One of the highlights for any wine buff is watching all the activities that take place during the harvest. The Napa Valley is one of the best spots for viewing the “crush” because of the number of vineyards and wineries in such a concentrated area. If you spend a few days in the Napa Valley from mid-September through October, you are likely to see all the harvest activities: the grape picking, the sorting table, crushing, and fermentation. It is the Napa Valley at its best for the tourist. Start making your plans now to watch the most exciting show in the world of wine.
Archive for the ‘Tasting Rooms’ Category
Harvest in the Napa Valley – Get Ready for the Fun
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Why You Should Spit Wine
If you are serious about learning about wine and discovering delicious wines, you should spit wine when visiting the tasting rooms of the Napa Valley or any other wine country. There is no way you can visit three to five wineries in one day, tasting five or more samples of wine at each winery, and remain sober. You palate will be gone in short order.
Needless to say, if you are the driver, your only choices are to spit or just roam around the tasting room while the others are having a grand old time.
Fontanella Winery – Thinking Outside The Box
By joe in Tasting Rooms
July 23rd, 2010
Fontanella is a new winery on Mt. Veeder and the owners Karen and Jeff Fontanella have some fresh ideas to perk up visitor interest. Visitors receive a private 30 to 45 minute session that includes a tasting of three wines, a novel comparison barrel tasting, and the opportunity to buy a small blending kit to create their own bottles of wine.
Winemaker, Owner Jeff Fontanella
Napa Valley’s Heart
So, where is the “Heart of the Napa Valley?” This is what a recent visitor to Wine Country Getaways inquired in an email. “I will be in San Francisco and I want to spend one day in the heart of the Napa Valley, please advise.” We try to answer all emails so I got to thinking about how I would go about telling this person where he should go in the Napa Valley. Is the heart of the Napa Valley a winery, a town, Highway 29, or half way between Napa and Calistoga? After pondering a bit I realized that to find the heart of the Napa Valley, one must “experience” the Valley rather than venture to a specific area or location. I suggested a list of places to go and things to do that would guarantee him that he had been to the “Heart” of the Napa Valley.
Robert Mondavi Winery
Visit one of the historic wineries of the Napa Valley and, if time allows, take the tour there. This will give you a feel and understanding of the early pioneer days of the Napa Valley. Some suggestions are Schramsberg, Beringer, Rubicon Estates, and Beaulieu Vineyards. Robert Mondavi undoubtedly had the greatest influence on the development of the Napa Valley and a trip to his winery is always a great experience. His memories are embedded in this winery.
Visit one of the smaller wineries that is family owned, where family members take part in the daily operation of the winery. Smith-Madrone, August Briggs, or Hendry Winery are some good ones to visit where you are likely to get attention from one of the family members.
Charlie Smith at Smith-Madrone on Spring Mountain
Reserve Tasting, Library Tasting, Sit-Down Tasting, Huh?
In the good old days of the Napa Valley, you could walk into just about any tasting room along Highway 29 and not worry about having an appointment or having to pay a fee for tasting wine. You weren’t presented with a menu of different levels of wine tasting. It was then a straight forward and simple way for a winery to introduce their wines to visitors. Now with some 400 wineries to visit in the Napa Valley, you will find a multitude that are open by appointment only, and several wineries have various fees for different types and levels of tasting. “Yes, we are open by appointment only, but we are always here, so just come on in.” “No, you need to call ahead for an appointment to arrange a tasting or tour.” Once you are in the tasting room, “Do you want our Club Med tasting or just the normal tasting?” This can all be very confusing to the first-time visitor to the Napa Valley.
Sequoia Grove Winery – Buy wine, Save a Redwood
By joe in Tasting Rooms
June 7th, 2010
Sequoia Grove Winery on Highway 29 in Oakville sits on a beautiful plot of land surrounded by tall majestic redwood trees. Redwood trees rarely grow this far from the Pacific Coast but here, at the Sequoia tasting room and winery, they stand beautiful and majestic.
