lgsjr – Page 43 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Sbragia Family Vineyards

At the very end of the Dry Creek Valley, just before Dry Creek Road peters out, perched on a high cliff, is Sbragia Family Vineyards. It is just about the northernmost winery in Dry Creek so it’s a bit of a drive. Because Sbragia Family sits athwart the closure of the fault line that created Dry Creek Valley, you will be rewarded with one of the most dramatic views in Sonoma’s Wine Country.

The winery itself is sleek, modern but not overly showy. The interior is a typical tasting room, with a wide bar and, unusually, some scattered tables where you can actually sit and enjoy your tastes. The colors in the room are somber, giving the overall experience a somewhat more intimate feeling than is often the case in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, especially in tasting rooms as large as this one.

But you’ll want to take your glasses out to the spacious terrace. There you’ll look straight down Dry Creek Valley. You can’t see San Francisco Bay from there, but your imagination will try to fill it in. Often, when you see aerial photos of vineyards the pictures have been taken from an airplane. Not at Sbragia Family. The picture below, courtesy of the winery, gives only a hint of what it’s like to see it with your own eyes.

Photo courtesy of Sbragia Family Vineyards

Of course, all that scenic beauty would be for naught if the wine was no good. You can rest easy on that point. The wine tasting itself has some special attractions, beginning with Ed Sbragia himself. As chief winemaker at Beringer in St. Helena he took an old, well-regarded winery and drove its reputation sky high. He started his own winery in 2004 and four years later he left Beringer to focus on Sbragia Family. He is still Winemaster Emeritus at Beringer and a consultant there. So when you taste wine at Sbragia Family, you’re tasting a lot of winemaking heritage.

And in fact that heritage is on a continuum. Ed’s grandfather immigrated from Tuscany and worked in the vineyards of the early 20^th century. His father, Gino, owned his own vineyards as well. Today, Ed’s son Adam is being positioned to take over from his father, after spending some time at Beringer himself. And we were once served in the tasting room by on of Ed’s daughters.

The wines are an interesting mix. As you might expect from someone who earned his spurs at Beringer, the Cabernet Sauvignons are in the spotlight at Sbragia Family. There are Cabs to try from Dry Creek, Alexander, Sonoma and Napa Valleys. We have found that one of the most enjoyable aspects of a visit to Sbragia Family is trying to discern the differences from the four different locations. Gino’s Zinfandel is named after Ed’s father and is the original family vineyard. They also have Uncle Italo’s Zinfandel from Alexander Valley. (It is Sbragia Family, after all.)

Our personal favorite over the years has been the Merlot. One year we served it at Christmas dinner with our family in Québec and they simply didn’t realize that American wines could taste like that.

The combination of the wines, the history and that incredible view make Sbragia Family a worthwhile destination if you’re going tasting in Sonoma County.

Wine Tasting in Bordeaux

For many wine lovers, including ourselves, our interest in wine started with Bordeaux reds. Of course, we hadn’t tasted the greatest of the great Bordeaux chateaux when we were younger; maybe it was Mouton Cadet that first caught our attention and our taste buds. From then on, as we were able to drink better wines, we thought of visiting Bordeaux as the summa of wine tasting experience.

And in many ways, it is. But in a few ways, it isn’t.

For one thing, the wine growing areas around the city of Bordeaux cover a lot of ground and produce rather different grapes and styles of wine. In a gross over-generalization, the vignerons of Medoc north of Bordeaux and Graves to the south make wines heavy in Cabernet Sauvignon; St. Emilion and its satellites to the east favor Merlot; in Pomerol it’s Cabernet Franc; and in the Sauternes-Barsac area they make sweet wines from Semillon. So you don’t exactly go to Bordeaux, you go around it.

The first thing a visitor needs to know is that, as Dorothy might have put it if she were a wine afficianado, “We’re not in California anymore”. You don’t just drive up to a winery, enter the tasting room and ask for a few pours. You need, with a few exceptions, to have appointments. While you can write well in advance and make them yourself, many only deal with the trade. That means you are either a winemaker yourself or otherwise in the wine business. “Otherwise” for these purposes often means tour organizers and brokers. So you wind up paying someone to be an intermediary just to get you in.

