Category: Wineries

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.

 

 

 

Ridge (https://www.ridgewine.com/) is best known, perhaps, for fine Zinfandels and Zin blends.  Or maybe you know that Ridge Montebello, their premier Cabernet Sauvignon, was among the wines at the famous Judgment of Paris taste-off in 1976, and the winner when the wines were re-tasted in 2006.  Ridge’s Montebello winery is a bit off the beaten path in Cupertino, California.  Wine tasters are more likely to be in Sonoma County, where Ridge’s other winery is located, right on the border of the Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys.

The vineyard itself has quite a history, with grapes planted there as early as 1901.  Paul Draper, the illustrious (and only) winemaker at Ridge, first bought grapes from the previous owner in 1972 and then bought the property in 1991.  For a long while, the tasting room was literally a plank between two barrels in the aging room of the winery.  Today it is a sleek, wood-paneled bar nestled among the vines, where a significant selection of wine are available for tasting.  On the opposite side of the bar is a glass window wall overlooking the old Zinfandel vines, a source of beauty in itself.

Ridge’s tasting room at Lytton Springs

There are several hallmarks to Ridge’s wines:  all but one are from single vineyards (their Three Valleys is the exception).  Many are estate wines, especially the Lytton Springs from the property where you taste wines.  Some have acquired quite a reputation, such as the Pagani Ranch or the Independence School and others are rather obscure small bottlings, like Boatman or Buchignani.   They make wine from many varietals, but are best known for Zinfandels and Cabernet Sauvignons.  Many of the Zins are blended with other grapes such as Carignan and Petite Syrah, enough so that they fall below the 75% requirement to be sold as a single varietal.

One of the beauties of a visit to this winery is the number of different wines you can try.  Yes, there is a Chardonnay, but really a visit to Ridge is about red wines. There may be as many as seven or eight Zinfandels available, which by itself is a lesson in the variety of flavors that can be extracted from this grape, a specialty of California in general and Dry Creek in particular.

The climax of a tasting at Ridge is their Cabernet Sauvignons.  The Estate Cab is usually included in a tasting, but if you want to know what the Montebello tastes  like, you’ll have to pay an additional fee.  It’s worth it, if only for the bragging rights. Do not leave Ridge without tasting it.  It certainly crowns a wine tasting experience.

We have found the servers to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but unfortunately have to report that on a few occasions we were served by someone seemingly uninterested in serving and helping us.  That experience underscores the importance of the server in the quality of your visit.

A visit to Ridge in Lytton Springs can be the highlight of a day’s tasting adventures, especially if you’ve never had the chance to compare their wines, one with the others.  Even if you have visited Ridge many times, as we have, there’s always at least one wine to try that will impress you, and the Montebello to blow you away.

The most noticeable aspect of the Northern Rhône valley, at least on the western side, is the terraced vineyards perched along the hillsides just above a string of villages. The villages themselves are little more than homes, stores and offices along a single road, the D1086.  In all honesty, the area is not very well oriented to tourism, other than wine tasting, unlike some locales in the Southern Rhône such as Orange, Châteauneuf or Gigondas.  Ah, but there is quite some wine to taste in the north and Yves Cuilleron makes some of them.

According to his web site (http://www.cuilleron.com/en/), M. Cuilleron’s family has run the winery for three generations; he has been in charge since 1987.  Their properties are located along the entirety of the Rhône Valley, from the Côte Rôtie to Costières de Nimes.  The winery itself is in Chavanay, just south of the better known village of Condrieu.  It’s a pleasant enough little building, located on the main road.  Other than a sign over the door… and his truck parked in front of his winery, there is no particular reason to expect fine wines within, except of course that wines are found in many little buildings in the area.

 

Caves Yves Cuilleron in Chavanay, France.  Photo courtesy of Wine.com.

There are dozens of wines with the Cuilleron label: red, white and vin doux naturel (naturally sweet wines).  The tasting room is generous in opening quite a few, so that you can have a reasonably broad introduction to Northern Rhône wines, for although they make wines from both north and south, they are primarily known for their northern wines.  Other than in the white wine, Syrah is the principal grape of the Northern Rhône region.  On our visit, we sipped a Condrieu (white). two St. Josephs (including Les Pierres Sèches(dy rocks) one of their better-known wines, a Crozes-Hermitage, a Côte Rôtie and a Cornas.

