Category: Wineries

Vino Nobile de Montepulciano occupies an unusual place among the wines of Tuscany.  It is not as well known as Chianti, nor as esteemed as Brunello, as trendy as Maremma nor as expensive as Bolgheri.  But the Noble Wine is quite ancient, well respected and very delicious, in our opinion.  If you want to really learn about it, you have to visit the town of Montepulciano, the name of which causes considerable confusion.

There is also a grape called Montepulciano, best known in the form of a different wine, Montepulciano de Abruzzo, from the section of Italy east of Rome.  That wine is hearty, a bit rough and very widely available.  Quite often if you simply order a glass of red wine in an Italian restaurant in the US, you’ll get Montepulciano de Abruzzo.  The wine from Montepulciano is Vino Nobile.  If you visit the town, you’ll find many enotecas where you can try the local wines and also several tasting rooms from some of the better producers.

We recommend that you walk all the way up the hill to the Piazza Grande, home to the cathedral and the imposing city hall.  And tucked into a corner of the square is a stately palazzo where you can taste the wines of Contucci.  This was not our first encounter with these wines; we had ordered them in restaurants in both New York and Siena.  So the enjoyment we had in the elegant tasting room was in learning about the range of the wines that Contucci produces: notably several different Vino Nobiles, a Rosso de Montepulciano, and a Vin Santo dessert wine.  However…

The Contucci tasting room on the Piazza Grande in Montepulciano. Photo courtesy of Cantine Contucci.

If you go down the hill at the same corner of the piazza you will almost immediately see a door with a big sign above it announcing the Cantine Contucci.  No disrespect to the fine building on the piazza, but this is the place to visit.  Here you get a much more rustic and warmer welcome and you see the caves where the wines are aged in huge oak casks.

The other location to taste Contucci wines.  Photo courtesy of tripadvisor.it.

You will learn about the history of the Contucci family (over 1000 years in Montepulciano), their role in the development of Vino Nobile (attested in the 18^th century), the popes who have visited and how Vino Nobile is made.  It has to be made with at least 70% Sangiovese (in Chianti it’s 80%) but then they mix in other local grapes such as Canaiolo Nero, Mammolo or Colorino.  Just to confuse matters further, in Montepulciano Sangiovese is called Prugnolo Gentile.

The wine casks in the cellars of Cantine Contucci.  Photo courtesy of Cantine Contucci.

We told the nice gentleman who was pouring wine that we had tasted his wines at the palazzo up the hill and he said we should just try them again.  We objected, he insisted and, oh well, why not.  If you want to combine good wine, good stories and some interesting history, a stop at the Cantine Contucci is just your thing.

 

 

Napa Valley is Cabernet Sauvignon country, and has been since the 1970s and before.  Duckhorn Vineyards (https://www.duckhorn.com) goes back to those days and indeed makes some fine Cabs.  But from the beginning it has been Merlot for which Duckhorn is best known.  In the early years, Duckhorn was little more than a shed high up the Silverado Trail in St. Helena.  If you stopped by, you might have run into Dan Duckhorn himself filling orders.

The Duckhorn winery.  Photo courtesy of Gould Evans.

Some things about the “good old days” are best left to the past.  Today a wine taster visiting Duckhorn will find a graceful grey building, looking very much like a farmhouse as Norman Rockwell might have imagined it.  Surrounded by vines, the scene just invites you in for a warm welcome, some wine and relaxation.

There are a number of things that make the wine tasting experience at Duckhorn different than at other wineries.  First, you pay for your tasting on your way in.  Of course, you pay first at the movies or the theater and wine tasting is more like entertainment than bar-hopping.  Nonetheless, it does feel a bit commercial.

Once you’re inside, there’s something you notice right away: ducks.  There are murals of ducks, paintings of ducks, decoys, statuettes, paraphernalia of ducks, everything but live quackers.  There is no doubt that you are at DUCKhorn.

All tastings are seated, served affairs in a sun-filled, high-beamed tasting room.  You will have a selection of Duckhorn wineries and often those of some of their sister wineries such as Paraduxx and Decoy.   You will always have some of the signature Merlot, as well others of their wines, which include Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.  The servers, for the most part, are well versed in the wines they pour and can explain a lot about what you sample.

Tasting on the veranda.  Photo courtesy of Duckhorn Vineyards.