Some visits are in groups; others are one-on-one with a guide who will almost always speak English. Anticipate a tour and a tasting, each visit lasting 90 minutes to two hours. The better the wine, the snobbier the visit. And they generally have only one or two wines, so there is less to taste at the end of the tour.

For the most part, the villages aren’t particularly either. The port at Paulliac is a good place to eat oysters right off the boat and Margaux has a few nice bistros, but save your dining experiences for the city of Bordeaux.

That all sounds pretty negative, but there are many more positives that outweigh the foregoing. For one thing, especially in the Medoc, you are visiting real French chateaux. They are gorgeous to behold and to be in; you never know when you might see some nobleman out with the hounds, as actually happened to us in Barton-Léoville. Just driving up the main road, the D2, is to behold castles that seem to come out of fairy tales. Unlike many other vineyard areas, the Medoc is flatland, so the castles you pass more than make up for the lack of rolling hillsides.

Chateau Pichon Baron (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The big, big exception is St. Emilion. It is a medieval town around which wine has been produced for millennia. You can see Roman ruins in the vineyards. Walking through the town, you’ll find enticing restaurants and outdoor cafes. There are bakeries selling the local delicacy called canelés, which are small, rich cakes flavored with rum, vanilla and caramel. And in town and on the outskirts, there are tasting rooms for wineries, where you don’t need appointments. (To be honest, these are not the great ones you came to Bordeaux to visit. Even in this region you need appointments for the big names. But we have found a few that offer very creditable wine.)

St. Emilion (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Perhaps the best reason to go wine tasting in Bordeaux is the effect of the experience. Once having seen the endless vineyards, seen the chateaux, tasted the wines where they’re made, you’ll never open a bottle of Bordeaux wine with the same feeling ever again. You’ve been there, seen it, smelled the grape-sweet air (and maybe stolen grape or two if you go in autumn) and the wine will have an impact on you that you’ll carry with you forever.

Test Your Taste

There is a stereotype of wine lovers that portrays us as people who can take a sniff and a sip from a glass and identify the varietal, the label and the year. Maybe – just maybe – that’s Robert Parker but it’s not the rest of us and surely not us at Power Tasting. For most of the world, it’s sufficient to tell the difference between red wine and white. (Hint: the white wine is colder.)

The sort of folks who visit Wine Country with the express purpose of tasting wine should be a little more knowledgeable than that, but how much? And how can you tell whether you have the ability to discriminate better wines when you drink them? A few points apply: if you like it then it’s good and if you don’t, it isn’t. Price plays no part in the matter. There are excellent inexpensive wines and costly bottles that are more about snob appeal than quality. And even knowledgeable tasters disagree; heaven knows Lucie and Steve do all the time.

The solution, as with so many things in life is practice, along with its cousin, homework.

Try to differentiate two similar wines. Just for fun when we have friends over for dinner, we often open two bottles and compare them. We recently did this with two Carneros Pinot Noirs, both of which are favorites of ours from wineries whose wine clubs of which we are members. They were both the top wines from their respective wineries at similar price points. We had enjoyed each many times but had never tried them next to each other. In comparing wines this way, we were forced to be very conscious of what we were smelling, tasting, feeling in our mouths, remembering after we swallowed. There is no right or wrong; in fact, the two couples split in their opinions. The important thing was to discern the slight differences in two great wines.
Try the wrong wine. Often when dining with friends at a restaurant, we’ll order two wines to accompany different courses. While there are no hard and fast rules, the wines ought to be complementary to the food. A heavier wine like a California Cabernet or an Australian Shiraz will fit better with a steak and a lighter wine such as a Beaujolais with a chicken breast. At least that’s what the book says, but what does your mouth say? If you have two different wines open, taste the one that’s not supposed to “go with”. If it clashes, why? What’s wrong with it? And then, why is the “right” wine right? What is working well in your mouth? Finally, is there something about the “wrong” wine that you actually like? Sometime, contrast is more interesting than compatibility.
Know what you don’t like. Steve doesn’t like thin, acidic wines so a lot of Burgundies leave him cold. Lucie, on the other hand, is not a fan of heavy, fruit forward wines so she’s not high on California Syrahs. Of course, there are exceptions in both cases, so you need to have an open mind. If someone says to Steve, “Try this Pommard, you’ll like it”, he’ll give it a go and sometimes he does indeed like it. The trick in a case like that is to ask, “What is there about this Pommard that I like that I don’t like about other Burgundies?” Maybe it’s the mouth feel, or the fruit or the aroma. Whatever it is, search for wines of that type that are reputed to have those characteristics.
Listen to your wine. Some years ago, Steve had a long-term out-of-town project. One night he decided to make dinner for his project team of eight consultants and bought three Bordeaux blends from California and an actual Bordeaux. He then challenged them to say which one they liked best and why. Most of the staff were young and inexperienced in tasting wine but, amazingly, as they expressed their opinions, the terminology of wine criticism started coming out. This wine was round. That one had a long finish. The real Bordeaux was subtle with more complexity. It’s not enough to like one wine more than another. You have to be able to articulate why you prefer one over another and the words you use will help you understand your own taste.

