Category: Experiences

For most people, travelling to Wine Country is a trip, one that often involves a flight and a rather lengthy drive.  If you’re going to go through all that, you surely want to justify your exertions by visiting several wineries, if only to get a feel for what that region can make.  However, some fortunate people live close enough to a wine-producing area that they can spend a few hours wine tasting whenever they want.  Or they can just stop by a winery for an easygoing half-hour or so, with some nice wine to add to the pleasure.

If you happen to be among those happy few, you may already have taken advantage of nearby wineries.  We have met some people in our wine tasting adventures who have told us that they live so close that they often hop on their bikes and come over on particularly pleasant weekend afternoons for a taste or two.

As residents of New York City, we can’t take advantage of “just stopping by” wine tasting.  Even a trip to Long Island’s North Fork entails at least two hours on the expressway.  But on a few occasions, we have had the chance to be the “locals”.

A vineyard in the Île d’Orleans.

We have a home in Québec City, which is a fairly populous metropolis.  But it’s also only minutes away from the Île d’Orleans, which is unquestionably countryside, the source of much of the fruits and vegetables for the city.  It is also the home to a half dozen wineries.  Many a summer weekend we drive over to the island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River to buy corn and tomatoes or just to breath some rustic air.  It’s no big deal for us to stop by and try a glass or two at one of the wineries.  To be honest, none of the table wines are particularly notable, but some of the ice wines (it gets awfully icy in Québec) are quite good.

Etude Winery.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

A few years ago, business required us to spend a few months living in Sacramento, only an hour from Napa Valley in one direction and Amador County in the other.  There were of course some weekends when we visited multiple wineries, with others when had non-wine reasons to be in Napa Town.  The road back to Sacramento took us right by Etude Winery, one of our favorites, where we are members of their wine club.  The servers became used to us stopping by for a few pours of their top wines, which we enjoyed in big Adirondack chairs on their terrace.

Finally, we once took a lengthy vacation in the Languedoc.  When it was market day in the village of St. Chinian, we’d drive in for our pain and fromage. And as long as we were there, why not stop by a winery?

If you are or ever will be that close to Wine Country, make sure you just stop by a vineyard or two.

The Southern Rhône is in Provence, which is famous for many things, notably wine, of course.  Then there are food, sunshine, an easygoing joie de vivre, and the people with their beautiful Provençal accent that is unique in France.   It is also a center of perfume production and much of that perfume is made from a flower characteristic of the region: lavender.

If you are coming to taste wine in Provence at the right time of the year, the late spring and through mid-summer, you will have the added attraction of seeing lavender growing in the fields. You may catch a few buds in April and there are stragglers in the fields after the main harvest in the middle of July, but the radiance of the fields in full bloom is a reason to visit in the prime months.

Lavender fields in front of the village of Grignan, in the Drôme Provençale.  Photo courtesy of Complete France.

Much as with grape vines, lavender is planted in orderly rows, so that it appears that fields and hillsides are striped in purple.  Of course we call that shade of purple by the name of the flower, but lavender takes on different hues, depending on the time of day.  In the hazy sun of morning, the plants are almost pink in hue.  In full sunlight, it takes on the light violet color we associate with lavender.  If you see the fields in the waning light of early evening, the plants appear to be a deep blue purple.

The scent of lavender hanging over the villages cannot be adequately described in words.  This indescribable fragrance envelopes you, leads you on, holds you back, entices, seduces and ultimately leaves you with a wistful smile that lingers in your memory.  If it is hard to summon the notion of a village embraced in this aroma, it is impossible to communicate the idea of an entire region smelling of lavender.

Processing lavender at the Distillerie Bleu-Provence.  Photo courtesy of Drôme Sud Provence.

You ought to visit the Drôme Provençale, where you’ll find the charming villages of Nyons and Grignan with its château. You can take a tour of the Distillerie Bleu-Provence and see how they process the flowers into lavender oil.  You will also enjoy a tasting of lavender tea and of course visit their attractive shop.

Our Provençal friends in Nyons have told us that they rub their arms and legs with lavender oil in the hot summer to avoid mosquito bites.  It certainly smells better than what we find here in the US.

Even if you miss the high season, there are lavender products available in all the Provencal towns throughout the year.  In almost every gift shop, you can find dried flowers, cosmetics, bottles of oils and tablecloths with lavender design.  Lavender is sometimes mixed in herbes de provence and there are those who sprinkle the flowers on salads.

We like to think that some of the aroma of lavender finds its way into the more delicate wines of the southern Rhône.  Search for it the next time you open a Côtes du Rhône.

