Category: Wineries

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

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

Carcassonne

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

Chateau Canet

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

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

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

Chateau Canet’s olive grove

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photograph courtesy of justluxe.com

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

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

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

California makes wine.  California makes software.  You just don’t expect those things to happen in the same place, but in silicon Valley’s Los Gatos you can find Testarossa, makers of fine Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.  (http://www.testarossa.com/) Even better for the visitor, the winery and its tasting room are in a building with genuine historical and architectural interest.

Testarossa is in the Santa Clara Valley, a part of California’s Wine Country we had never visited before…at least not for wine.   Of course we knew the more famous places like Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles, and to be honest we had low expectations of Santa Clara.  To be even more honest, many of the wineries where we tasted fully lived up to our low expectations.  But Testarossa was the happy exception.

You approach Testarossa up a steep and winding roadway leading to a large parking lot with a rather large and austere building on top.  It was once a Jesuit seminary, dating from the 1880s, and was also the home of Novitiate Winery, which the brothers ran to fund the school.  The wine making facilities are used by Testarossa today.  Visitors enter the tasting room through a long, arched stone arcade, which opens up into a rather capacious facility with two long bars.  On weekends they add tables to serve guests in other parts of the room.  There is also a wine bar on the grounds.

Photo courtesy of Testarossa Winery

One factor that makes a visit to Testarossa particularly enjoyable – other than the wine itself, of course – is the fact that the servers are extremely knowledgeable and helpful.  The winery provides ample training and all are at least level one sommeliers.  It is not an exaggeration to call them wine educators.  Not that they’re snobby and professorial.  Quite the opposite.  They set a tone that says, “Wine is fun; good wine is great fun”.

We must say that we enjoyed what we tasted and were particularly interested in their approach to wine making.  Testarossa has no estate wines.  That means that they do not grow grapes on their own property.  The Jesuits did grow on the grounds, but after more than a century, the vines had given out.  Today, Testarossa sources all its grapes from vineyards up and down the California coast, from Russian River and Sonoma Coast down to the Santa Rita Hills.  To our tastes, their best wines come from the Santa Lucia Highlands, but then we’re very favorable towards wines made from grapes grown there.

A highlight of a visit is tasting the wide array of single vineyard wines that Testarossa makes.  They’re picking up some fancy numbers from the rating magazines and we feel that they’re well justified.  At the same time, we gravitated towards the blends, especially from the aforementioned Santa Lucia Highlands.  The reserve tasting is definitely worth the extra expense (not that much, really, since at $20.00 it’s only $10.00 more than the regular one).

We recommend that, when visiting Testarossa, you take your time and ask a lot of questions.  You’ll get knowledgeable answers and once you show your interest, your server is likely to open bottles that aren’t on the tasting list, even on a weekend.  It would be worthwhile visiting this winery just for the history.  In these days of vanity wineries, it’s a pleasure to see software folks who hit it big – it is Silicon Valley,  after all – making the commitment to fine wine and a great tasting experience.

A visit to the Signorello Estate (http://signorelloestate.com/) winery can take on a few different personalities. Let’s focus on the easy one first, tasting their wines.  We rather like them, especially their Cabernet Sauvignon and their Syrah.  According to Signorello’s web site, their wines have been receiving considerable attention from the point-giving magazines. They are certainly a mouthful, with strong varietal flavors. Their top wines are now allocated, so if you’re not a member of Signorello’s wine club, the only way you’ll taste their top-rated wines is to visit the winery.

The tasting room is spacious and kept a little on the dark side, for a chateau-like atmosphere.  In fact, as you drive up to the winery you may be reminded a bit of a slightly modern French chateau.  And indeed although the owners bear an Italian surname, the wines are very much in a Napafied French style.  There is a grandeur to the Signorello winery, combining the architecture and the landscape.  You know you’re in Napa Valley.  In fact, you’ll have just the sort of experience that many wine tasters came to Napa Valley for.

If you’re lucky, your server will be Nathalie Birebent, whose lilting French accent makes the wines taste a little less Californian and a little more French.  (More about Mme. Birebent later.)

You may enjoy your tasting at the bar of the tasting room or outside on a sunlit terrace, and it is there on the terrace that the split personality of a Signorello visit kicks in.  There is one of those infinity pools that seems to disappear over the edge, leading to a lovely view of Signorello’s vineyards and Napa Valley generally.  It is hard to think of anything more attractive on a lazy summer afternoon.

But summer afternoons at Signorello are anything but lazy.  Signorello has a working restaurant kitchen just opposite the bar and they do use it.  The winery offers several different wine and food pairing tours and on the weekends there is often quite a party going on.  So the calm of the interior belies the jangle of the terrace.  If the latter is the scene you like, there are fewer places better than Signorello to enjoy it.  If not, we recommend you visit Signorello on a weekday.

We have a special affinity for Signorello, beginning with the aforementioned Nathalie Birebent.  Not only is she the spirit of the tasting room, but she’s also the wife of Pierre Birebent, the winemaker.  So Mme. Birebent brings a special level of knowledge to her service which magnifies the wine tasting experience.  Lucie is a native francophone (and Steve can get along in French) so our conversations over a few pours is always quite lively when we visit Signorello.  On one occasion, Pierre gave us a private tour which was a pretty amazing way to visit a winery.