These simple tests are good preparation for a trip to Wine Country. It’s very possible that you’ll taste wines you’ve never had before, maybe never heard of before. By doing your homework, you’ll have a better idea of what’s good and not so good to the ultimate expert – yourself.

Cantine Pellegrino

Wine tasting in Europe, especially in France and Italy, comes with a special advantage – or perhaps it’s a special problem. Lunch is a deeply respected, perhaps sacred, time of the day and everything except the restaurants closes firmly for two hours, to allow dining and maybe a little siesta. If you’re a visitor to local wineries, you are forced to adapt to their customs and take an extended lunch yourself. Ah, the slow and easy life, replete with fine food, local wines and friendly people!

The problem is that if you are visiting from afar, you may not have a lot of time to visit wineries in the morning before lunchtime. And then how can you pass up on a bottle of wine with lunch? Depending on which part of Wine Country you are in, you may not recognize any of the labels on the list, so you just choose the most expensive because even that one is cheap compared to what you’d pay for a bottle at home.

So now it’s 3:00, you may have visited one winery and you’ve tucked away a half a bottle each (assuming you are travelling in a pair, as we always do). And you still have to drive back to where you started the day. Hence, wine tasting in these areas requires a bit of planning and getting up early. Alas, when we went wine tasting in Marsala in Sicily, we neither planned nor set an alarm clock.

Hence we arrived at Cantine Pellegrino’s tasting room at 12:50, ten minutes before the midday closing. The kind lady serving wine told us that there wasn’t enough time for a tour (which we didn’t want anyway) and she would only have enough time to pour us a few sips of their best wines (which was exactly what we did want). Once she saw how interested we were, she cut 20 minutes into her appointed lunch hour(s) and we really got to know their wines. (In fact, we already knew their Nero d’Avola, which we often order at a nearby restaurant at home.)

If you plan to visit Marsala, the center of the greatest wine producing region in Italy, get directions to find Cantine Pellegrino (http://www.carlopellegrino.it/wines/en). Our GPS system took us near there, but led us to the winery itself, a large industrial building. (Grapes are grown in vineyards; wines are made in factories.) Where you want to go is the tasting room located almost a kilometer away, on the sea front.

Cantine Pellegrino’s Ouverture tasting room (Photo courtesy of Cantine Pellegrino)

If your wine tasting experience has been gained mostly in Napa and Sonoma, you’ll feel right at home at Pellegrino. Their tasting room is in a very modern, three-story building that they call Ouverture. Blindingly white in the Sicilian sunshine, it is surrounded on three sides by landscaped walking areas and by the sea on the fourth. As mentioned, the greeting you get is very warm and, well, Italian.

The wines available for tasting cover a very wide range. The basic red wine is Dinari del Duca (the Duke’s Money), either Nero D’Avola or Syrah. As stated, the Nero D’Avola is exported and widely available in the United States. Their top red wine (and also their top white) is Tripudium, a blend of indigenous and international varieties. They also have an Etna Rosso, from the other side of the island.

The best part of the wine tasting experience at Cantine Pellegrino are the wines unique to Sicily. Off the main island, actually nearer Tunisia than Italy, is the island of Pantelleria. Here the primary grape grown is zibbibo and it almost exclusively used for the dessert wine called passito. Half the harvest is vinified and the rest is left on mats in the fields to become raisins. Then the wine is passed over – hence, passito – the raisins, producing an exquisitely sweet product. Be prepared for your server to ask you what the taste reminds you of. (Hint: think apricots)

Then there’s the Marsala wine. Sure, you may know the stuff to cook with, but it’s not much to attract the taste buds of a wine lover. At Pellegrino, you have the chance to taste well-aged, vintage Marsalas. The oldest currently available is the 1981. It tastes nothing like any Marsala you may have tasted, more like an Amontillado sherry.

