lgsjr – Page 49 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Tasting Port in Lisbon

While Portugal has some excellent table wines, its glory is in the dessert wines, from grapes grown along the Douro River in the north of the country. The grapes have names that are strange to American ears: Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão and Tinta Amarela. The name of the wine they are made into comes from the city at the mouth of the Douro, called Porto. Hence the wine famous around the world for its richness, depth and high alcoholic content is called Port.

But if you are in Lisbon you are three hours south of Porto. So if you want to taste Port, where do you go? The answer to that question is very simple: the Instituto Dos Vinhos Do Douro e Do Porto (the Institute for the Wines of the Douro and of Porto). It’s located at 45 Rua São Pedro de Alcântara, in the district called the Barrio Alto or the “high neighborhood”. The building is an elegant old palace on a street that winds its way down the hill towards the River Tagus. The Instituto is the august body that determines if a winery’s top production in any given year is good enough to be merited as a vintage Port, so they know their way around this delicious beverage.

The Instituto operates an elegant tasting room called the Solar, where admission is free. The first thing you notice upon entering is that it is very dark. Once your eyes adjust, you see that it looks very much like a club room, very hushed with large easy chairs for you to sink into as you sip your Port. And oh, the Port you have to choose from! There are more than 300 of them from more than 60 producers, ranging from simple ruby Ports to mature vintage Ports. Prices range from a few euros to twenty-plus per glass. The low end is a real bargain; the top end is also a bargain for what you get.

Solar Lisboa renovado (6)(1)

Photograph courtesy of the Instituto Dos Vinhos Do Douro e Do Porto

For the most part, the best Ports are sold only by the bottle, so you need to be with a group to savor these extra special wines. It’s quite a show if you do. Your server arrives with the bottle cradled in his arm, wiping away the accumulation of dust. He lays it gently into a cradle that has a small crank. In order to avoid pouring sediment into your glass, he uses the crank to gently tilt the bottle so that only unsullied liquid gets there. He’ll serve you a plate of almonds to accompany your selection. You are now officially in wine-lovers’ heaven.

If you want to taste by the glass, you are hardly left out of the fun. You can try all sorts of combinations, such as the range from bottom to top of one producer. This is best if you already have some knowledge of Port and have a favorite Port house. Or to gain some knowledge of which houses you like, try tasting similar wines from multiple makers. So for example, you can sample late bottled vintage (LBV) wines from Grahams, Taylor Fladgate, Dow and Fonseca side by side or one after the other.

Another good tasting is to try a vertical of tawny ports that contain a variety of well-aged wine from various vineyards (or quintas). You can compare one winery’s 10-year, 20-year and 30-year tawnies. Needless to say, the older the wine, the more it costs. There are even some 40-year old tawnies that are quite pricy but are an exquisite experience. Steve once tasted a 40-year old Burmester there and has never forgotten it.

Once you leave the Solar, turn left and walk a hundred or so feet. There’s a little park with the best view overlooking downtown Lisbon and the Alfama hill across the way. Don’t miss it.

The Solar is open until midnight, opening at 11:00 am on weekdays and 3:00 pm on Saturdays. It’s closed on Sundays and holidays, of which there are quite a few in Portugal. We recommend that, since the days are so lovely, you shouldn’t spend them indoors. Go see the sunset over Lisbon and then taste in the evening hours.

Jazz and Wine, New Orleans Style

There are many restaurants that offer a jazz brunch. Usually, they are neither good jazz not good food. Two for the price of one often means not much at all, even for the price. A wonderful exception is Bacchanal Wine in New Orleans. As the name implies, it is really a wine bar first with jazz as an additional benefit. It is also a wine store with a pretty wide-ranging selection and a café with a menu that isn’t very wide-ranging at all. The food is more in the way of nibbles, with a soup and a sandwich available as well.