Of course, we don’t mean wine that’s green in color.  Nor red wine with heavy accents of green pepper; those don’t taste good at all.  Nor the vinho verde of Portugal, whose green-ness means that it is young.  We are talking about wines made using sustainable agricultural methods and in many cases eschewing pesticides, fertilizer and additives.  When we visit wineries around the world to try some of their wines, we know nothing about their farming practices and not much more about how their wines are made.  To be honest, we don’t care.  What’s important to us is what’s in our glasses.

But with a little bit of contemplation, we do realize that what the farmers are doing contributes to our enjoyment and in several ways to our enjoyment in the future.  If they don’t care for the land there won’t be wine from their fields in years to come.  If they aren’t respectful of the climate, they may not even have any wine this year; the fires in Napa and Sonoma counties are proof of that.

The best agricultural practices would be unavailing if the wine weren’t good.  Our experience tells us that when the vineyard manager and the winemaker collaborate on sustainable and sanitary winemaking, the results are worth the effort.  Simply put, making wine well produces well-made wine.  While we are unaware of any scientific evidence in support of this proposition, we do have a lot of anecdotal support.

For example, the Famille Perrin Côtes-du-Rhône Réserve Rouge is a widely available, inexpensive red wine.  It’s the kind of wine found on many a French table every night (and ours, from time to time).  The same house also produces a Côtes-du-Rhône Nature for a few dollars more.  It’s only recently available in the United States, but we have tasted and compared the two wines in Québec and it is clear that the Nature is far superior.

The indicator of biodynamic certification

Perhaps not coincidentally, Perrin also owns Tablas Creek Vineyard in California’s Paso Robles.  They are proud to declare that they are certified as biodynamic and organic winemakers.  According to their web site, Tablas Creek uses:

“a mobile flock of 150+ sheep and alpacas to weed and fertilize the vineyard, interplantings of hundreds of fruit trees around and within the vineyards, compost made on site from prunings and grape must, applications of compost tea from the on-site compost, natural pest controls including 39 owl boxes around the vineyard and sections of native vegetation left to attract insects and predators, and our own hives of bees to support all these different plant species”.

Now, we’re not quite sure how much difference sheep, bees and owls contribute to the winemaking process.  But we are certain that, to our taste, Tablas Creek makes the best Rhône-style wines in Paso Robles.

We believe that specific farming and winemaking practices are not in themselves the reasons why being eco-friendly results in better-tasting wine.  It requires more attention to detail, to sanitation, to taking good care of the environment in the field and in the factory.  This seriousness of purpose finds its way into the bottle and ultimately into our mouths.  This is no secret formula, but it does taste like it works.

 

 

There are sections of Wine Country that we return to over and over: California, France, Italy, Long Island among them.  We suspect that many wine tasting enthusiasts focus on these and other popular destinations.  And then there are the wine making areas that are near cities where life just happens to take us.  It has been many years since we visited Australia’s Barossa Valley, because we had some work in nearby Adelaide, only 45 minutes away.  We’re sure that much has changed in the interim, but some things have remained the same.

The Barossa Valley, among the most beautiful wine-producing regions in the world.  Photo courtesy of TrailHopper

We are certain that they still drive on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car.  If driving while wine tasting concerns you, then doing everything backwards won’t ease your worries.  Maybe this is the occasion to take a tour. (We were hosted and chauffeured by a business colleague, so as they say there, “No worries, mate”.)

A distinctive feature of the Barossa Valley is its German heritage.  Many of the wineries there sport Germanic names and a lot of the restaurants are the wurst places to go.  (Sorry about that.)  Of course, there are many people of British extraction there as well.

Barossa is famous for one grape: Shiraz.  Yes, it’s called Syrah in France and America, but Aussie Shiraz is really distinctive.  The first time we were served it by Australian friends, we thought the wine had gone bad.  Then we realized it was just different from anything we’d ever tasted before.  Of course, Australian wines are better known these days but be prepared for some eye (and mouth) opening experiences.

Wine tasting in Barossa is familiar to many Americans.  The people are friendly and welcoming and if possible even more casual than the servers in Sonoma or Paumanok.  Being Australian, they are hearty and bold, and the same can be said of their wines.  If you like power hitters, you’ll be in heaven here.

The Henschke winery tasting room.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

They are intensely proud of their wines, as they should be.  Their wineries were little known outside Australia when we were there but wines from Seppelt, Peter Lehmann, Torbreck and Wolf Blass (note all the German names) can be found in wine stores around the world.  Of course, what we get at home are the mass production wines.  You can taste some of the rather spectacular wines they keep for themselves if you visit Barossa.

