The other Napa (Los Carneros, California)

Although still part of the Napa AVA, Los Carneros is a very different beast. It is closer to San Pablo Bay so has more coastal breezes, and the fog is pushed into the Napa Valley from here. So although it is a lot cooler, there are more sunshine hours for a much more even ripening. There are two major varieties here, pinot noir and chardonnay. Countless wineries in the Napa Valley source fruit of these varieties. In fact every chardonnay I tried came from Carneros. The region feeds into the Sonoma Valley, and thus Carneros actually has feet in both Napa and Sonoma County.

Hyde de Villaine is a partnership between Larry Hyde who planted his famous vineyard back in 1979 in Carneros, and Aubert de Villaine who married Larry's first cousin Pamela, and is the winemaker at Domaine de la Romanee Conti. Their goal is to find a truly iconic and unique expression of California, and the winemaker since 2002, Stephane Vivier, is succeeding at this in spades. The winery itself is located in Napa town, but the vineyard is in Carneros. It is difficult not to compare the wines to their French counterparts, but in style they reflect their origins significantly.

HdV Vineyards tasting

Compared to the majority of the chardonnay I have tasted thus far, their is an elegance of fruit in the HdV wines and a minerality that is quite amazing. More than any other chardonnay I have seen these are ones that deserve to be aged. The merlot cabernet blend is hauntingly similar to a great St. Emilion with fantastic acid and tannin structure. The highlight for me was the syrah, treading that very fine line between showing elegant varietal fruit character, and not over-expressing the savoury spice elements. It is one of the most complex syrah wines I have tasted outside of the Rhone, and I'm sure that sounds very unpatriotic but its true. It was really fun wine-geeking out with AJ Fairbanks, Pamelas nephew and General Manager, and I hope I can catch up with him again at some point.

Yeasts in the Saintsbury winery

Dick Ward and David Graves were Masters of Oenology students together at the University of California Davis Campus, but met in a beer-making course. Together they decided to establish a wine business together, but it wasn't until the 11th hour they decided to name the winery after their favourite wine critic, a turn-of-the-century Englishman known for his aruldite pontification. Their focus today is on chardonnay, syrah, and the king is pinot noir. They have two estate vineyards they source from, and have growers throughout Carneros and even the Anderson Valley which straddles Sonoma and Mendocino. They have a modest production, but their single vineyard wines are astonishingly good, and amazing value.

Saintsbury Stanly Ranch Pinot Noir 2008

The chardonnays surprised me a lot because they were the first to have a pure citrus fruit expression, whereas most of the others had an element of melon and pineapple in them. Whilst my personal tastes aren't towards the earthy, smoked meats and grainy qualities of Carneros pinot noir, I can appreciate the quality in the Saintsbury pinot noirs. Once you get into the single vineyard pinots in particular, they have a very silky and supple nature to them. My favourite to be honest was actually the Anderson Valley Cerise Pinot Noir 2009, partly as the others were all 2008 and the '09 vintage was better for reds, and partly because of the expression of fruit. The Anderson Valley Pinot Noir seemed to have much brighter, lighter and tighter fruit, red cherries and strawberries and a bright fresh acidity to it. The peppery syrah was fantastic, coming from the Sonoma Valley. It was very generous of the guys at Saintsbury to invite me to join the winery team for lunch, and show me around the winery during such a busy period.

Lunch with the Saintsbury 2011 vintage team

As I headed up towards Santa Rosa where I am staying for two nights I stopped in at Benziger Estate in Glen Ellen. Benziger has been in the Sonoma County area for over 30 years, and it is a true family enterprise. For many years Benziger have been at the forefront of biodynamic and organic viticulture, not only in the US but all over the world. The first thing you notice as you come down the driveway are various non-grape plants between rows of vines. This practice is designed to introduce natural fauna that protects the micro-climate (hence the vineyard) from disease and pests, and allows the vines to produce better fruit more consistently, without the use of chemicals and additives. Benziger convinced their contract growers to convert to sustainable green practices, certain that would produce better fruit, and it is hard to argue when you taste the wines. The Bordeaux blends in particular show depth, velvety tannins, complexity and intensity that puts most of the Napa Valley wines to shame, and is about half the price. The 2008 vintage for the Tribute is superlative for the price, a steal at only $80.

Benziger vineyards

Benziger Biodynamic Discovery Trail

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These guys know wine tourism (Napa Valley, California - Day Three)

My final day in the Napa Valley started with a visit to Shafer Vineyards back in the Stags Leap District. Shafer dates back to 1972, around the same time that Stag's Leap Wine Cellars were established and before the Napa Boom post-1976 Paris Tasting. You most definitely can't say that John Shafer was jumping on the bandwagon. He left a career in the textbook publishing industry to establish a vineyard to grow grapes, and took his time to re-establish the site before producing his first vintage in 1978. From the beginning the wines gained much attention, and they have been producing their flagship Cabernet from the same vineyard for over 25 years.