There’s jazz most of the day, starting with lunch. Jazz, wine and food are served in a courtyard in the back, or upstairs if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

Now, about the wine. While Bacchanal does have formal wine tastings (Wednesdays and Saturdays), the wines they have on offer at the bar are easy to treat as a wine-tasting. They are all reasonably priced at around $8.00 a glass. But if you go on a Monday, such as we did, they are all sold at $5.00. At that price a couple can sample quite a lot. We had the opportunity to taste two Rosés (Spanish and South African), two sparkling wines (American and French) and three reds: a Malbec from Argentina, a Nebbiolo from Langhe and a Rioja Tempranillo. Some of those weren’t glassfuls but rather sips to see if we liked them. A few we didn’t but most of them we did. A nice feature is that the wine store supplies the bar, so if you like something in particular, you can buy it and take it home.

We had particular fun with the jazz. The musician was Raphael Bas from Southwest France. He plays Gypsy jazz (also called manouche) on guitar and harmonica. He is a special favorite of ours, whom we’ve heard play and sing for about a decade when we visit New Orleans – which we do a lot. That day he was accompanied by Matt Schreiber on the accordion. You can listen to Raphael at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grHKKhnBqCM

Raphael and Matt play indoors on a rainy day

A word about the location. It’s a long way from the French Quarter in a sector called Bywater, probably because it’s by the waters of the Mississippi River. The road there, the extension of the same Chartres Street that’s so pretty in the French Quarter, is desolate and industrial, with a shipyard just across the street. When you do arrive at Bacchanal, you may well think you’re going into a dump, more of a tumbledown saloon that a place for wine and jazz. Take heart; it’s better inside and in the courtyard. It’s not a place to walk to, so you’d better take a cab and then get a number to call a cab to go back, because there are none trawling this neighborhood. The bar staff will help you with a number if you don’t have one.

Wine Tasting and Education in Your Own Town

We are lucky to live in one of the most exciting and amazing cities in the world, New York City, which has everything and so much to offer. For wine lovers, there are wine tastings all around the city, usually sponsored by wine stores and often free of charge. Some wine stores advertise their events in the newspapers, some on their website or in their stores. It is a great opportunity to discover a new wine or to meet the winemaker.

Once Sherry-Lehmann (one of the finer wine stores in New York) had a tasting of Napa Valley Stag’s Leap Artemis Cabernet Sauvignon (which happened to be one of Lucie’s top favorites) and had invited the founder and very famous winemaker of Stag’s Leap, Mr. Warren Winiarski. We knew about Mr. Winiarski from the book Judgment of Paris, which told how its 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon won first place against ten top French and California red wines in a blind taste test by leading French wine experts. Without hesitation, Lucie took the subway with the intention, of course, of buying a couple of bottles of Artemis, but particularly to have the chance to meet with Mr. Winiarski. She had a nice chat with him, had him sign our bottles and even had a little extra, a kiss on the cheek from the famous Mr. Winiarski. “What an interesting and charming man!” she still says. This is an opportunity to meet with the guy that made the wine you love so much, or the one you’re about to discover, and you’ll never forget that encounter with the winemaker whenever you open one of his bottles.

There are so many classes that one can take, from the classes for the beginners, to a Pinot Noir lecture and tasting, to Wine and Food Pairing, to Italian Wines, etc. Those classes usually include a lecture and a wine tasting, often served with bread and cheese. It is a great chance to learn about wine without leaving your own town. Should you have never heard about those classes in your town, we would suggest you walk to your favorite wine store and ask them; if they do not have any wine tasting or classes, maybe you could suggest them to do so.

As we said, living in New York City offers a lot of opportunities where so many wine stores have wine classes and wine tastings. We have been attending some of those classes and always go away with more knowledge, be it a class to discover different wine making regions of Italy, a tasting of American versus French Pinot Noir, food and wine pairing or Rhône wines.

We love to travel to Wine Country, but we also love to stop at a wine store and have a tasting … without leaving town!

Donnafugata

Wine tasting in Sicily is unlike other places we have been, even in Italy. For one thing, there is no essential place to go to, no Medoc or Napa or Tuscany. The Sicilians grow grapes and make wine almost everywhere on the island. For another, unless you are a real specialist in Italian wines, you probably haven’t heard of any of the better wines made in Sicily. Finally, most of the Sicilian wines available in the US, until recently, were either overly acidic or overly sweet, so there’s not a lot of incentive to find the wineries and taste what they have to offer.