A bonus of a visit to Yves Cuilleron is the art on display, portraits by a local painter, Robert Bourasseau.  M. Cuilleron is so taken by this artist’s work that he has dedicated a series of his wines under the label Cuvée Bourasseau.  The tasting room has numerous paintings on display, all of them showing a person with a wine glass in his or her hand. (The paintings were not for sale but a poster of them is.  Lucie loved the paintings so much that she bought the poster.)

The tasting room at Cave Yves Cuilleron with paintings by Robert Bourasseau.

There isn’t much else to be found around the winery nor in the nearby villages.  The nearest places we know to find something to eat are in the town of Ampuis, in the heart of Côte Rôtie, about ten minutes’ drive north of the winery.  There are many wineries that you can drop in on, but be aware that almost every one closes for lunch from roughly 1:00 to 3:00.  You should eat too.  After all, you’re in a sector of Wine Country in France, so do as the French do.   Just remember that they may have a glass or two of wine with their lunch, and you’re going wine tasting afterwards, so take it easy.

Rochioli (http://www.rochioliwinery.com/) sits on Westside Road in the Russian River section of Sonoma County.   It’s not immediately apparent from the road, being set back behind a parking lot and some gardens that block the sight of the winery itself.  Moreover, it’s just beyond a turn in the road, so it’s very easy to drive right by.  So keep your eyes peeled as you drive along; this is a winery where you definitely want to stop, for a number of reasons.

It’s possible to have an enjoyable tasting experience in some places, even if the wine isn’t very good.  Fortunately, that’s not a problem at Rochioli (pronounced ROE-key-OH-lee).  The wines, particularly the Pinot Noirs and the Chardonnays, are top tier and have a reputation to back that up.  In fact, one of the pleasures of a visit to Rochioli is to thumb through the heavy scrapbook they keep by the side of the bar where you can read all the letters from the White House expressing the thanks from past Presidents who have served and drunk their wines at state dinners.  If you’re not a Head of State yourself (and who is?) it’s fun to pretend for a few minutes while you sip the wines.

The winery building is an unassuming redwood structure, pretty enough in its way but certainly not palatial.  In the past, the interior wasn’t much to talk about either, but in recent years they have spruced it up with a nice zinc-topped bar and a pentagonal window overlooking the vineyards (of which more later).  The look of the tasting room is still not the reason to visit, but it’s quite pleasant in a clean, spare way.

There are really two attractions: the wines, of course, and the view.  Rochioli has made its reputation on estate-grown varietals and that estate is just outside the window.  It is amazing to taste the same grapes grown in rock-throwing distance from one another and detect the differences.  Since it’s the same wine maker from the same estate, the difference has to be attributable to the terroir.   To be sure, it takes the skillful hand of the wine maker to draw out the essence of the terroir.

You are welcome to buy a bottle or two of these wines, if they have them available.  And there’s the rub.  Rochioli’s wines are for the most part allocated.  You need to be on the The List (yes, they capitalize both words) to have access to them and then you are committed to buying some every year or you fall off The List.  We’re told it takes at least five years to get there and they ask that you not call to check where you are on The List.  They’ll tell you when the time comes.  We are currently two years into our five.

As noted, the other great attraction at Rochioli is the view across their vineyards.  The winery is on a slight rise and there are umbrella shaded tables at the rear.  We have written before about wine tasting with a view and mentioned Rochioli; we’re happy to cite it again. This is a great please to have a wonderful lunch.  The nearest places to pick up gourmet edibles (you wouldn’t want PB&J sandwiches, would you?) are the Dry Creek General Store and the Oakville Grocery in Healdsburg.  Buy a bottle of one of Rochioli’s wines to go with your lunch (of course you have to if you want to use their picnic area), borrow the wine glasses from the tasting room) and have a couple of glasses of wine with your lunch.  Be careful, of course, not to have too much.

We don’t know if this is how they’re dining at the White House, but it will feel like lunch time in Heaven when you follow our advice.