Napa Valley - Day 2

Rachel was up early and headed off to work out at Curves. One has to stay in shape for all that wine tasting! Pretty much whenever we travel, she gets a travel card and finds the local Curves. I slept in (after not having slept well during the night).

After breakfast we were off to our first appointment for the day. Although we never met Gary Andrus, we know him through his wine. After starting Archery Summit in the Dundee Hills of Oregon, he started a little winery near Cornelius called Gypsy Dancer, and we've enjoyed both their Pinot Noir and a wonderful crisp Pinot Gris. He was also the winemaker for Dukes Family Vineyards and made some wonderful Pinot Noir for them. Sadly, Gary passed away earlier this year. Our first stop of the day was Pine Ridge, the winery that Gary founded before coming to Oregon.

Upon entering the tasting room, we were offered a taste of their Chenin Blanc/Viognier blend - a delightful light white wine with tropical fruit and good acid. This is their only wine that's not made at the winery and uses grapes sources from near Clarskburg and Lodi. It's a great value and they make a lot of it. We then started the tour in their demonstration vineyard where they show off the various grape varieties planted on the estate as well as a number of different trellising techniques. Our tour guide was pretty good, and gave us the rundown on grafting, ripening, and harvesting. We then walked around into the working area of the winery. They have a very clever racking system for their barrels in which each barrel is mounted in a couple of metal loops with rollers so that the empty barrels can be easily rotated for cleaning and draining.

We then got to tour the barrel cave and taste one of their Chardonnays. The Chard was quite nice, and the cave looked pretty much like any other barrel cave. Near the back, they have a nice event space with some strange glass artwork. They also had their tasting table setup where we sat down to taste through several of their estate reds paired with some nice cheese. We had a good fruity Merlot, a Cab Franc, and a nice Stag's Leap District Cab Suav. We then went back to the tasting room and tasted Fortis, their Bordeaux blend, and their Oakville Cab Sauv. All the reds were quite good, although we liked the Cab Suavs better than the Fortis.

After Pine Ridge, we had some unscheduled time, and Rachel had suggested that we go to Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, the winery that Warren Winiarski started back in 1970 and whose Cabernet Sauvignon topped all of the other reds in the famous Paris tasting of 1976. The tasting room was in the middle of being remodeled, but were still pouring at the tasting bar. The wines were quite good, but the pourer was a bit of a cold fish, and I never really felt comfortable. The wines were quite good - a very nice, lightly oaked Chardonnay, 2 single vineyard Cabs, and their Cask 23 Cab - a selection of the best fruit from their 2 vineyards. All were very good, and the Cask 23 bordered on exceptional, but was not worth the $195 they wanted for it.

Our next stop was the iconic Robert Mondavi Winery. The Mondavi family, and particularly Robert, played a pivotal role in the development of today's California wine industry, and their story is well chronicled in several good books (I particularly liked The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty by Julia Siler). The story has a sad ending when Robert became over-extended and had to sell out to Constellation, a giant corporation that has bought up many wineries throughout the world. Fortunately, Constellation seems to be letting the winery continue its focus on high quality wines - at least for now.

I had toured the winery in February of 2007 (the first winery I'd ever visited) and somehow managed to get a personal tour when no one else had signed up for the tour. This time there was one other couple on the tour, and it felt much more scripted and less interactive than last time. But our guide was pretty good anyway, and did a nice job explaining the variations in grape growing and wine making that lead to the many subtle differences in the individual barrels of wine that eventually get blended. He also talked about some of the innovations that Robert Mondavi brought to wine making such as jacketed stainless steel tanks, and the extra care taken in the wine making at the winery. The facility itself is quite impressive: over 50 giant oak fermentation vats, hundreds of new french oak barrels for every vintage, and 2 giant hydraulic basket presses. At the end of the tour, we tasted 3 representative wines from their estate-level collection: a buttery Chard with a bit too much oak for my taste, a Carneros Pinot Noir (decent, but no Oregon Pinot), and their Oakville Cab.

