Category: Wineries

When we talk about Twomey, we need to be very precise.  For one thing, it’s just Twomey, not Twomey Cellars or Twomey Vineyards.  There used to be two Twomey wine tasting experiences to be enjoyed, one in Calistoga in Napa Valley and the other in Sonoma county, on Westside Road in Healdsburg.  Today, only the Russian River site remains.

Then there’s the issue of heritage.  Twomey is owned by Silver Oak, renowned for their Cabernet Sauvignons.  Our first encounter with Twomey was when they focused on Merlot, but somewhere along the line they switched to producing Pinot Noirs, which does make more sense for a winery located in Russian River.  So, they took over a tasting room from a boutique winery called Stonegate, and that’s where they offer tastings to this day.

A tasting at Twomey begins with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.  It seems that every winery in the area that specializes in red wines offers a little bit of white, just to show that they can.  (Maybe it’s a California law.)  The rest of a tasting focuses on Pinot Noir.  More than that, each of the wines offered is from a single vineyard, which is a hallmark of Twomey’s wines.  That said, we found a distinct style to Twomey’s various offerings.  It’s not that they all taste the same, but there is a similarity.  Since they grow or source from Oregon to the Central Coast, we infer that the hand of the winemaker is more dominant in their wines than is the terroir.

Many Sonoma County wineries buy their grapes from commercial vineyards and vinify the grapes themselves.  It was once said that in Sonoma County, the farmer is king.  That is still true to an extent, but there are also many wines that are made from estate grapes.  Twomey’s wines fall into both categories.  Their Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinot Noirs from Prince Hill Vineyard in Oregon and Monument Tree Vineyard in Anderson Valley are made from their own grapes.  That doesn’t necessarily make them better.  We preferred the wine sourced from Gary’s Vineyard in Santa Lucia Highlands, but then we are generally very fond of SLH wines.

The tasting room is a modern building of steel, wood and glass.  The panoramic windows give onto a wide terrace, where tastings may be had in good weather.  And beyond that is an expansive view of the northern end of the Russian River region.  It would be easy to say “Forget the wine; come for the view” but the wine is worth a visit as well.

Maybe it’s because of the look and feel of the tasting room, but we found a tasting at Twomey to be a little cold and distant.  The servers were professional and prompt, but not overly talkative.  Now, there are some tasting rooms where we have wished that the server would just be quiet and let us enjoy our wine.  But maybe Twomey’s staff have over-corrected in the other direction.

And, wonder of wonders, they still give you the glass with your tasting, and handsome glass it is!

Winemaking is part farming, part manufacturing and part art.  A visit to Ramey Wine Cellars (https://www.rameywine.com) is very much involved with the latter two, but visitors don’t get to see anything about the farming aspect except a map of where they grow and source their grapes.  Ramey’s winery is in an area with homes and office buildings, and Ramey looks from the outside like one of those offices. You won’t see lush vineyards and their location in Healdsburg isn’t even in the middle of the attractive area of town around the plaza. 

Located where they are, Ramey doesn’t get any visitors who just happen to be walking by and tastings are truly by appointment only.  The result is those who do make reservations are greeted and treated personally.  We were met and escorted by Sam Tesconi, the Director of Marketing and Guest Relations.  We were the only visitors at that time.

On entering their facility, one sees a large, open room with gleaming steel tanks and a variety of other equipment.  There is also a ceramic aging tank that they’re very proud of.  The barrel room, like the entire facility, is spotless.  For educational purposes, there’s one barrel with a glass head, to allow visitors to see their Chardonnay resting on the lies, which they periodically shake up to maximize the contact with the wine.

Then it’s off to a tasting – a rather generous one – in one of the six private rooms reserved for that purpose.  We were seated at a long wooden table where places were set with six glasses of wine, two whites and two reds.  We sat down and Mr. Tesconi explained the makeup of each wine and the vineyards from which they came.  Ramey makes wine from both estate and sourced grapes, mostly from Sonoma County but also in Napa Valley and Central Coast.

Ramey aspires to wine greatness and, while Power Tasting doesn’t review wines, we can say that we enjoyed what we tasted very much.  They are best known for their Chardonnays, two of which were served.  There was a notable difference between the wines from Sonoma Coast and Russian River.  The reds were a Pinot Noir, a Syrah and two Cabernet Sauvignons.  Each one had a distinctive character with some stylistic similarity.  It would be hard to pick out one that we would call a clear favorite.