Another option is to take your glasses out to the wrap-around veranda and sip while you take in the vines and the Napa Valley hills.  There is something about the ambience, the quality of the wines and the interaction with your server that just relaxes you.  A walk around the gardens in warm weather only amplifies the feeling.

A particularly pleasant time to visit Duckhorn is around Christmas.  They decorate the winery beautifully, which adds to the “coming to the country for a visit with friends” atmosphere.  You almost expect to see a present under the tree with your name on it.

We at Power Tasting are not in the business of reviewing wines.  However, we can say that Duckhorn has made some very fine wines for a long time.  We do write about the pleasures of wine tasting from the perspective of the visitor and we can recommend a visit to Duckhorn quite without reservation (although reservations are required).  In our opinion, it is one of the best overall wine tasting experiences one can have in Napa Valley.

There are so many French wines called Château This and Château That that it’s a surprise to find out, when you visit, that the chateau is little more than a farm house, if that.  Château is the French word for a castle and you would expect that the building on the premises of the vineyard would be at least a great house, if not a palace.

In California, the desire for such grandeur is reflected in some of the wineries’ names, such as Chateau Saint Jean and Chateau Montelena.  (To be fair, the winery at Chateau Montelena is quite grand.)  You can visit Castello Amoroso in Calistoga and see a recreated Tuscan castle, but remember this is the Disney version and all of it is fake.

Or you could go to the Languedoc, in Faugères region, and visit Château Grézan.  From the main road you will see a sign pointing towards the winery and if you look quickly, you’ll see the tops of a few towers.  You’ll drive up a long lane and then, suddenly, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are just before you.  This is the real deal, a castle.  You’ll drive through the large stone gate and park and someone will come to welcome you to taste the wines of Château Grézan (http://chateaugrezan-famillecrospujol.com/).

You’ll have a chance for what the French call a degustation and we call a wine tasting, of which more later.  But first a few words about the chateau.  There has been an edifice here since the 14^th century.  In fact, the Cros-Pujol family, owners of the chateau and the vineyards, say that this has been a crossroads since Roman times.  It was a stopping place for pilgrims going to Compostela and it was an important regional base for the Knights Templar during the Crusades.  However, the castle fell into disrepair.  What you see now was reconstructed in 1824, inspired by the romantic vision of the Middle Ages that was rampant at the time.  Okay, Château Grézan is not an 800 year old chateau, but nearly 200 years is good enough for us.

You can sip Château Grézan’s wines in a stone-walled tasting room that is somewhat reminiscent of those in Napa Valley or Sonoma County.  There’s a bar and a table featuring giftware and there’s a rack of t-shirts.  The wines you can taste are red, white and rosé and they come in four categories: Les Icones (icons), La Collection, Les Appellations and Les Secrets de Famille.

The soil of Faugères is rather poor and stony, with schist being the predominant factor.  It gives the wines a spicy finish and they tend to be big round wines in this region.  Château Grézan’s top wine in the Faugères appellation (at least in price) is Les Schistes Dorés.  Oddly enough, we preferred their least expensive wine, the Grezan Rouge, which is a bit softer and more approachable.

There is one wine in the Family Secrets category, called Seculaire, that is 100% Carignan.  It is an unquestionable power hitter and should be aged for eight to ten years before drinking.  It cannot be marketed as a Faugères, since the appellation requires all wines to be blends.

The prices are a shock to Americans.  The Les Schistes Dorés is 25 euros ($29.50) and our favorite, the Grezan Rouge, is only nine euros ($10.60).  All that and a castle too!  How can you pass it by?

If you want to visit a winery with some serious clout, go to Plumpjack (www.plumpjackwinery.com) in Oakville in Napa Valley.  It is owned by Gavin Newsome (currently Lt. Governor of California and if the polls are to be believed, soon to be the Governor) and Gordon Getty (yes, that Getty family).  All of which has no meaning whatsoever with regard to the wine tasting experience when you go there.  Plumpjack is laid back, casual and definitely focused on the wine.

A word about the name.  Plumpjack refers to Sir John Falstaff, a character in several of Shakespeare’s historical plays.  He was a hearty, hard-drinking rogue and evidently that was the image that the owners wanted to give their winery.

The building housing the tasting room is no Napa palace, though clearly the owners could have afforded to build an architectural masterpiece if they had wanted to.  The fact that it is a quiet farmhouse (or so it seems) nestled within their vineyards says a lot about their approach to their wines: solid, approachable, focused on what’s in the glass and not on all the extraneous fol-de-rol that typifies some wine tasting experiences in Napa Valley.