Donnafugata, in the town of Marsala on the west coast of Sicily, can really change your thinking about Sicilian wines.

The Donnafugata winery facilities

The name of the winery is taken from the great Sicilian novel, Il Gattepardo by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. It means “the fleeing woman” in Italian and in that language the word does roll off the tongue. However, to American ears, particularly ears that are near Brooklyn, it sounds so much like the dismissive “fuggedaboutit” that is attributed to that borough. Try to overcome this prejudice when you visit Marsala.

Unfortunately, the town is not close to other tourist destinations, such as Palermo, Agrigento, Syracuse or Taormina. That means a visit to Marsala entails a long drive, fortunately over well-constructed and well-marked highways. The town itself isn’t much to see and the wineries for the most part look like factories from the outside. Ah, but it’s what’s inside that counts.

At Donnafugata, there is no bar as such for you to just step up to and taste. You take a brief tour through what is, indeed, a factory – as all wineries are to a great extent. You learn about the Rallo family that owns and runs Donnafugata and get a pretty good overview of Sicilian grapes and winemaking techniques. We found the selection of wines to be very interesting, with Nero d’Avola as the primary red grape but with several quality wines that add Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Whites are from a broad selection of grapes, mostly unknown outside of Sicily, such as Catarratto, Grillo, Zibbibo and Ansonica. They do have several Chardonnays just like back home.

Your tour guide offers you a tasting in a small room, little more than an office. Our guide was a fellow named Marco, who was very enthusiastic and eager to please. He would have opened every wine they make if we had allowed him to do so.

Marco getting ready to serve

One of our great discoveries was the dessert wine called Passito. It is made from Zibbibo grapes on the island of Pantelleria, closer to Tunisia than to Italy. It is made by placing a large portion of the harvest on cloths in the fields, in order to turn the grapes into raisins. The remaining grapes are vinified and then passed over (hence, Passito) the raisins and allowed to macerate. The result can be exceptionally sweet but if managed well, made into a complex, aromatic dessert wine that is, as the Italians say, uno vino de meditazione, a meditation wine. Donnafugata’s Passito is called Ben Ryé, or “son of the wind” in Arabic.

If you intend to visit Donnafugata, be certain to make a reservation and give yourself plenty of time to get there. Like all of Italy, they close for a leisurely lunch, which means that if you are driving from afar, you don’t have a lot of time to visit multiple wineries in the area and still get back to your hotel before dark. (The highways are fine but the streets in the towns and cities are a bit of a challenge.)

Tasting at 35,000 Feet

Airplanes are made for flying, not for tasting wine. Nonetheless, they serve wine on (some) airlines, so why not taste it? Well, for one thing, most of it is pretty awful. In economy, they have those little 187 ml. bottles that have labels like Chateau de Somewhere or Turkey Neck Cellars. Yes, it’s liquid, contains alcohol and is either red or white. I think it’s fair to say they make it from grapes. Beyond that, you’re taking your chances.

But if you’re fortunate enough to be flying in Business Class or (gasp!) First Class, they often have some pretty good wine available. We’ve done a lot of international business travel which has given us quite a few such opportunities. We’ve had Dom Perignon, Penfold’s St. Henri, and Chateau Beychevelle, among some of the more notable wines, while aloft. If you’re flying overseas, why not avail yourself of a tasting based on the wine list the airline offers? Tell the flight attendant that that’s what you’re trying to do and he or she will often be happy to give you two glasses so that you can compare, say, a California Cabernet versus a French Bordeaux. Or ask for a white before your meal (pretty much only on overseas flights only) and then red wine with it.

If you would like to experiment in this way while flying, there are a few things you ought to think about.