We sat with winemaker Molly Hill and tasted most of the wines that are currently released. Molly had been the assistant winemaker since 2003 and in 2007 became head winemaker, as Michael Trujillo moved to the position of President and Director of Winemaking. Together, Molly and John have really spiced up the wine offerings at Sequoia Grove. Much known for its flagship Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and its Rutherford Bench Cabernet, a new lineup of wines has been introduced. These wines, along with their price points, should attract a new group of followers to the winery. Most notable and delicious were the 09 Sauvignon Blanc, 09 Rollicking Rosé and an amazing 09 Glorious Gewurz. The Gewurztraminer grapes are sourced from a vineyard near Ukiah in Mendocino County. This wine for us is one of the finest California Gewurztraminers we have tasted in recent times. At $18 it is a great value. These three wines, along with two other interesting reds, are available only at the winery. This is reason alone to visit this winery, plus you get the bonus of sitting in a grove of redwood trees. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are going to the Napa Valley
This may not be as fancy as a video produced by the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association or the Napa Valley Destination Council, but our new video on travel tips to the Napa Valley is just what our readers have been asking for. We must get several emails each month with the same essential comment: “We are going to the Napa Valley for the first time and we don’t know where to begin.” We are always a little bit bewildered by this because our Napa Valley Web pages on WineCountryGetaways.com are all about simplifying a trip to the Napa Valley and helping visitors to decide which wineries to visit. We realize now that many folks don’t want to spend a lot of time searching around, so we decided to create this short but informative video. The video explains how to select wineries and also many of the “Do’s and Don’ts” of wine tasting Read the rest of this entry »
Buehler Vineyards – Strange Encounters and Other Napa Valley News
Spring is here in the Napa Valley, the sun is warm, and many of the vines are alive with recent bud break. It is a very enjoyable time to travel to the Napa Valley. Not only does spring bring tourists to the Valley but other creatures as well. We had just finished tasting some delicious Buehler wines and were on our way to the terrace to enjoy a picnic lunch. There it was basking in the beautiful sunshine, a rather long and ominous looking rattlesnake. John Page Buehler was the first to alert us and then quickly raced into the tasting room and returned with a shovel. Page with his handy long shovel was able to corral the snake and move it away from the picnic area. What a man! Read the rest of this entry »
A Vineyard Year – My Perspective
It has been awhile since I made a post to this blog. About two weeks ago I got caught up in making a video slide show about a year in wine country. I have seen many of these depictions in my years of wine travel and have always wanted to try my hand at putting one of these together.
I shifted from film to digital photography in 2004. The program I use to catalog my images, Adobe Lightroom, shows that I have some 28,000 digital images on my computer. I would venture to say that about 75% of those are of wine country. We travel to wine country every month of the year and often twice during a month, so I knew I would have no problems finding the images I needed. In fact having too many photos was the issue. It was hard to decide which photos to include and which ones would give the best representation of the vineyards during that particular season. I whittled it down to 42 images and 3 minutes of time.
About half the slides were taken in the Napa Valley and the others shot at various wine regions throughout Northern California. There is one slide from Spain and it’s one of my favorite photos, a close up of an Albariño cluster moments away from being harvested.
The background music is provided by jazz artist Marc Cary from his CD “Focus.” The title “Walk With Me” is so appropriate. Watch the video and walk with me through my rendition of the four seasons in vineyard.
Napa Valley – What it was like in 1970
My last post was about Napa Valley wine prices in 1970 so I thought it might be fun to try and describe what the Napa Valley was like back then. Our first trip to the Napa Valley was in 1968. We were newly married and just a mere 25 years old. I had actually been there once as a teenager but of course could not have cared much about visiting wineries. We owe our interest in wine and wine country traveling to my brother-in-law and to a teaching colleague who were both 12 years our senior. Both of these individuals introduced us to wine and we traveled often with these folks to the wine country. My guide back then to wine country was the first edition of Sunset Magazine’s California Wine Country. It was published in 1968 and was priced at a whopping $1.95. Read the rest of this entry »
