespect intended, the wines were not very good. In the past few years, some excellent wineries have opened tasting rooms in town, including La Crema, Siduri, Clos Pegase, Stonestreet and Hartford Family. Each has its own personality, from relaxed to frenzied, but you can spend a day tasting great wine without driving between wineries.

There is a sort of cognitive dissonance about Healdsburg today. It is very much a part of Wine Country and the tourism trade that has grown up around wine tasting. But there is also more than a lingering memory of small-town America, especially in the plaza. Instead of a town to bypass on the way to the vineyards, Healdsburg is now worthy of a visit for itself.

In-Town Tasting

In most cases, the best way to go wine tasting is to drive out into the countryside; see the vines; snatch a grape or two if it’s harvest time; and get to know the area where the wine is produced. But there are times when this is not necessarily the best idea. In the Napa and Sonoma Valleys on a weekend (especially a holiday weekend); in Europe during the vendange, in remote areas where just getting from place to place takes up too much time it is often best to look for other alternatives. One of these is to do your tasting in a town, rather than in the vineyards.

It’s a bit unfair to the wineries that have opened in-town tasting rooms, but most of these have, for a long time, been pretty terrible. We are happy to report that this is no longer the case, at least not everywhere. There are reasons to stay in town, but there are also drawbacks.

Priest Ranch in Yountville, CA

Perhaps the greatest advantage of tasting in town is that you don’t have to drive from winery to winery. A very little shoe leather will take you from one to the next. On the other hand, unless you are staying in the same town, you do have to get back behind the wheel to go home. So the plus is you can taste more wine without driving but that’s the minus as well. Take it slow and easy in town just as you would out among the vines.

When you taste in towns, you trade off the beauty of the trees, sky, lanes and vines for the less ethereal attraction of cafes, shops and everyday life. In Santa Barbara, for example, the tasting rooms are in two main locations: along the railroad tracks in the aptly named Funk Zone and uptown in shopping centers. Neither of these are necessarily bad, but a lot of the artistry or wine is lost in an atmosphere that is either party time (!) or commercial.

You lose a connection with the terroir is towns. The wines are there because that’s where the owner opened the room, not because the wines come from right around that area. Again using Santa Barbara as an example, many of the wines you can taste are from Santa Barbara County, but many are from Santa Maria, San Luis Opisbo or even Sonoma Counties. There’s wine there, but no there’s no there there.

In Italy, in our experience, wineries don’t open tasting rooms in town. For one thing, the vineyards are just outside the towns, within a few minutes’ drive. For another, many of the towns are too small to attract visitors. They are little more than a few houses gathered around a crossroad. Exceptions include Montalcino and Montepulciano in Tuscany, where you find sale di degustazione that feature certain wineries that they represent. You pay a fee and you get a guided tour of the region, sitting on a bar stool. It always felt like a shame to us to be there when the real vineyards were just down the road.

A degustazione in Montalcino. Photo courtesy of Sempione News

Virtually every village in France’s wine growing regions has a cooperative, where the farmers who don’t have the money or interest to make wine for sale on their own band together for common facilities and marketing. If, as happened to us in Beaujolais during the last harvest, none of the wineries are open, the cooperatives are there to give you an idea of what the regions’ wines are like. In some, sadly, all you get is a distant hint of the greatness in that denomination, not the true glory of the AOC. There are some great exceptions, such as in Rasteau or Chablis.

At Walt Wines in Sonoma

There is hardly anything more pleasant than passing an afternoon taking in the scene in the street or on the piazza or the petit place sipping lovely wines. As with everything else having to do with adult beverages, that pleasure should be indulged with discretion. We like tasting in town sometimes, but we know where the real magic of Wine Country comes from, too, and it’s not on the streets.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 3 – The Sellers

Here is the next installment of Power Tasting’s guide to the Servers one might deal with in Wine Country. There are many species of Servers; we have previously introduced Pourers and Hosts. Here we present the Sellers.