Airplane cabins are not ideal locations for wine tasting. The air is pressurized and recirculating. The light is not in a good place to appreciate the color. And your senses are not the same as they are on the ground. As a general rule, powerful wines come across better in the air than lighter ones because they overcome the natural dulling of your smell and taste that are the result of airplane conditions. As a result, what you might fall in love with in the air may taste overpowering when you order later, in a restaurant or shop. Steve once discovered a Cambria Syrah only to find he really didn’t like it when he tasted it in California’s Central Coast.

Don’t forget that wine is alcohol. And you’re going to feel it sooner and harder. So the general rule that you should sip not drink if you’re wine tasting goes double up in the air. But it’s soooo easy to forget. The movie is playing and the attendant keeps filling your glass, so why not have a little more, and a little more and…

Once, Steve was flying home from Japan and asked the steward for one of those forms that you can use for comments. JAL had had to do a lot of maneuvering to get him on the plane and upgraded and he wanted to thank them. The steward must have broken protocol and read the comments, because he reappeared with a broad smile and a bottle of champagne. For the rest of the flight, he wouldn’t let Steve’s glass become empty, to the point that Steve had to fake sleeping in order to get him to stop. Or maybe he wasn’t faking?

Airplanes bounce. If your flight is long enough, you’re bound to hit some turbulence somewhere. And, lo and behold, wine will slosh. You could have a long way to go with red wine all over your pants. That’s why airlines don’t use stemware, so that their glasses, especially when filled, will have a lower center of gravity. So try not to have your glass filled to the top. Of course, you could drink quickly so there isn’t much in the glass. Bad idea. Or you can ask the attendant not to pour too much, which also has its drawbacks. The flight attendants like to show the airlines’ generosity to their higher-paying customers and so give you a lot and come back to give you more. However, they never seem to be there just when you’d like another drop or two. For some of the more expensive wines, they may not have a lot of bottles on board, so if you don’t take these fine wines when offered, they may not be there when you want them. Still, restraint is always a good approach.

All the above sounds like we’re discouraging you from sipping wine in the air. Not so. We just hope that you do what you would do if you were on a tasting visit to Wine Country. Think about what you’re doing. Use discretion. And then open your taste buds and your mind and taste what may prove to be something wonderful. Have a good time. And bon voyage.

The First Time

In the 1970’s, just after the famous Judgement of Paris showed how great California wines had become, Steve went wine tasting for the first time. He remembers well the sensation, as he was driving along Route 29 in the Napa Valley, that he was in a wine shop only it wasn’t labels he was passing by but wineries. Domaine Chandon, Heitz, Louis Martini – all these famous places along the road! And every place offered something to taste and for free. It was wonderful.

In our travels, we have re-experienced that sensation many times and so can you. Each visit to a wine-growing region unknown to you brings back that same sense of an adventure about to unroll. Even with a GPS, you don’t really know where you are going. Very often, most of the wineries are not very well known to you. Maybe you have never heard of any of them. What should you do?

One option is to take a tour, but we do not recommend it. Tour operators are interested in volume, not quality. They choose wineries that can accommodate large groups, with wines that appeal to the mass market. It is better for them to offer wines that everyone can enjoy somewhat than expensive wines and expensive tastings that are oriented to connoisseurs. It is bad enough when 30 people show up at a winery all wanting to be served at once. It’s even worse when you’re in that group. You have no time for conversation, for learning, for savoring something unique. And you definitely won’t be offered that special wine they keep below the counter for those who are willing to spend more time to really understand a winery’s production.

The best bet is to get to the region you’re visiting and stop at the first winery you see. It may be a lucky hit, with knowledgeable people, lovely décor and fine wines. But even if it isn’t, it will have two things you want: a map and someone you can ask: “We’re new here. Which wineries do you suggest we try?” Almost without exception, we have found that wine people love to talk and love to give advice. Your taste may not be the same as theirs, so you might want to say, at your next stop, “The people at Chateau X recommended your wines. What can you recommend that might be a little different?” A truly helpful server should ask you, “Well, what kind of wine do you like?” and then direct you to light whites, heavy reds and everything in between.