Two Barossa wines can hold their own with the best in the world.  The most famous is Penfolds Grange.  Even greater, to our taste, is Henschke’s Hill of Grace. These are massive wines, 100% Shiraz and sought after by wine lovers everywhere.  Of course, they come at quite a price, north of $650 American dollars at the winery.  To give an idea how long ago we visited the Barossa Valley, we were able to pick up bottles of both at $25 American dollars, equivalent to $63 today.  Here’s to the memories.

 

 

When you are out wine-tasting, lunch is a necessity.  Don’t even think of sipping wine on an empty stomach.  Breakfast is important too, but the morning meal does not lend itself to lazy luxuriating quite as much as does lunch.  One thing that almost all wine-making regions have in common is the availability of superb cuisine.  Why travel all that way to Wine Country and deny yourself the pleasure of a leisurely meal at midday?

Caffés in Montalcino.

In Europe, you have no choice.  On that enlightened continent, a two-hour work stoppage is de rigeur, as they say over there.  So you pull into a town or stop at a French café (or an Italian caffé) surrounded by vines and do like the locals do.  We can’t open a bottle of Brunello without thinking of warm afternoons on the piazzas of Montalcino.  The same goes for St. Emilion, Greve in Chianti and Chateauneuf de Pape.

When visiting California’s sections of Wine Country, you have the option to gulp down a Big Mac and keep on tasting.  We Americans are all go-go-go and that does have some business advantage.  But if you are on a wine tasting trip, you’re not there on business (unless you’re a distributor).  Just because you can try three wineries between noon and 2:00 doesn’t mean that you should.  Not when the bistros of Calistoga, Healdsburg, Paso Robles or Santa Barbara are calling out to you.

It’s all a matter of attitude.  If you just happen to be passing through and you only have a little while available to you, then eat something quickly and then stop by at a winery or two.  But have you ever just happened to be passing through Yountville?  Or Pauillac?

Another argument is that wine tasting should be about wine and a fancy lunch is just an unnecessary use of your mouth.  If your objective is just to taste as much wine as you can in as short a time as possible – a highly dangerous goal – you’re better off picking up a few bottles at the store and staying home.  For us, at any rate, a large part of the reason to go wine tasting is to be in Wine Country, to soak it all in (not just drink it all in).  And that means eating lunch where the locals go.

Photo courtesy of the (San Jose) Mercury News.

You’ll never dine anywhere where there are no tourists, but there are many places where you can sit with people from the neighborhood and from the wineries.  That doesn’t necessarily mean white tablecloths and fine fare.  For example, if you’re tasting in St. Helena, there are few places that scream WINE COUNTRY like the original Gott’s Roadside.  Oh, there are all the attributes of the fancy places, such as locavore purveyors and Ahi tuna, but at the end of the day, it’s about the burgers.  And if you want some wine, Joel Gott makes that too.

The point is that you should make a good lunch a part of your wine tasting adventure, not a diversion from it.  Be careful how much you drink with lunch if you’re going to keep tasting all afternoon, but remember wine was made to go with food.

It’s always fun to discover that an unknown wine from an obscure location is really pretty good.  But with all due respect to the Mavrud grapes of Bulgaria or the sparkling wines of Brazil, there’s a reason why the world beats a path to Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa Valley, Burgundy, the Rioja and Sonoma County: They’re the best.  If you want to be a knowledgeable wine taster. before you get off the beaten path, you’d better be familiar with some if not all of the premier sectors of Wine Country

What’s the big deal about being there, in the most famous locales?

For one thing, there’s a pleasure when you open a bottle in remembering what the region looked like or even better what the winery was like.  There’s nothing like the experience of touching the actual grapes (or maybe filching one to see what they’re like) when you pour what they made from them.  Except for winemakers themselves, most of us couldn’t tell a Cabernet Sauvignon grape from a Pinot Noir, but it’s fun to believe you could.  And you can only pretend to do so if you’ve actually been there to see them.

Of course, you can look at grapes anywhere they grow them.  But when you’re standing in front of Château Margaux touching the grapes (which we have done) you know that these are among the greatest grapes in the world.  You have to be there.

Château Margaux.  Photo courtesy of Forbes.