The town of Marsala is certainly out of the way, but it’s worth a visit. But get there well before lunch.

Railroad Square

Sonoma and Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, are dissimilar in many ways but they have one feature that is very similar. They each have a major town square, with inviting leafy parks that are the focal points of each town. Today they are surrounded by restaurants, tasting rooms, galleries and boutiques that announce that these are towns for people who have made it, who have the means to live the good life in Wine Country. As a visitor, you know that there is money there.

There’s another place in Sonoma County that also has a lot of history, with shops and restaurants too, but this place says something else: “I remember the old days, before Sonoma County became fashionable”. That place is Railroad Square in Santa Rosa. It’s actually a formally designated Historic District, and we like to think that that’s not so much because anything terribly historic ever happened there, but because it has retained its roots.

There’s a railroad station of course, but no railroads anymore. However, the Web (http://www.railroadsquare.net/) says that there will be light rail trains stopping there again, beginning in the fall of 2016. Trains notwithstanding, this is a section of town to be seen as a pedestrian. No matter where you’re from, you get the sense that you’ve been here before, and that you’re welcome back.

The old Santa Rosa station in Railroad Square (photo courtesy of City-Data.com)

There’s the old Hotel La Rose that’s been there since 1907. It’s the kind of railroad hotel that, in the movies, the new sheriff stayed in while the schoolmarm fixed him up a place of his own. To be honest, we’ve never stayed at the La Rose. You can’t use frequent flyer points there, alas. But it is awfully pretty to look at.

Up the street is a favorite restaurant of ours, Lococo’s. It’s a little Italian trattoria with red and white checkered napkins and with real Italians working in it. The food is good, the prices are reasonable and the charm comes free. Like we said, it’s homey.

Further up the street is Jackson’s, the latest establishment to occupy that corner spot. It’s changed hands and cuisines every few years and right now it’s a frank and honest bar. Oh, you can get food there, too, but it’s really the spot for a cold beer or a local wine, preferably on a hot summer evening. With each change of ownership, the new proprietors have been smart enough to keep the art deco cabinetry that once again provides historic continuity.

Another good part of Railroad Square is the coffee shops. Whenever we’re in Santa Rosa, which is pretty often, we get our morning joe (well, actually latte) at one of two places. The Flying Goat is newly renovated, with black and white tiles and a lot of sunshine pouring in, a very modern look. On the other side of the square, there’s A’Roma Roasters with its rustic style, little wooden tables and stools, old posters on the walls and a long row of dispensers of coffee beans, which they sell at retail. It smells of breakfast when you enter. Both have a few tables outside where you can enjoy your coffee and watch the crowd.

The choice of coffee shops is a deeply personal one, but both of these offer the same thing: they’ve been there a long time, they’ll be there a long time and you’ll feel welcome whenever you get there. Sure, there are tourists planning their wine tasting days (isn’t that what you’ll be doing too?) but there are a lot of locals as well. It’s not infrequent that people will ask where you’re from, what you’re doing in Santa Rosa and ask how you found this particular place for a cup of coffee. Just tell them you’re coming home.

The Good Stuff

The reason to go wine tasting is, of course, to taste wine. That rather unextraordinary statement obviously needs some refinement.

The main reason we go wine tasting is to educate our palates and increase our understanding by sampling the finest wines we can, in whatever region we are visiting. We realize that there are some people, usually those living nearby, who are simply enjoying a day in the country along with some nice beverages to enhance the pleasure. For them, lingering over a rare and expensive Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay just isn’t a part of the game plan. If you are one of those people, the rest of what follows really isn’t for you.

So now that it’s just us serious tasters, we’d like to ask a question: If you’ve come all this way to France or California or Italy or Australia or…why would you want to spend your time and tolerance for alcohol on anything other than the best wines? (There are actually a few good reasons and we’ll get to those later.) But for now, please take our advice and when you enter a tasting room, scan the wines offered and select the best available.

How do you know which are the best? One way, of course, is that there’s a special list with the best wines on it, often called the Reserve or the Library selection. If there isn’t such a list, there will be some wines that are more expensive than the others. It is highly likely that those are the wines the proprietor considers the best.