And what’s in the glass is of very high quality.  They do make Merlots and Syrahs, but Plumpjack’s specialty (and the reason to taste there) is Cabernet Sauvignon.  The rating numbers given by the trade magazines don’t mean everything, but consistent high 90’s and a scattering of 100’s does mean something.  It tells the visitor that almost every harvest produces wines that are well worth tasting.

Plumpjack’s tasting room

The atmosphere of a tasting at Plumpjack is very important.  Even when the tasting room gets crowded (primarily on weekends) you don’t feel rushed or pressured.  The basic tasting charge of $40, while not out of line with other top-tier wineries, does keep down the size of the crowd.  You can stand up by the bar or take your glass outside to the porch or under the vines that grow alongside the building.  The views out over the vineyards add enormously to the pleasure of your tasting.

In addition to the tasting room, Plumpjack offers seated tastings.  One to consider, especially on weekends when you might want to avoid jammed tasting rooms, is Plumpjack’s hilltop tasting.  There’s a small hill on the property and they have a table at the top where the combination of wine and view are matchless.

The view from Plumpjack’s hill

Plumpjack is a “by appointment only” winery.  It’s always a good idea to have an appointment and on weekends it’s fairly necessary, but our experience has been that if you arrive and they’re not full, they’ll make room for you.

Worth noting is that Plumpjack also owns two other wineries, Odette in Stags Leap and Cade on Howell Mountain.  Your tasting at Plumpjack is likely to include some wines from these properties as well.

If your idea of a wine tasting experience is to party in fancy digs, Plumpjack isn’t for you.  But if you like serious wine in relaxed circumstances, make your way to Plumpjack on the Oakville Cross just off the Silverado Trail.  You’ll be happy there.

Beaujolais is a section of Wine Country just north of the French city of Lyon.  It is  well known for  the Beaujolais Nouveau released each November.  In Beaujolais, it is the celebration of the end of the harvest, without any pretention.  It’s a great marketing gimmick and is the inspiration for parties all over the French-speaking world, but these wines obscure the quality of some excellent wines made from the Gamay grape in this region.

A slightly chilled Beaujolais Villages goes well with a barbecue on a warm summer evening, but these wines aren’t very memorable, either.  The best of Beaujolais comes from the crus, 10 appellations in the northern end of the region.  All of them are named after villages (Chenas, Julienas, Morgon, Brouilly, etc.)  Well, all but one: Moulin à Vent, which means windmill.  And not just any windmill, but a specific one that became the emblem of this cru when the appellation was established in 1936. As noted, these folks have a flair for marketing.

The famous windmill of Moulin à Vent.

The windmill in question sits on a hill overlooking a wide valley, full of vineyards, in the town of Romanèch-Thorins.  Right across the road from the windmill is Château Portier, whose wines will provide a good introduction to this well-regarded region of Beaujolais.  (Because it is the closest to the windmill, the owners of Château Portier are the official custodians of the landmark.)

One of the outbuildings at Chateau Portier.

The proprietor is Denis Chastel-Sauzet, who is the president of the Moulin à Vent vintners association.  We’re not sure what the President’s duties entail, but it is a good indication that the other winemakers hold M. Chastel-Sauzet in high regard.  The building that houses the winery is from the 19^th century, with extensions that were there in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  You can walk around the grounds, which offer pleasant views of these older buildings and of the valley.

The tasting room will remind no one of a Napa palace.  It’s a bit dank but it is functional.  And Château Portier bottles wines from all around the Beaujolais crus, in addition to several from Moulin à Vent.  It’s a better introduction to the quality wines of the region than in the Caveau de Moulin à Vent (the local winemakers’ cooperative) just down the road.

Many critics would say that the finest Beaujolais wines come from Moulin à Vent.  While we appreciate other crus, especially Morgon, we would be inclined to agree.  There is a richness in the mouthfeel in these wines that make them much more interesting than the easy-going Beaujolais Villages and certainly more so than Beaujolais Nouveau.  Top end Beaujolais wines deserve to be in any collector’s cellar and the best of them are age-worthy and can accompany many meals, from steak to salmon.  This is not to say that Château Portier is among the best of the region, but this winery is a worthy destination for a visitor who wants to see the famous moulin à vent (the windmill) and learn about the wines.