Most tastings feature recent releases with a few years from harvest.  Rarely do we get to taste a winery’s top wines.  In this case, while the white wines and the Pinot Noir were from the 2022 harvest, the reds all had at least seven years of aging and one, the Cabernet Sauvignon from Pedregal Vineyard in Oakville, was from 2014.  We really felt as though we had been introduced to what Ramey wines were all about.

When we visited Ramey, we got a very informative, personable tasting of some rather good wines.  It really didn’t matter that we had to forego the scenery.

We were spending a day tasting wine in the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma County.  We often take a day away from driving through vineyards to take advantage of the tasting rooms (and restaurants) in town.  As we walked along Healdsburg Avenue, the main drag there, we spied an awning advertising the names Ehret and Lurton, obviously a tasting room for two labels just below.

Ehret meant nothing to us, but Lurton did (well, might have). G&C Lurton makes some classified wines, specifically Dufort-Vivens, a second growth Margaux and Haut-Bages Liberal, a fifth growth from Pauillac.  Were they actually offering tastes of these notable wines in the heart of California viniculture?  Indeed they do…and more.

The explanation begins back in France.  Gonzague Lurton (the G in G&C) decided to make American wine that would represent a combination of California terroir and Bordelais winemaking skill.  He purchased land in Chalk Hill, just south of Healdsburg, and planted Bordeaux grapes there and called his vineyard Acaibo.  He then decided to open a tasting room featuring his wines from both his growing locations.  Tastings are also available at the vineyard, but we haven’t taken advantage of this.

Gonzague and his wife Claire (who also has a long history in winemaking) induced their nephew, Jean-Joseph Cogombles to work in the tasting room.  Thus it came to pass that we were served both Bordeaux and Sonoma wines by a family member.  Jean-Joseph is a young man who is surely destined for a life in wine; we found his wine knowledge to be at the sommelier level.

The tasting room is spacious, with tables scattered around it.  There is also a bar at the back, and that is where we sat on a slow day (we were the only tasters present) and enjoyed the wines Jean-Jospeh served.  Frankly, we preferred the French wines more, but it wasn’t a fair competition.  Top tier Bordeaux is going to have an advantage over relatively newly planted American vines.

But the contrast was worth exploring.  The Acaibo wine we tried was lush and aggressively forward, as befits a California Bordeaux blend (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot).  Let’s say simply that it has potential.  Interestingly, the name Acaibo is a term in the local Native American language for three waters, mirroring the three grapes.

A visit to G&C Lurton in Healdsburg is not a typical Sonoma County tasting experience.  We got to use our French, though Jean-Jospeh speaks clear if accented English.  The opportunity to compare a famed winemaker’s products from two distant parts of Wine Country side by side is unique.  We would certainly return on another trip to Healdsburg.

Oh, and about Ehret.  They’re a Knights Valley winery with a bar of their own at right angles to Lurton’s.  We never got to taste their wines but may on another occasion.

A visit to Barbieri &Kempe can seem like déjà vu.  It can also be a little like double vision.  Let us explain.

Barbieri & Kempe has taken over the space in downtown Santa Barbara that once housed the tasting room of Sanford Winery.  (They also have a tasting room in Los Olivos, but we haven’t been there.)  Even though Sanford (and now Barbieri & Kempe) were located in a high-end outdoor shopping mall, there was a sense of refinement and exclusivity when Sanford was there.  Barbieri & Kempe brings a different vibe: friendly, inviting visitors to stay a while and enjoy the experience.  Even though the interior is well-appointed, their terrace (with statues of laughing dolphins adding to the atmosphere) beckons to visitors.

Once seated, you find out that the Barbieri & Kempe tasting room isn’t for one winery, but two that share the space.  Then you find out that Paolo Barbieri and Erin Kempe are a couple, with each producing and bottling wines under their own names.    Paolo is also a Master Sommelier and began making wine in his garage.  Erin worked in restaurants and met Paolo that way.  She assisted him in his early winemaking efforts until she gained the confidence to put her own name on wines she produced.  Dinnertime at their house must be interesting: “My wine tonight or yours?”

The wine tasting experience is enhanced by the possibility of ordering cheese with your pours.  Barbieri & Kempe is also a cheese chop with a nice selection of California and international cheeses available as a tasting plate or to buy at retail.  Perhaps in recognition of Signor Barbieri’s Italian roots, there are also Italian salamis for sale.

There’s an openness to the way tastings are offered at Barbieri & Kempe that says, “We are what we are and we are where we are.  We hope you like our wines.”    Overall, we did enjoy them, in particular the Grenache-Syrah-Mourvèdre blend from Ms. Kempe and in particular her Illumina Bordeaux blend. In general, they both cover a wide range of varietals.  There is a fair amount of overlap in the grapes each of them uses for their wines, with both of them offering rosés, reds and whites. 