Not only will you taste better wines this way but you will have a better experience. Sometimes, the glasses will often be larger and thinner. You will probably get a better explanation of what is being offered to you, especially if you are tasting on a weekday. You may very well be in a special, more elegant tasting room as is the case, for instance, at Beaulieu Vineyards and at Cakebread in Rutherford.

Naturally, these better wines cost more to sample. For example, at the two aforementioned wineries the cost of a regular tasting at Beaulieu Vineyards is $20 and $35 for the Reserve tasting. At Cakebread it’s as little as $15 for a selection of current releases and $40 for the Reserves. We always choose the Reserve lists.

Now, we understand that the higher price may be a deterrent for some people. That’s one of the good reasons mentioned above for choosing the lesser quality tasting list. Another might be that there are wines that are on the regular list that you’d especially like to try. A particular winery might not have a reserve Merlot, for instance, and you’d like to know what their Merlots are like. There’s also the fact that you might want to taste wines that you are more likely to buy when you get back home.

Here are a few tips that might make tasting the good stuff more affordable. We two almost always share a tasting. Remember that the idea is to taste, not drink, so a shared glass gives both of us enough of an idea of what we want to know. Moreover, we have sometimes found that the server will pour a bit more into a shared glass than to a single taster’s. If, in addition, you want to try something on the lower priced list, the server will almost always accommodate you if you purchase the more expensive tasting (although often not the other way around). In fact, it is often a very good idea to taste both the regular and the Reserve wines side by side. (Just ask for an additional glass.) You may well find that the regular wine is more to your liking than some of the pricier ones.

BYOB

Let’s say that you’re in some wonderful sector of Wine Country and all day long you’ve been tasting fabulous wines. If you’ve taken our advice, you’ve selected only the best wines to sip even if you had to pay a little more for the experience. At the better wineries, you could be enjoying a pour from bottles that go for a hundred dollars or in some instances, several hundred.

Then you go to dinner.

Remember that wine you liked so much this afternoon. Well, with the restaurant’s markup, that could make the price of drinking it with your meal unaffordably high. But there is a way around it: bring your own bottle. Remember, most restaurants charge a corkage fee if you bring a bottle with you. It could be as little as $10 per bottle or as high as $25.

But look at it this way. Restaurants mark up their wines between twice and three times the retail price. So if for example you loved a $75 wine, you might expect to pay $150 to $225 for this wine to accompany your meal. If you bring it with you, it would cost you only $100. Now, “only” is a relative term, but it certainly is cheaper than the price on the wine list.

If this is your plan, it could change the way you approach wine tasting during the day. If you know the restaurant at which you plan to dine that evening, call them and find out their corkage policy and fees. You might even ask what the specials of the day will be. Then go wine tasting with your dinner in mind.

Perhaps you’re planning on having a steak, a big, luscious steak. A Cabernet Sauvignon would be just the right wine to drink with it. And luckily enough, you’re in Napa Valley or Sonoma County (or Bordeaux or Chile) where they just happen to be famous for big, luscious Cabernet Sauvignons. As you go through the day, try the Cabernets that would fit your budget with the corkage fee added. When you’ve found the perfect wine, buy it and take it with you to dinner.

Of course, you might taste several “perfect” wines while you’re visiting the wineries. If you’re thinking of buying one for your evening meal, it’s a good idea to take a few notes as you go along and then decide which one is most to your liking or fits best with your dinner plans. You can then go back the winery where you tasted that wine and buy a bottle.

Here’s a little tip that will make bringing your wine even more attractive. Many restaurants, even some of the best, don’t charge corkage at all. They may place some restrictions on that policy. For example, Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg only extends the no-corkage policy to wines made in Sonoma County. That still gives you a lot of room for maneuver. Another California restaurant with a no-corkage policy is Hurley’s in Yountville. We especially appreciate that the sommelier there gives extra attention to wines that are more than ten years old, because they and their corks can be a little more delicate.

There may be other restrictions, such as only certain nights when corkage is waived or a requirement that you buy one bottle off the list before they waive the corkage on the one you bring with you. A little advance planning pays off. There are lists on the web, but we’re not vouching for their accuracy. A few simple phone calls are the best bet.