Wine is made of grapes but people make wine.  It’s a wonderful experience meeting these people in their own environment.  For the most part, they’re very nice.  And why shouldn’t they be?  You’ve come a long way to taste their wines and you chose their winery for the purpose.  If you’re serious about wine tasting – and you must be, because you’re there – they are as eager to know something about their customers as you are to engage with the winemaker.

We were in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or many years ago, having a picnic in a churchyard.  A man walked by and spotted us and came over to talk.  We thought he was going to tell us to move but, no, he wanted to see what we were drinking with lunch.  When he found that a couple from the other side of the Atlantic was having a premier cru with our jambon and baguette, he was quite pleased.  “Quelle pique-nique!”  It turned out that he owned a few rows of vines in the adjoining vineyard.  We think of him every time we open a top Burgundy.  To do that, you have to be there.

For us, wine is a beverage to accompany dinner, sometimes for meditation, a subject of eternal fascination and, in wine tasting, an avocation that has taken us to vineyards around the world.  We can and do enjoy the wine from the store around the corner, but it’s not the same experience.  The pleasure of wine tasting, as opposed to drinking, comes as much from the tastes, memories and feelings as much as from the wine itself.  And to get that experience, you have to be there.

December’s weather is very unpredictable in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County, which we elide to be Napa/Noma.  We have been there at times when it is absolutely springlike and on other occasions we have frozen in temperatures much colder than that which we left behind in New York.  So before you come, by all means check your favorite weather app to learn how to pack.

A chilly December morning just off the Silverado Trail.

There are many advantages to a visit in December and a few drawbacks.  It’s a rather relaxed time for the local folks.  The hardest work of the harvest is over and the new wine is sleeping soundly in barrels.  If you’re taking a tour, you won’t get to see people actually making wine (come in September and October for that) but on the other hand, you’ll be able to see all of the winery.  It’s not safe to traipse around when the destemmers and fermenting tanks are in full operation, with workers busy everywhere.

The big plus is the celebration of the holidays.  Many if not all of the wineries decorate for Christmas, some rather splendidly.  We can recommend Robert Mondavi and Beringer in Napa Valley and Arrowood in Sonoma County for the attractiveness of their displays.  Wine tasting is a rather festive pastime by itself; it gets downright merry at Christmas.

In addition, many of the wineries have private parties at this time of year, often on the first weekend of the month but later if that weekend is early in a given year.  Most of them are for their club members and are often called “pickup parties”.  The members from nearby are expected to pick up their December shipments in person and they get a little extra.  If you show up and you’re not a club member, they will almost never shoo you away.  On those days, they normally have their best wines available for tasting.

Also, many wineries hold fancy dinner parties for their club members, usually for a stiff price.  If you’re in a mood for a banquet dinner – always with great wine – you can join one club before you go and then sign up for the dinner.  Many of them sell out early, so give yourself some time in advance if you choose to do this.

Yountville at Christmas.  Photo courtesy of The Wine Stay.

Some wineries have rather extensive (and often expensive) gift shops.  What better time to shop for gifts than December?  The shops are extensively decorated and of course many of the items are Christmas-themed.  Among the best are Mondavi and Beringer, once again, but also Darioush and Rubicon.  Moreover, the same can be said for the towns as well, where they are selling things to the local people, not just the tourists.  (Yountville is especially beautiful at this time of year.)  Among things we have bought over the years have been a gilded grape leaf to hang on a sturdy branch of a Christmas tree and a wreath made of grape vines.

Of course, you may be rather cold if you visit Napa/Noma in December, but the crowds will be sparser (except on party days).  Hotels are more available, as are restaurant tables.  With much of the previous release’s wines already sold, you may have some difficulty tasting your favorites, but consider that a chance to discover something different.

Don’t let the weather deter you.  December’s pleasures overwhelm the few disadvantages.

In some ways, wine tasting is the same experience wherever you do it.  Someone offers you a glass, fills it with wine and tells you what you have in your glass.  You sip the wine, think about how it smells and tastes and try to remember how much you liked it.  But in many other not quite so fundamental ways, the experience of wine tasting varies greatly depending on what part of Wine Country you are in when you do it.  Of course, different places make different kinds of wine but let’s put that aside.  We are talking here simply of the differences in the experiences you have, which after all is what Power Tasting is all about.

Opus One winery, one of the most European tasting experiences in California.  Photo courtesy of the Napa Valley Register.

Wine tasting in California is rather straightforward, with a few big exceptions.  You drive up to a pretty building, enter a well-decorated tasting room and sample several wines.  In most places, there are a variety of wines to choose among – red, white and rosé – and most tasting rooms allow you to try four or five of them.  In a few wineries there is a dessert wine to top it all off.  If it’s not too busy and if your server has some knowledge of wine, you might also have the chance for an interesting discussion about what you’re being served.