Some people are really crazy about Pinot Noirs from the Russian River Valley.  To be honest, there are some we like but overall we prefer Carneros, Santa Lucia Highlands and the Santa Rita Hills for American Pinot Noirs.  All the same, a wine tasting trip to Sonoma County would be incomplete without visiting the Russian River AVA.  Unless the eponymous river is raging in the spring, this sector has a gentle beauty as compared, say, with the majestic mountains of Alexander Valley nearby.

When you make that trip, make sure that you leave time to visit Martinelli (http://www.martinelliwinery.com/).  It will be either the first or the last winery you come to off of Route 101, Sonoma County’s main highway, depending on where you start. It’s an easy place to spot along River Road; it’s a big red barn.  And that barn says a lot about who and what Martinelli is.  Too much of NapaNoma wine making has become the province of big corporations.  A winery that has been in the same California family for well over 125 years gives you a reason to visit all by itself.  A big red barn is emblematic of a family of farmers and it is the antithesis of what have become known as Napa Palaces.

Martinelli’s big red barn

The tasting room inside is cool, dark and full of history, much of it that of the Martinelli family.  The sides of the bar are made from metal panels taken from an old locomotive. The bar itself is under wooden beams, reinforcing the fact that you’re in a barn.  For those who like to shop, there is ample opportunity in the tasting room, a bit too much for our tastes. The Martinelli sign advertising the winery also mentions its gift shop, which is unusual.  But all the knick-knacks don’t detract from the wine and wow, is there ever a lot of great wine to try.

The Martinelli tasting room

Essentially, Martinelli produces Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Syrah and Chardonnay.  Tastes differ of course, but it is fair to say that all of their wines are of a high quality.  They grow grapes in nineteen vineyards, primarily in the Russian River Valley, of which they sell 90% of their grapes to other wineries.  So what you get to sip out of a Martinelli bottle is what they consider to be their best.

To get some idea of the variety of wines available in their tasting room, a quick perusal of current releases listed on their web site shows 24 wines.  We have found it worthwhile to focus on just one grape on each visit, to be able to sample the subtle differences in terroir that these wines represent.  That list of current releases shows nine different Pinot Noirs and seven Zins.  The demands of sobriety call for some degree of specialization on a visit.

The Martinelli family is rightly proud of their heritage and there are many stories they like to tell to elaborate on it.  One favorite is the name of one of their oldest, most famous vineyards.  It is on a very rocky, steep (60 degree) hillside.  The founder’s son was told that only a jackass would try to grow anything on that hill.  And so today, Jackass Hill produces some of Martinelli’s best loved Zinfandels.

A wine tasting visit to Martinelli will combine history and great wines.  Why would anyone want to miss that?

Once you leave New York’s Long Island Expressway on your voyage to Long Island’s Wine Country in the North Fork area, among the first wineries you will come to is Macari Vineyards (www.macariwines.com).  It offers a warm welcome and some of the better wines we have tasted in the region.

Macari’s vineyards were once a potato farm, as is true of much of the North Fork. It is still family-owned and run and it is, in a sense, still a farm since they raise a herd of cattle as well as growing grapes.  They are exponents of biodynamic wine making,(which we don’t really understand, but we must say that biodynamic vineyards often produce excellent wines).

Macari has two tasting rooms: the original one in Mattituck and another in Cutchogue.  The latter is only open in the summer tourist high season; Mattituck is open year-round.  It is this one that is the basis for our comments, although the wines are the same in both locations.

The tasting room is quite large, with a high-vaulted ceiling that can absorb noise when things get busy on summer weekends.  Yet despite the massive stone fireplace and all the exposed wood there’s somehow a sense of intimacy to the place.  Displays of bottles of wine on boards stretched between barrels reinforce the rusticity of the setting.

The wines available for tasting shows Macari to its best effect.  The reserve list includes a very creditable Sauvignon Blanc, a Syrah and the stars of the show: Macari’s Cabernet Franc and their Bordeaux blend, Bergen Road.  These last two have depth and power that show how far Long Island wine making has come in recent years.  Interestingly, although the blend of the Bergen Road differs from year to year, in the 2014 available now they have four of the five Bordeaux grapes, except Cabernet Franc.  Also, for those like Lucie who enjoy a glass of Rosé, make sure to taste theirs.  She loved it and find that it tastes like a rosé from Provence, which is quite a compliment.