Of course, this gets a little trickier when the region you are visiting is in a non-English speaking country. Fortunately, English has become the world’s second language so you can usually have a passable conversation. We have also engaged in a fair amount of arm-waving, map-pointing and general looking lost. It has always worked and we have often been directed to some of the most amazing wineries we have ever visited.

The great likelihood, when you’re tasting in a region you’re not familiar with, is that the wines aren’t going to be exactly what you think they’ll be. For example, a California Syrah is different from a French Syrah which isn’t the same as an Australian Shiraz. Moreover, a Southern Rhone Syrah is different than one from the north. You need not only to be open to these differences but to relish them. That’s what wine tasting is all about. It’s not a search for novelty for its own sake but rather to enjoy different winemakers’ expressions of the soil, the climate and the traditions of each locale. When you taste something unexpectedly wonderful, you’ve gotten a sense of what makes wine so fascinating: the variety, the personality, the subtlety and the achievement that each new harvest brings.

Sometimes, you’ll find wines made from grapes you’ve never heard of. Did you ever have an Insolia? It’s a wonderful white grape from Sicily that makes some of the most elegant white wines we’ve tasted in a while. How about Pinotage? Cannonau? Canaiolo? Open your mind when you open your mouth and you’ll get the most out of your visit.

Finally, make comparisons with wines you know, but only after you’ve finished for the day. If you say to yourself, “This is like XYZ Vineyards back home” you’ll always have the taste of XYZ on your mind and on your palate and you’ll find it hard to judge the wines you’re tasting on their own merits.

So, wherever you go, follow the open road. It leads to Wine Country.

A Lovely Day in the Country

Wine tasting can be a destination activity. You travel to the capitals of the wine world – Bordeaux, Napa Valley, Tuscany, the Barossa Valley – for the purpose of tasting the wonderful wines they have to offer. But in other cases, tasting wine is secondary if not incidental to the trip. Perhaps you’re on vacation in a city that has wineries nearby and you’d like an afternoon away from the urban bustle. Or you live in such a place and you wake up to find a day too beautiful to stay in town. So you decide, let’s go to Wine Country, not for serious tasting but just for a pleasant day out.

Here are some tips for making the most of such a day.

Plan ahead. We don’t mean that you should spend hours studying guides and maps. But take a quick look on the Web for a locale that has all the things you need: a few wineries, a restaurant and a deli. There was a time when you really needed to know where you were going. Nowadays, Google knows and you only have to ask.

Minimize your driving. Select a destination that you can get to primarily on major roads and then go there only (and there only). Don’t lose your time behind the wheel going from winery to winery. If there are two or three in close proximity to one another, those are the ones to visit today. Your tasting at Chateau Latour can wait for another day.

Have lunch. Have a very good lunch. Have wine with your lunch. If you dine in a restaurant, make it one that’s fun. For example, when we go wine tasting in Long Island’s North Fork, we often have burgers and sandwiches at the Old Mill Inn in Mattituck. The attraction is sitting on a dock watching the ducks come begging for French fries and seeing the pleasure boats head out into the Sound. It’s not great food but it’s great fun.

Shop for something that isn’t wine. Almost every winery has stuff for sale, from caps and shirts with the winery logo to truly beautiful, unique (often overpriced) products. You don’t have to buy but the looking can be fun. And since Wine Country is by definition farm country, you can often find a stand with fruit, vegetables, pies and candy.

Savor the beauty that’s all around you. There may be exceptions, but in our experience grapes only grow in beautiful places. The vines in serried rows, like soldiers marching in formation across a hillside, are going to look brilliant, any time of year. At almost every winery they are aware of what they have and provide a bench or a porch where you can just sit and take in the glory of the scenery. We both say it fills our hearts. Fill yours.

Stay as late as you can. Of course, it depends how much time you need to drive home. But seeing the vines in the long, golden rays of a summer afternoon – or better yet, a sunset – makes for an unforgettable day in the country.

Taste, don’t drink. It is so tempting to go to just one more winery and to swallow everything each one has to offer. But don’t forget that it is alcohol and you have to drive to get back home. Sip each wine and experience it with all your senses – the aroma, the color, the feel of the glass in your hand, the murmurs of other guests – and if you really like it, buy a bottle to take home with you.