As to those California exceptions, more and more wineries that sell highly priced wines now only offer seated tastings by appointment.  Often a tour is a prerequisite for a tasting.  There will be a smaller number of wines available, but they will all be well-made expressions of the terroir and the varietal.

Domaine la Soumade in the Southern Rhone Valley, one of the most Californian tasting experiences in Europe.  Photo courtesy of the Our House in Provence blog.

Europe is too big a place with way too many wines to make any meaningful generalizations…but we’ll try anyway.  In some places, the experience is quite Californian.  Wineries have built pretty buildings (or taken over quite impressive old buildings) and serve their wines at a stand-up bar.  In terms of the experience, you could just as well be in Mendocino as Montalcino.  The conversation may be somewhat more limited, depending on your language skills and that of the server.  The range of wines you may taste could be very much more limited; in some places such as Bordeaux, Burgundy or Chianti they only make a red and a white and the only variety is based on the level of quality.

There are several other variations in Europe.  The biggest, best known producers only offer tastings by appointment, if they do so at all.  The service will be in well-spoken English, because you reserved it that way.  There may be only one wine to taste and it will be very good.

At the other extreme, there are many instances in Europe where a tasting, such as it is, is held in the winemaker’s kitchen, with that fellow or his aunt serving you whatever they make.  In some places that may be only one wine, but more likely you find a fairly broad selection of the same type of wine from their properties around the region.

Since these generalizations are so broad, we recommend you do a little homework before you travel to taste wine in Europe.  It will save you from misunderstandings and disappointments.

Sonoma County has unique attractions for wine lovers: an enormous variety of, well, varietals; beautiful scenery; great restaurants; and of course some very fine wines.  But earlier in our years of wine tasting, Sonoma County was often viewed as simply an adjunct to its more “refined” neighbor across the Mayacamas range.

Chateau St. Jean.  Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Tourism.

Whenever we wanted to visit Sonoma County, we would take a day out of a trip to Napa Valley and traveled across the Oakville Grade to the southern end, known today as Sonoma Valley.  Our experience there was limited to the wineries right along Route 12 (Sonoma Highway) so that later on we could get back easily to the Napa side.  That wasn’t very restrictive because there were some pretty good places to taste wine.  A typical visit would start at B. R. Cohn, move on to Arrowood, then Kenwood and finish at Château St. Jean.  (Come to think of it, that’s not a bad selection even today.)

But Russian River? Alexander Valley? Dry Creek?  We seem to remember that we had heard of them, maybe, but we had no idea where they were or what they produced.  Then, some time in the 1990’s, we thought we’d spend an entire trip in Sonoma County.  Friends looked at us quizzically.  “Why go there? Why not just stick with the good stuff in Napa?” they would say.  Ever adventurous, we took off across the Golden Gate and along Route 101 only getting a little lost around the town of Sonoma.

The view across Dry Creek Valley.

Yes, we discovered all sorts of wonderful wines and wineries.  There weren’t as many then but there were lots of well-established wineries, without any of the fancy-schmancy buildings and tasting rooms that were then being erected in Napa Valley.  What some might have called rustic we interpreted as authentic.  Instead of fighting the traffic on Napa’s Route 29, we were traveling along beautiful country roads, lined with vines.

However, there were some drawbacks.  It was hard to find a meal.  There were no restaurants at all along those country roads, and even on Route 101 all we could find were fast food joints.  Hotels weren’t a problem; we stayed at the Hilton in Santa Rosa, now sadly lost to the 2017 fires.  But as recently as the year 2000, we pulled into Healdsburg at midday and had trouble finding a restaurant where we could sit and enjoy lunch and a glass of wine.

Today, the best of Sonoma County is still there while the shortcomings have been eliminated.  The scenery is till ravishing.  There are quite a few wineries that make world-class wines.  Chards, Cabs, Zins and Pinots to be sure, but also wineries that specialize in grapes native to the Rhône and to Italy, as well as California’s own Petite Sirah.  And there is no longer any difficulty finding a good meal, we can assure you.  In recent trips, we’ve dined excellently in Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Windsor and of course in Healdsburg, the culinary mecca of Sonoma County.

We miss a bit of the anything-goes nature of the Sonoma County of yesteryear.  The rough edges have been knocked off, and there are some full-fledged palaces for tasting.  But Sonoma County’s charm and quality have persisted and even improved, so there’s really no comp