They are well aware that Cabernet Franc is their flagship grape.  Over the course of the summer, Macari hosts several events highlighting their twenty years of Cabernet Franc.  This is the same grape that is used in the majority of the wines made in Pomerol, and unfair comparison to be sure, but an indication that Macari is aiming high with the wines that have garnered them their highest praise.

Macari’s porch and the pizza truck

Macari makes it easy to spend an extended time at their winery.  As you enter their tasting room, there is a refrigerated cabinet with cheeses and charcuterie, which you can eat on their spacious and well appointed porch.  If that’s not enough, the winery has arranged for a pizza-making truck to pull up alongside the building.  And of course, you enjoy it  with a bottle of Macari wine!  We don’t think we’d make a special trip from Manhattan just for a pizza and a bottle of wine, but if we had a vacation home on the North Fork or the Hamptons, it would be a very tempting way to while away a baking hot summer afternoon in the shade of Macari’s porch.

Macari is one of the Long Island wineries that gives evidence to the potential of what the North Fork can produce.  Macari Vineyards  is offering a fine wine tasting experience today and the future of this winery is yet to discover.

Santa Barbara has two areas for wine tasting.  The so-called Funk Zone is right along the seaside and while there are good wines to be tasted there, the overall ambiance is a little, well, funky.  It’s more a place to party on a lovely warm day than to get serious about tasting fine wines.  A few miles uptown is quite a different story.  There you will find better known wineries’ tasting rooms, more plush in their furnishings, surrounded by ritzier restaurants and shops.  Among the best of them is the tasting room of Au Bon Climat (http://www.aubonclimat.com), also known familiarly as ABC.

The winery is the life’s work of a fellow named Jim Clendenen and everything about Au Bon Climat is a reflection of his philosophy of wine and, to a certain extent, of life.   He has long been portrayed, by himself and by others, as Wine’s Wild Boy, including a very public spat with (of all people) Robert Parker.  He even makes a wine called Wild Boy, with his shaggy face right there on the label.

But what’s in the bottle belies Clendenen’s outlandish reputation.  Au Bon Climat makes California style Burgundian wines, with great respect for the terroir of California’s Central Coast.  Best known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, they also make Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc under the Au Bon Climat label as well as several others that Clendenen has developed.

One of the attractions of tasting at ABC is the rather huge selection of wines available for tasting.  Moreover, the atmosphere of the winery makes you want to stay awhile and taste them all.  The room is well lit, with a large window looking out onto the street.  It has a clubby feel, albeit a club with a lot of wine bottles stacked up on the walls.

Au Bon Climat’s Tasting Room.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

It’s a good idea to let your server figure out what kinds of wine you like and then lead you through them.  There really are too many to attempt to taste them all and the range of stylistic differences argues against trying.  We gravitated towards deeply flavored Pinot Noirs, so we were treated to a sort of tour of vineyards where Au Bon Climat grows and sources grapes.  Their own Le Bon Climat vineyard was not our favorite; Bien Nacido was.  ABC is hardly the only grower in Santa Maria County’s Bien Nacido vineyard, but we were informed that they farm the largest swath with the best sunshine aspect.

Sanford & Benedict is another vineyard where they source their grapes.  It’s an interesting experience to walk a few blocks to Sanford’s own tasting room  and see how two different winemakers treat grapes from the same (or a least similar) terroir.  Surprisingly and rather interestingly are the wines sold under the Barham Mendelson label because they are from Russian River in Sonoma County and not Central Coast at all.

Yet another factor making a visit to Au Bon Climat different is that it has the best positioning in what is effectively a beautiful wine tasting shopping mall called El Paseo.  There are six tasting rooms there, so you can spend a day tasting wines in Santa Barbara and not walk more than 100 yards.

Levy’s Rye Bread had a famous series of ads showing people not expected to be Jewish (a little African-American boy, an elderly Asiatic, a red-headed Irish cop) enjoying a piece of their bread, with a tag line that said “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”.  Well, you don’t have to be Jewish to love Hagafen Cellars, either.

“Hagafen” means “fruit of the vine” in Hebrew and is a word frequently invoked in the Passover Seder, a ceremonial dinner that wine is an important part of.  Hagafen Cellars sits along the south end of the Silverado Trail in Napa.  Except for the fact that all their wines are made in a kosher manner, there is nothing to distinguish it from any other winery in the region.  Nor is there anything about the wines they serve to indicate that they are specifically for Jews.