Cindy Pawlcyn’s Garden

This is not a restaurant review, even though it’s almost about a restaurant, one of our favorite restaurants, but just a little to the left. It feels as though Mustards Grill (www.mustardsgrill.com) has been along Route 29 north of Yountville forever, but actually it opened in 1983. Steve would have sworn that he ate there on his first trip to Napa Valley in the 1970’s, but evidently it wasn’t so. But we have eaten there a lot of times since. The outside looks like an old fashioned road stop restaurant but the inside is bistro style and cozy. You’ve got to love a place that proudly proclaims on its outside banner that they serve “steaks, chops, ribs, garden produce and way too many wines”. There have been many memorable meals there and way too much wine, but this is about the garden adjoining the restaurant.

mustards

Photo courtesy of Mustards Grill

The founder, proprietor and resident guru of Mustards is Cindy Pawlcyn. She also owns Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, a restaurant located on a back street (of course) in St. Helena. It has the same sort of food but a very different ambiance. For one thing, there’s no garden. Cindy (evidently no one calls her Ms. Pawlcyn) erected a vegetable and herb garden on two acres just besides Mustard s, so that she could have fresh ingredients for her kitchen(s). There are other restaurants with private gardens, Thomas Keller’s across from French Laundry being the most famous. But no other that we are aware of is so accessible to the public as is Cindy’s.

Diners are invited to stroll there before or after a meal. (There’s no prohibition against walking through the garden without dining, but we would not recommend it. Mustards’ web site says they also grow winter vegetables, too. What a wonderful feeling walking among herbs and vegetables in a garden just outside the restaurant you’re about to walk into. Or after your meal, you can smell all the aromas of those fresh ingredients that were just on your plates.

We are both city folks, but Lucie has family in rural areas who have what the Quebecois call jardins potagers, or simply vegetable gardens, so all this isn’t quite that unusual to her. She rubs the herbs lightly between her fingers to extract and smell the essential oils. Steve knows nothing about gardening and he is fascinated to see what a string bean or a pepper looks like before it’s ready to eat.

There’s fun in seeing what your food looked like before it even was ready to go to the kitchen. Perhaps more so, it keeps you in mind that, for all the fun of going to Wine Country to taste exceptional wines, you could stay home and open bottles if all you wanted was to taste wine. When you’re in Cindy’s garden, you know you’re in the country. We both love Cindy’s restaurants, particularly Mustards.

St. Supéry

St. Supéry

We read in Wine Spectator recently that the family that founded the St. Supéry winery is selling it to the Chanel company. Chanel is best known for perfume, of course, but it already has winery holdings in France. We can only hope that the new owners continue the excellent tasting experience in the winery’s St. Helena location.

As you pull onto the property from Napa valley’s Route 29 you see a large white clapboard house on your right. It’s called the Atkinson House. St. Supéry has restored the house, both inside and out, and it is open to the public by appointment. It features a living museum of a late 1800 vintner’s life. This historic old home is an archetype of what anyone would expect a prosperous St. Helena farmer to live in…a century ago.

The Atkinson House belies the handsome building that contains the tasting room. The main tasting room itself is modern and airy with windows that overlook the vineyard. They also have a lot of merchandise for sale.

st.supery1

The Atkinson House at St. Supéry (photograph courtesy of St. Supéry Estate Vineyards and Winery)

Most of the time, we recommend that visitors just belly up to the bar to get an overall sense of what a winery produces. This is certainly true at St. Supéry, where the tasting room is capacious enough even to accommodate weekend crowds.

As we have written elsewhere, there are some good reasons to take special seated tastings. [See By Appointment Only] At St. Supéry, the special tastings are well worth considering. They have several, including a wine and cheese pairing and a class that they call Aromatherapy with a Corkscrew, which we haven’t tried. We did take and highly recommend their Vineyard to Glass tour. An experienced sommelier hands you a glass of wine and then escorts you outside to walk through the vineyards. St. Supéry places great emphasis on terroir, and when you can see the ground and the vines where the wine you are tasting comes from, you really understand the inherent relationship among dirt, sky, water and wine. If you go, don’t miss the exhibit of the different soils in their vineyards.