What is a Seller? A Seller pours and serves wine, but these are almost secondary characteristics. Like a Host, a Seller is a pretty good talker, but unlike a Host, the Seller’s intention is not that you have a great time but rather that you join the winery’s club or at least buy some wine while you are there. If you show the slightest interest – and we recommend that you do show interest – you will be regaled with details about the wine club, how easy it is to join, how much great wine you will receive and what wonderful events you will be invited to. It is best not to mention that you live far away and will probably not be able to attend the events. By showing some interest, you are more likely to taste wine from of a few bottles reserved under the counter for likely joiners.

How can you recognize a Seller? Sellers talk. And Talk. And talk. Some of the palaver is actually rather useful. Sellers generally know a lot about the wine they are serving (if not wine in general) and are happy to describe them to you, always in glowing terms of course. Once you respond, as polite people usually do, by saying that you too like a particular wine, the Seller will move in like a torpedo. A commonly encountered phrase is, “Well, if you liked that…”, and then he or she reaches along the counter and brings up the next inimitable gem. (By the way, none of this applies if you ask about a wine club first. Providing you with information you ask for is service, not a sales pitch.)

How to get the greatest advantage from a Seller? First of all, you need to have some sales resistance. If you don’t, either be prepared to walk away or to buy something. But encouraging the Seller brings rewards. You’ll get that extra little bit in your glass. The wonderful vintage from yesteryear might suddenly appear, left over from a media tasting and held in reserve just for you. You really will learn a lot about that winery’s production and wine philosophy. And, to be fair, you might actually find that the wine club or a few bottles being pushed at you do attract your taste buds and your pocketbook.

Where are Sellers found? Sellers can be found in virtually any tasting room, but a rule of thumb is that wineries with cheaper wines don’t benefit as much from club membership or a few bottles sold and the wineries with the highest priced wines don’t benefit from the Seller’s personality. But when you walk into a winery with a lot of bottles in the $75 to $100 range, the Seller’s distinctive spiel is likely to be heard.

Etude Wines

On a pleasant country road in Carneros, the southern end of Napa Valley, you’ll find the Etude winery. It is at the end of a long lane, in three buildings more evocative of New England than California. It is surrounded by vines although not for the grapes that go into the wines you will taste there.

Etude is unusual in that they make top-end Pinot Noirs, thanks to Jon Priest, their winemaker, but not only from Carneros. They produce Pinots from the Santa Rita Hills in Southern California, Willamette Valley in Oregon and as far away as New Zealand, all under the Etude label. They are all very good, but our favorites are their estate wines from Carneros, especially Heirloom, their premium vineyard parcel.

Etude is distinctive in another way, as well. They also make several highly rated Cabernet Sauvignons, all from the Napa Valley. Generally, Cabernet houses don’t do Burgundy grapes well and Pinot specialists can’t quite seem to get their Cabs right. Etude is one of the few to do both equally well. Oh, yes, they have Chardonnay and Pinot Gris too, for white wine drinkers.

The tasting room is spacious, woody, well-lit and has an imposing wall of wines behind the bar. There are tables and sitting areas inside and you can also have a seated tasting outside (for a charge). Or just take your glass, walk around the yard or sit in some strategically placed lawn chairs. We have found the servers to be rather knowledgeable and able to explain what is in your glass in such a way that you appreciate the wine a little more.

Photograph courtesy of justluxe.com

There is generally a convivial mood to tastings at Etude, fostered by the servers to be sure but also by the atmosphere of the winery. More so than at many of the Napa Valley wineries further north on route 29, there is more of a feeling that you are in the country, surrounded by vines, where the focus is on the quality of the wines than on the imposing architecture or Fifth Avenue merchandise for sale.

A plus (and maybe a slight negative) is that Etude is one of the first high-quality wineries one finds driving north from San Francisco. So if you don’t have a lot of time for a Napa Valley visit, Etude and a few of its neighbors can make for a fast and easy trip. The downside is that Etude is well-known both for its wines and as a destination, so a lot of groups arrive there. If you can avoid weekends, particularly holiday weekends, you’ll enjoy your visit to Etude all the more.

We have been members of Etude’s wine club for many years and are happy to introduce you to it. It’s the sort of place that, if we were going to design a winery, it would be a lot like Etude.