We have often praised in-town tasting.  You miss the sight of the vines, but you spend more time tasting and less time driving.  The atmosphere at Barbieri & Kempe is very urban, with the hubbub of a shopping center and all the passers-by.  Somehow, that seems to add to the experience, not detract.  We found Barbieri & Kempe’s wines enjoyable, if not the most representative of Central Coast wines that we have tasted.  But we at Power Tasting are not wine critics; we comment on the wine tasting experience.  And we enjoyed our time sampling this couple’s wines at their Santa Barbara site.

As these things often do, our interest in Benovia began in a restaurant.  We wanted a Pinot Noir to go with dinner at Willi’s Seafood in Healdsburg, California.  Our server suggested Benovia, saying it was the only wine that had been on their list since the restaurant opened.  We were impressed by the wine and decided to visit their winery in the Russian River AVA the next day.  We did call in advance, since their website says tastings are by reservation only.  We were told they could squeeze us in.

The Benovia “ranch”.

The road to Benovia is not as picturesque as in other parts of Russian River, more industrial than rustic.  As we approached the winery (in November) through the vineyard, we noticed that there was still fruit on the vines.  Or more accurately, there was fruit rotting on the vines.  Evidently the sales of lesser-known premium wine are depressed.  The owners decided it was smarter to feed grapes to the birds than to make wine that wouldn’t be sold.  To say the least, this is a sad trend.

The interior of the Benovia winery, with our server named Izzy.

Beyond the vineyard, we encountered a large factory-like building and then, just beyond it, a rambling ranch house.  On entering, we found an empty tasting room, with one group of people sitting on the patio.  Squeeze us in, indeed!  Nonetheless, we were welcomed warmly and were seated in front of a fireplace (no fire) in a living room setting.  In fact, that typified our visit to Benovia; it’s like visiting friends with a nice house and good taste in wine.

Benovia is a relatively recent arrival in the world of wine, having opened in 2005.  The owners purchased the vineyard around the winery, as well as several other Russian River terrains.  As a result, most of their wines are estate made, which we always consider to be a plus.  Of course, since they’re situated in an area famed for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, that’s what they make.  They also sell a few wines made from other grapes, which we didn’t taste.

The wines served at the tasting were a good representation of Benovia’s wines.  In many tastings, visitors are offered the bottom of the winery’s list.  A tasting at Benovia spans their price points.  The wines served are a mix of single vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, from both Russian River and Sonoma Coast.  Power Tasting doesn’t review wine, but we can say that our favorite was the Pinot Noir from the Martaella vineyard, which was the one we drove through to get to the winery.

Benovia is a small winery, producing only 4,000 cases, an amount that is being reduced due to market pressures, as described.  We hope they survive the slump, because we enjoyed the tasting experience there and we also like the wines we tasted, including the one that we had at dinner. 

Many Sonoma County wineries are the result of generations of farmers who grew grapes for making wine.  Benovia isn’t like that.  It’s more 21^st century, a winery opened by people who made their money elsewhere.  That’s not necessarily bad and if they are committed to quality winemaking, we’d like to see them encouraged.

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

The Saini tasting room.

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

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

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

John Saini with his grandson Angelo.

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

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

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

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

The Freixenet winery.

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

Reproduction of a Freixenet advertising poster of another era.

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

The Freixenetmobile.

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

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

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

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

The Trefethen winery.  Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

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

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

A legacy tasting.  Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

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

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

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

There’s a wide variety of wine tasting experiences that one can experience.  They include from quiet, almost meditational tastings in ancient facilities.  Others are like a night out or a visit to a family home.  And some just seem dedicated to fun, however one defines that word.  Brick Barn, in our opinion, fits into that latter category.

One of the patios at Brick Barn, showing the Spanish influence on the architecture.

The winery sits in Buellton, nestled in the Santa Rita Hills.  It is a new operation, founded in 2018.  The winery itself is a handsome, Spanish mission-inspired building, with a very large capacity for tasting visitors.  That size, and the variety of venues at Brick Barn define the wine tasting experience there.

The bar area at Brick Barn.

Let us describe several different experiences to be had at Brick Barn.  The first is a rather traditional.  There’s a tasting room with a bar, where you can enjoy a selection of their recent bottlings.  The selection of wines is quite varied, about which more later.  The tasting room itself is beautiful, with a large bar decorated in tiles reflecting both Spanish and Native American heritage.  The chandeliers and the assortment of interesting shopping add to the pleasure of the room.