Domaine Carneros

As we often point out, Power Tasting is not about wine itself but about the pleasures of visiting Wine Country and tasting wine. In our estimation, there are few if any places worthier of a visit than Domaine Carneros in the Napa County side of the Carneros region. In a word, the experience is simply lovely.

Domaine Carneros is the US subsidiary of Taittinger in Reims, France. Their wines are among the most famous champagnes in the world. The French have laws that restrict the use of the word champagne to sparkling wines made of grapes grown in the Champagne region. Therefore, being a French company, they do not call their California production champagne, only sparkling wine. You can now forget that distinction and call it whatever you like.

And we’re pretty sure you’ll like visiting Domaine Carneros.

You enter the grounds through a wide gate (remember that gate) and park at the foot of a long staircase leading to what to the naked eye seems to be a grand French chateau. Honoring their roots in France, the Taittinger people constructed a faux chateau in California, very much like the one they have on their French estate. The staircase cuts through rows of Pinot Noir vines, one of the three grapes used in champagne and thus in Domaine Carneros’ cham…, excuse us, sparkling wines. (The other two are Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier.)

The faux chateau at Domaine Carneros

You then take a seat at a table on the wide terrace (or inside on days with inclement weather). The views from that terrace are priceless: vineyards, the rolling green and beige hillsides of Carneros, blue sky, a lake, sheep nibbling the grass. Wait. Sheep? Actually, the Domaine Carneros folks put up flat wooden replicas of sheep, just to enhance your experience.

The view, with “sheep”

Soon a server will bring you a menu and ask what you would like. Here you pay for wine flights at different levels, from $30 to $40 dollars. You can also order by the glass, at prices ranging from $10 to $30 a glass. No, it isn’t the cheapest place for wine tasting in Napa Valley, but you should consider the matter of value for money. Visitors can have their sparkling wines or their Pinot Noirs, the most renowned of which is called Famous Gate. (Remember that gate?)

You can also order rather pricey nibbles, like charcuterie and caviar. Your server will also bring you some almonds or other snack to go with your wines, without charge.

A few words about those servers. They are always very well-mannered and attentive and are usually quite informative about the wines they serve you. They tell you what you need to know and don’t enter into your conversation. It can be a little difficult to get their attention when you want to order some more to drink, and in our experience, we’ve always wanted more. But they can be rather pushy about joining the Domaine Carneros wine club. (See Wine Clubs in a previous edition of Power Tasting.) We must admit that we have succumbed and have joined, but that is neither a recommendation nor does it mean our arms were twisted by the server. Just be ready for the sales pitch and politely say “no” if you’re not interested.

It is important to remember that a visit to Domaine Carneros is more about drinking than sipping, as compared to any other winery we’re familiar with. If you show interest in purchasing the wines, or especially if you show interest in joining their club, the server will bring you healthy pours of virtually all the wines on their list. So take it easy and keep in mind your wine tasting agenda for the rest of the day when you visit Domaine Carneros.

For us, it’s usually the first place we visit when we arrive from San Francisco, the winery being one of the southernmost in Napa Valley. It may be our only visit for the day. Or it’s the last stop on the last day of our trip, the only place we go as we leave Napa Valley (or Sonoma for that matter). We can’t recommend visiting Domaine Carneros highly enough, but you do need to be prepared.

Don’t Try to Visit Everyplace All at Once

There are two types of locales in Wine Country. Some are places with a small number of wineries, often not of the very highest grade. Areas like Temecula Valley, Long Island’s North Fork and Jerome, Arizona fall into this category. Then there are the sectors where the world’s great wines are made, such as Bordeaux, Napa Valley, Stellenbosch, Barossa, Tuscany and the Cote d’Or in Burgundy. These are enormous territories with hundreds of wineries and tasting rooms. (For example, there are more than 400 wineries in Napa Valley alone.)

Here’s a little non-secret: you can’t visit them all. Probably not in a lifetime and absolutely not in a day. So if you’re visiting one of these legendary wine-making areas and you only have a day (especially if you only have a day) there are some tips that will make your visit more enjoyable.