Hagafen does make an especially wide range of wines, from the usual (Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot and several Cabernet Sauvignons) to some that aren’t usually found in Napa Valley (Tempranillo, Reisling).  Quite a few are available for tasting.  One enticing feature of a visit to Hagafen is the gardens surrounding the winery, where you are free to take your glass and wander or just sit on the patio.

The winery itself is a pleasant Mediterranean-style building and the tasting room is simple and wood lined.  You can stand at the bar and taste, but if it happens to be a beautiful day, the friendly staff encourage you to take your wine out onto the patio

As mentioned, there’s nothing particularly Jewish about the wine or the surroundings and people of all faiths or none at all are welcome.  But if you do tell the folks behind the bar that you happen to be Jewish, the conversation steers in a particular direction.  No one asks what your religion is, but if you happen to know what Hagafen means, well, that’s a leading indicator.  You might be asked about where your family is from and especially about the Passover customs in your family.  We wouldn’t say that Gentiles are left out, but rather that Jewish visitors get a little more interaction of a particular sort.

Hagafen is quite justifiably proud of how often their wines are served at the White House.  It seems that whenever Israeli leaders come to Washington, Hagafen Cellars is on the table.

We would not say that Hagafen Cellars is a destination winery.  There are better wines in Napa Valley, although Hagafen’s are enjoyable.  There are wineries with more eye-popping architecture.  But if you are tasting along the Silverado Trail, Hagafen Cellars offers a unique tasting experience of kosher wines

Visiting Sauternes is a revelation and also a bit of a surprise.  The greatest of the latter is to see the grapes if you visit near the harvest.  In all your other wine tasting voyages, harvest time means plump, glistening grapes hanging pendulously from the vines, just waiting to be picked and vinified.  What you get in Sauternes is shriveled brown grapes, formerly green, that you would throw away if you found them in your refrigerator.

Sauternes grapes.  Photo courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

The reason is botrytis, la pourriture noble, the Noble Rot.  It’s a fungus that infests vineyards in damp weather, especially when the grapes are ripe and give the botrytis something to eat.  Much of the liquid is evaporated out of the grapes and what there is is wonderfully sweet and concentrated.  It doesn’t occur everywhere nor every year, but in a the area in and around the villages of Sauternes and Barsac, it is an almost annual event.  As you can see in the photo, not even all the grapes in a cluster are affected, so the ones they want for the world’s most famous dessert wine have to be picked carefully, by hand.  It takes a lot of these rotten grapes to make a bottle of wine.

There are many Sauternes producers, the most famous of which is Château d’Yquem.  Other notable ones are La Tour Blanche, Suiduirat, Doisy-Daëne and Doisy-Védrines.  We have chosen to highlight Château Guiraud because it’s one of the best (Premier Grand Cru Classé in 1855) and the only major Sauternes house actually in the village of Sauternes.  For the visitor, Château Guiraud is a great deal easier to visit than others of the great Châteaux, with no reservation required and tasting hosted in English as well as French.  (Oh, and also because we love their wine and keep it in our cellar.)

Château Guiraud.  Photo courtesy of Vinexpo.

A tasting a Château Guiraud is part of the revelation we referred to at the beginning of this article.  You’ll find that there are dry white wines made in the region and their second label, Petit Guiraud, is a pleasant before-dinner wine.  Then you get to taste the big guns, the real Sauternes wines.  Their basic tasting offers a vertical of three vintages, which again is revelatory.  You learn the intricacy and delicacy of this fabulous dessert wine from the people who made it.

The château itself makes for a pleasant visit.  You enter via a long roadway lined with plane trees.  At the end you find a gracious 18^th century mansion, with a stone bordelais tower next to it.  The tasting room has a grand fireplace and the room, while a bit sparse, is a welcome to a bygone era of French hospitality.  If you’re there at the right time of year, don’t forget to see the rotten grapes.

One oddity of a visit to Sauternes, especially early in the day, is to find yourself sipping dessert before the sun is down or even before lunch.  Best advice: get over it.  Second best advice: give some thought while you’re sipping to how you might enjoy these wines other than as dessert.  They certainly accompany cheeses and although they are a bit heavy are well suited to aperitifs.  Perhaps the best and most widely know way to drink Sauternes is as an accompaniment to foie gras.