The lounge area.

Visitors can have their wines served in another large room, decorated to resemble a private club.  It invites consideration of what’s in the glass and low-voiced conversation about it.  We have reason to believe that there is no rule of silence, however.

Tasting, picnicking, trees and views.

Then there are the three patios outside.  Here you can sit under umbrellas and spreading trees, admiring the views of Brick Barn’s vineyards and the Santa Ynez mountains beyond them.  (The parking lot in between doesn’t spoil the pleasure.  After all, the cars have to go somewhere.)  Visitors are invited to bring picnics, enjoy their tastings of a buy a bottle, and simply relax.  If that’s your idea of fun (and it is ours) Brick Barn is the place for it.

Finally, there’s party time.  Brick Barn is open most days from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.  In other words, it is the place to go for tourists and locals alike at the end of the day.  Happy hour can be very happy there and the tasting facilities can become a bit crowded.  There’s live music on weekdays and we’re told that the joint rocks until closing time.  It’s not our thing, but if it is yours, party hardy.

Brick Barn makes an enormous variety of wines: ten whites, two rosés, four sparkling wines and eight reds, plus four that they consider their top-tier wines, which they call Fatalist.  (In our opinion, that’s not the most alluring name for a wine.)  This variety is both a strength and a weakness.  It pretty much assures that any visitor will find a type of wine that they enjoy.  But, as we have said before about other areas of Wine Country, making too many types of wine often  undercuts the ability to make anything particularly well. 

We fear that that’s the case at Brick Barn.  Their wines aren’t to our taste, but that’s unimportant.  We write about the tasting experience, which is excellent there.  We’re not wine critics and evidently many people like the wines there.  So, if you’re in the Santa Rita Hills, you can have fun at Brick Barn.

In thinking about Heitz Cellar, our memories break down into two periods: when Joe Heitz was alive and afterwards.  Let us be clear that in both periods to vineyards produced world-renowned wines, particularly their Cabernet Sauvignons.  But the wine tasting experience became very different once Joe passed away.

Heitz – the winery and the man – are true pioneers of Napa Valley winemaking.  He founded the winery in 1961.  To put that in perspective, that was 15 years before the famous Judgment of Paris put California wines on the oenological map.  Heitz Cellar’s 1970 Cabernet Sauvignon was one of the American wines tasted on that historic occasion.

For most of its existence, the Heitz tasting room was an unassuming, sparsely furnished stone building on Route 29 in St. Helena.  The winery was generous in pouring many of their best wines, including the most famous one, the Martha’s Vineyard.  Joe Heitz believed that wine was for sharing and so tasting at his winery were free.  That remained the case until Joe’s heirs sold the winery to the Lawrence family in 2018.  But Joe lives on, on the Heitz Cellar labels, checking out his wines in the aging room.

The old Heitz Cellar winery, circa 1990.  Photo courtesy of Wine Spectator.

The Heitz winery today has been rebuilt as a sleek building and tasting room, not a Napa Palace but a long way from two barrels and a plank.  As is the case everywhere in Napa Valley, the tastings are sit-down affairs and there is a fee, one consistent with other top-end vineyards in the region.  Tastings are available at the original location, now called the Salon, and in the Vaca Mountain foothills, at what they term the Estate.

Tasting at Heitz’s Salon.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

The wines available for tasting lean heavily towards the Cabernet Sauvignons that made Heitz so well-known.  Martha’s Vineyard is still the flagship wine, and now has a picture of the old winery building on the label.  (Sadly, a former favorite of ours, the Bella Oaks, is no longer made.)  Some of what makes a visit to Heitz so exciting is that all their wines are sourced from single vineyards, so one can taste the regional variation in Napa Valley in the hands of a single winemaking team.  Oh, yeah, they have some Chardonnays and a Rosé too.  They’re not the reason to visit Heitz Cellar.

Power Tasting isn’t qualified to compare the wines the way Joe Heitz made them to those made with his name on the label today, but we can compare the experiences.  Previously, visitors were made to feel like Joe’s guests, sharing in the bounty of his vineyards and his winemaking skill.  The wines were and are powerful and elegant, but the experience was casual and down-to-earth.

A visit to Heitz Cellar today is more like dinner at a four-star restaurant.  It’s classy and makes one feel special, but it’s removed from the earth the grapes grew in.  (There is a vineyard tour available, so we guess that isn’t always the case.)  Honestly, we preferred the old way, but those days are gone and we enjoy the way things are now.

A word about the name.  It’s Heitz Cellar (singular) although we’ve always pluralized it.  We don’t know any other singulars.