Do some advance planning. Figure out where you will be starting from that day, how long it will take to get to Wine Country and when you need to be back. Many thanks to Google Maps; everyone can be an expert in these matters nowadays. You also must factor in the number of wineries you intend to visit, which is governed more by your tolerance for alcohol than in the number of hours you’ll be in the area.
Choose just one section to visit. Or maybe two, at the most depending on the geography. The point is that you want to spend your time visiting wineries, not driving long distances from place to place. [Exception to this advice: Maybe you do want to drive around in order to take in the scenery. Maybe you want to see the vineyards surrounding castles in the Medoc or the gracious hills in Sonoma County or the Route Touristique in Champagne. That’s a great idea, too, but then plan to minimize your winery visits.]
Figure out where you’re going to have lunch. If you are going wine tasting, you are going to have lunch. This may be a picnic by the side of the road in a Burgundian village or a fine repast at a South African wine farm. But these meals don’t just happen. You need to plan ahead if you’re bringing lunch with you or know where restaurants are if you intend to dine that way. Some of the best bets are knowing where the local delis are. These days, many have gone gourmet, which isn’t bad at all.
Go to the best wineries in the section you choose. This is easy if you’re familiar with the area, but what do you do if the wineries are all just names to you? There are several answers. Again the Web is your friend; look up “best wineries in ______” and you’ll have an excellent chance of tasting something worthwhile, at least to someone’s taste. Or just ask people. We have often pulled into the first winery we see, tasted their wines and then asked the people there where else we should go. These folks in wineries are usually very generous with advice and have often led us to some of the greatest wine tasting experiences of our lives. (See Valpolicella Follies, for example.)
Do your wine tasting in a town, not at the vineyards. As a general rule, tasting rooms in towns are inferior to what you’ll be able to try at the places where the wine is actually made. But that is not universally true. For example, you can have a very pleasant experience walking down Grand Avenue in Los Olivos, stopping at a few (just a few) of the 25 tasting rooms in town. You can do the same thing at the degustaziones in Montalcino. If you happen to be staying in those places, you don’t have to worry about getting behind the wheel of a car, so your day is optimized.
Don’t worry about what you didn’t get a chance to see. It is far better, to our minds, to get the most out of a small sample then just to skim a larger selection. We realize that not everyone feels this way, but consider the fact that having visited one corner of Wine Country, life has a way of giving you another chance one day.

Meeting the Winemaker

As we state on our front page, Power Tasting is not about wine as such, but about visiting Wine Country. We offer advice to travelers, not connoisseurs. The people we generally talk with when we go visiting are servers and tasting room managers, not winemakers. Still, over the years we have had the occasion to meet many winemakers who just happened to be in the tasting room while we were there.

Perhaps our warmest memory was meeting two generations of the Charavin family at their winery in Rasteau, Domaine des Coteaux de Travers (www.coteaux-des-travers.com/index.php/en). We were already familiar with their wines and made a point of visiting them. The winery had only a simple bar in front of the production area. The young woman who served us was the both the wife of the present winemaker and the daughter of the family that had owned the estate in previous years. While we were talking with her, her father-in-law, Robert Charavin stopped by and we learned a bit more about the history of the winery. And then his son, also named Robert, came by in his mud-covered boots. They were all excited to meet Americans who loved their wines, but not as excited as were to meet them. It was a unique and educational experience.

Also in the Rhone Valley, we visited Chateauneuf du Pape, an area famed for its hearty and expressive red wines. Traveling through the sector, we stopped at a winery we had been told was up-and-coming, Domaine Paul Autard (www.paulautard.com, in French). The woman serving us recognized that our accents were from North America and when we asked a few questions decided to introduce us to the winemaker, that is, her husband Jean-Paul Autard. He explained that his father, Paul, had started the winery and that he was setting about to create world-quality wines. We discussed his trips to New York, invited him to call us when he was there the next time (he never did) and he gave us a nice corkscrew that we use to this day.

autard

Jean-Paul Autard (Photo courtesy of Domaine Paul Autard)

One more story. We have been drinking the wines of David Cofaro for quite some time and visit his winery often. We’ve gotten to know him and his wife Pat a bit over the years. In 2015, we got to meet his new assistant winemaker, Josh. He’s an earnest and thoughtful young man who has some great ideas about how he could improve wines we already thought were pretty terrific.

In all three of these stories, there’s a common element. There’s more to wine than barrels and terroir. There are the people and the way they think about wine, their personal histories, their way of approaching what they do for a living with passion and intelligence. We are not oenologists or critics, so our interactions with winemakers is necessarily irregular. But when we do get the chance, it adds enormously to our understanding or wine and to the pleasure we get going wine tasting.