We decided we should probably get some lunch next, so we drove a short distance up hwy 29 to Dean and Deluca for some tasty sandwiches which we enjoyed sitting outside in the warm sun. This is really the best lunch during a day of wine tasting - something fast, but not fast food. I wish we had someplace like Dean and Deluca or the Oakville Grocery in the northern Willamette Valley.

After lunch we drove south for our 3:00 tour at the Del Dotto wine cave. I had taken the tour when I was here about a year and a half ago and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately it suffered from second time syndrome for me, both because I had built it up in my mind from last time as well as the fact that our guide this time wasn't that good, and the tour group was too big. I thought they limited it to 8 people, but we must have had at least 12 (2 of whom were the couple that had been on the Mondavi tour with us earlier in the day) . The wines are pulled directly from barrels in the cave and ranged from a very nice smooth Sangiovese, a pedestrian blend, several good Cabs, and a really huge Cab that Parker had rated a 94 (a big fruit bomb that was really quite good, but I'm not sure I would have wanted a whole glass of it). After the cave, we were poured several bottled wines including another Cab, a Port, and something they called a Pinot Noir (I'm not an Oregon Pinot snob, am I?). All in all, it was a letdown.

Once again, we found ourselves finished at around 5:00 and wondering what to do next. We'd driven by Peju several times during the day and they had a sign that said they were open until 6:00, so we headed there. Walking past the various art objects outside, we entered the tasting room and found ourselves in the middle of a gathering crowd that was being whisked back through several tasting rooms into the VIP room. We looked for a way to escape, but the pourer was herding us all back, so we decided reluctantly to go with the flow. We ended up at a long bar with about 10 other people. In the end, we figured that this was how they handled the 5:00 rush when most of the other tasting rooms close and everyone who still wants to taste shows up.

Our pourer took the group through a tasting of what seemed like about 100 wines, most of which were surprisingly good. Usually when a winery has so many different wines, we worry that they don't do a great job on any of them, but that wasn't the case here. The reds were better than the whites, and they had several good Cabs, as well as a Merlot, Syrah, Cab Franc, and some blends. In the end, it was a pretty good tasting experience even though it was a strange beginning.

We headed back to the hotel for a short rest before heading into Yountville for dinner. Yountville is home to the famous French Laundry as well as some pretty nice looking inns, which we may look into staying at during our next visit. We arrived at Hurley's just before 7 and were immediately seated. Since we had tasted so much wine during the day, neither of us felt up to a full bottle of wine with dinner, but their extensive wine list included a number of half-bottles and since we were both looking at seafood for dinner, we ordered a half bottle of Dry Creek Vineyards' Fumé Blanc (we had tasted last year's vintage during our Sonoma trip last year). For food, we started with a crispy mix of fried calamari, shrimp, cauliflower, red onion and fennel. For our salad course, I had a warm asparagus salad with prosciutto, pine nuts, manchego cheese and a lemon anchovy vinaigrette and Rachel had (I think) a salad of mixed baby greens with candied walnuts and goat cheese. For our main course, I had seared scallops with gnocchi and Rachel had grilled mussels with chorizo, leeks, garlic, tomato and red wine as well as a small order of very tasty crab cakes. Had we not just been to La Toque the night before, it would have been a great meal. As it was, it was well prepared but predictable food. I hope we haven't been spoiled for life! For dessert, I had a warm chocolate brownie with caramel sauce and ice cream (yum) and Rachel had a scoop of gelato and a scoop of sorbet. She had debated about the cookie plate, but of the 5 cookies, she didn't care for 2 of them. Interestingly when her dessert and coffee came, they was accompanied by the 2 cookies that she didn't like. Oh well.

It was a good day, but in some ways a letdown from yesterday. The food and wine were good, but just didn't quite live up to what we had yesterday. But, tomorrow is another day, and we have a busy schedule.