The tasting room employees we have encountered were welcoming and knowledgeable at St. Supéry. In addition to the people, the architecture reinforces the pleasure of a tasting. The gallery on the upper floor is usually worth a look, as well.

In the past we have bought St. Supéry’s Cabernet Franc and Merlot. We especially enjoy their Bordeaux blend, which they call Elu or “the Elect” in French. Elu should definitely be included in any tasting. Make sure to see the bottle, because the label is especially attractive.

Wine Clubs

Despite the title, this is not really an article about wine clubs. In keeping with the Power Tasting credo, we are writing about the effect wine clubs have on the experience tasters have when visiting Wine Country.

These clubs are primarily an American phenomenon, although we have recently learned that a few European wineries are considering them as well. Here are the basics: joining a club is free but it entails a commitment to receive shipments from one to many times a year. There are some clubs that require you to buy as few as six bottles annually and many call for purchasing a case each year. Some allow you to choose what you want to receive but most will send you whatever they want to send you (usually the bottles they have trouble selling otherwise). In return, you receive a discount on purchases, free tastings when you visit their wineries and invitations to special events.

[There are a lot of qualifiers here: “some”, “many”, “most”. That’s because each winery structures their clubs differently. Be sure to read the fine print if you plan to join.]

Before considering the benefits of membership, let’s look at the negative impacts on wine tasting visits. At some wineries, especially those with sit-down tastings, the servers do a lot of pressure selling. We have had bad experiences at Far Niente, Nickel & Nickel and Domaine Carneros in that regard. There you are, at a table full of bottles and glasses, and the nice person who has just taken you on a tour and poured you some wine says, “No pressure, but…” and begins the sales pitch. If you have some decent sales resistance, it’s no problem. But it does detract from what would otherwise be a very pleasant experience. And since there is usually a fairly hefty charge for these seated tastings, you’ve paid to be a sales target. If you’ve ever been to a sales meeting for time shares, you will recognize the nasty feeling it leaves with you.

On the other hand, being a member can really enhance your overall tasting experience. At the present time, we are members of six clubs, and there are about as many again that we once joined and then left. As members, you are more likely to return to that winery often and the staff will get to know you. That alone makes your visit more pleasant. In most cases, wineries have a menu of what is available for tasting that day. However, wineries generally have no inhibitions about opening everything they have for people who are already committed to purchase in quantity every year. So you wind up with more to taste of wines you’ve already selected as favorites. The fact that you’ve tasted all of them in the past is no drawback; each wine is different each year.

Many wineries have special areas that are for members only. A bit snobbish perhaps, but you’ll appreciate this if you’re visiting on a weekend. And you can bring a few friends with you, so having a private area makes it more fun for your small party.

What we have found best of all is the invitations we receive to our clubs’ private parties. If you reside near the wineries, you can really live it up. For those like ourselves who need to take a plane and stay at a hotel, it’s difficult to take advantage. Still, the ones we’ve attended range from good fun to grand events. We have always had the chance to meet and chat with the winemakers and often the winery owners (although now that so many are owned by big corporations, that’s harder to do). They always serve food that complements their wines. (We once decoded a particularly good ragu and will post the recipe separately.)

The guest of honor at Etude’s annual pig roast

And then then there are the big blowouts. Last summer we took up the invitation to Etude’s annual pig roast. Seated at a table on the lawn outside the winery, we feasted on a whole porker that had roasted over an open fire all day. Cooks brushed it regularly with olive oil soaked laurel branches. We were fortunate to sit next to Jon Priest, the winemaker-in-chief. Oh, and the wines – a selection of pinots from across the top of Etude’s line, including Heirloom, their finest. Was it worth the membership? It sure was!

20150627_193853 Lucie sips while Etude’s Jon Priest says a few words