Overall, a visit to Signorello combines many of the elements that make wine tasting exciting: fine wine, knowledgeable servers, resonant architecture and (if you like) a party.  There’s the little thrill that comes from discovering wines that you can’t find on the shelves of your local wine shop.  We always leave Signorello with a smile on our faces.

The first time we ever tasted wines at Artesa (http://www.artesawinery.com), it was a rather exclusive visit.  We needed a reservation and as we approached the property, we had to enter a code that they had given us.  A large gate opened slowly and then we drove up a long road to a mountain top.  Okay, maybe a hilltop, but it was pretty high up.

Today, the gate is left open during business hours.  The road and hilltop are still there but it is hardly exclusive.  In fact, in recent years the tasting room is quite busy, seemingly every day of the week and twice on weekends.  Aside from the wine, of which more later, the reason for Artesa’s popularity is the architecture of the winery and its view out over Carneros.  Oh, it’s a Napa palace all right and those aren’t always to our taste.  (See Not for Everyone.)  But in the case of Artesa, the winery itself make a visit worthwhile.

As you walk towards it from the parking lot, you’ll pass lovely terraced fountains but you won’t see the winery, just the hilltop.  Oh, wait, there’s something black jutting out of the hill over there.  And there’s a portal entering the hill.  You’ve arrived.

The modern interior is airy and spacious and has a lot more than a bar and a gift shop.  There are side rooms and reflecting pools, with paintings and sculpture everywhere.

The utter joy of visiting Artesa is the view, as you can see in the photo below.  The term “sweeping vista” hardly does it justice.  That little dot in the distance is Domaine Carneros, the champagne (oh, excuse me, sparkling wine) house and its impressive chateau.  At the horizon is the north end of San Francisco Bay.  And in front of it all are vines, lots of vines.

The actual wine tasting experience is a bit dodgier.  The tasting room space is quite large but it also can be quite crowded.  Because of the aforementioned beauty of the place, Artesa has become a tourist attraction as much as a wine lover’s destination.  So you may well be there with large groups or families with children.  We well remember one visit in which a baby was literally crawling between our legs as we sipped our wine near the child’s parents.  We do love little kids, but there are times and there are places.  (See Taking or not taking your kids to wine tasting.)

Before our first visit, we were familiar with some of Artesa’s wines, especially the Sauvignon Blanc.  A wine store had recommended this wine as an accompaniment for asparagus, which worked quite well.  We have also enjoyed their Merlot in the past.  To be honest, we weren’t as impressed in recent visits as we have been in the past.  That’s the beauty of wine tasting, though; maybe next time we’ll fall in love with Artesa’s wines again.

 

 

 

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 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.

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.

There’s a lot of history in Napa Valley.  And then there’s history.  If you’d like to get a glimpse and a taste of Napa Valley’s past and it’s transcendent present, there are few places more suited for that than the Beringer winery in St. Helena (www.beringer.com).  Some may think that successful California winemaking started with the so-called Judgement of Paris in 1976.  And indeed the Beringer brothers were making wine in ’76…1876 that is.

The overall effect of the first view of the Beringer property is that is not so much a winery as a park.  The grounds are adorned with fountains and ancient trees that keep everything cool even on the hottest summer days.  There are two venues for tasting, the Old Winery and the Rhine House, the latter the 19^th century home of founder Frederick Beringer.  (His brother’s Hudson House is also on the property.)  So even if you have people in your party who are not wine drinkers, there’s a lot to see and do.
Still, Power Tasting is about wine tasting, so let’s talk about that.  Now owned by Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates, Beringer makes wines that range in quality from everyday table wines to some of the finest wines in California, if not the entire world.  We recommend that serious wine enthusiasts choose the reserve tasting at the Rhine House, which gives you a chance to sample the famous Beringer Private Reserve.  This wine was the creation of former winemaker Ed Sbragia, who propelled Beringer to the front ranks of American winemaking.

The Rhine House at Beringer Vineyards

Let us relate a few stories from our previous visits.

On warm afternoons, you can take your tasting to tables on the porch surrounding the Rhine House.  On our first visit, we arrived late in the afternoon with about an hour to go until closing time.  We found the wines to be spectacular and took our time, with Steve going inside to collect the next pour while Lucie stayed at the table.  After luxuriating in great wine and the shafts of golden afternoon sunshine piercing the trees, Steve went to pay…and all the staff had left for the day!  We do recommend a late-afternoon visit but also encourage you to pay for your tasting.

We have previously discussed Christmas in California’s wineries; Beringer is one of the loveliest.  For one thing, Rhine House looks as though it could be made out of gingerbread.  For another, they erect a magnificently decorated Christmas tree in the center hallway.  Their shop also has many lovely gift items.  It’s impossible not to feel the spirit of the holidays.

Christmas at Beringer

We have found the servers at the Rhine House to be knowledgeable and helpful.  We have long enjoyed Beringer’s Knight’s Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and one time wanted to taste it in comparison to the reserve wines.  However, the Knight’s Valley is not served in the Rhine House.  So an attendant hopped in a golf cart, drove off to the other tasting room and brought a bottle back for us.  How’s that for service?

We have always found that if you are obviously interested in fine wines, the servers at Beringer have some special treats stashed away.  So if you particularly admire, say, the 2010 Private Reserve, there might just be a 2004 under the bar for you to compare it with and get an idea of how it will age.

Beringer is one of our favorite destinations in Napa Valley.  We recommend that you visit it too.  We think it will become one of your favorites, too.