Shafer winery

Visits to the winery to taste are only by appointment, twice a day. A tour and sit-down tasting of the wines, which total a retail value of over $450, costs $45. This sounds like a lot but it is not uncommon in California, charging is standard practice, and the Napa Valley is generally more expensive than other regions. Considering the private and exclusive nature of the tasting, and the quality of the wines it is not surprising that numerous wine critics have praised Shafer for their tasting experience. This is certainly helped by the quality of the wines. Structurally the Shafer wines are some of the best I've seen, and they manage to allow the fruit to express without intefering with oak and alcohol. They are very intense in fruit character, not uncommon in Californian wines and therefore are unmistakably New World in style. The other guests who enjoyed the tasting were fervent admirers of the wines, travelling from as far as Boston to sample the wines.

Shafer wine tasting

As some might know Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola has been in the Californian wine industry for quite a while now, and it is hard to go into a liquor store here and not see at least one of his many wines. He purchased Inglenook Estate, one of the first wineries in the Napa Valley, back in the 1970s and in the 1990s renamed it Rubicon Estate. The original chateau built on the property houses the cellar door and wine museum, along with some of FFCs movie memorabilia. It's a pretty slick set-up, and the chateau feels like something out of Europe but not in a fake way. There are so many other things for sale there its easy to forget you are in a winery. I declined tasting there as it was a bit too charming for me.

Rubicon Estate

Cakebread Cellars was established in 1973 by Jack Cakebread, a professional photographer. Their chardonnay is legendary in the US, and is not only completely recession-proof but they are forced to allocate due to overwhelming demand. The visitor centre is split across various areas, centrally located in the original winery. The wines are very pure varietal expressions, showing good consistency across the range, but the zinfandel was definitely my favourite. The winery is beautiful, built from cedar and with a natural warmth to it. They have a cuisine school running all-year-round, and it would be a fabulous place to hold an event. No weddings, sorry guys!

Cakebread Cellars

Part of the Louis-Vuitton Moet-Hennessy Group which includes Chandon California and my former employers Chandon Australia, is Newton Vineyard in the Spring Mountain appellation. Newton was originally established by Peter Newton (who founded Stirling Vineyards in 1964), and his wife Dr. Su Hua Newton (a former protegee of Coco Chanel). The vineyards at Newton are quite extraordinary, hugging the very steep contours of the mountain. I had tasted the wines and seen pictures when I worked for Chandon Australia, but being there makes it totally different. The cellar is housed under a glorious garden, being a member of the wine club here would definitely have its perks when events are held at the winery.

Newton Vineyards

Being part of LVMH has its benefits. Some of the sales and display tools designed for Newton are truly exceptional, and in many cases sustainable too. The connection to Chandon California also means they can have food matches by Perry Hoffman with the wines. The Unfiltered range are in the full and bold fruit expression style of Napa Valley, but are totally in balance. The Unfiltered Chardonnay is very famous for being poured at events at the Whitehouse, and isn't as rich and buttery as I remember it, its actually quite elegant. The tour and tasting here is one of the best I have been ever been on, and it is a lovely secluded place to visit away from the hustle and bustle of the valley floor.

Newton tasting

Click here to see more photos from Day Three of the Napa Valley, California.

Wine in them hills (Napa Valley, California - Day Two)

Bright and early on my second day in the Napa Valley I drove up into the Spring Mountains, hoping that the weather would improve, as my first day had been rainy and gloomy. I had corresponded with JJ McCarthy from Cain Vineyard and Winery before I left, and arranged to visit at 8:30am, so I got a really great view from a lot higher up. The Cain vineyard is at least 650m above sea level, whereas the Napa Valley floor is only about 200m, so elevation is clearly on their side. The soils on Spring Mountain are also a lot tougher, so the vines have to work harder to find water and nutrients to thrive. One of the first things I noticed were fewer and smaller bunches of fruit than in the valley floor. Tasting the fruit was thrilling, as it is the first time I can remember actually tasting terroir in grapes, and the cabernet sauvignon tasted like wine!

Cain vineyards covered in fog

Cain produce only three wines. The Cain Five is named as such because it uses a blend of the five classic Bordeaux varieties; cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot and malbec. The Cain Concept - The Benchland is the little sister to the Cain Five, vinified the same way but tends to have more cabernet sauvignon. The Cain Cuvee is a very experimental wine, a blend of two vintages to create a soft approachable blend consisting of almost 50% merlot, and also blends valley floor with Spring Mountain fruit. The wines were exceptional reflections of their origins and were definitely not in the full-bodied, heavily extracted, high-alcohol and overly oaked wines one would expect from the Napa. The Cain Five in particular showed nuances of earth and savoury spiced meat characters, and was very subtle and elegant. At $100 a bottle is was probably one of the best value I tasted in the region.

Cain Five and Cain Concept

I had been recommended several wineries in California by some winemakers back in Australia before I left. One of these wineries was Miner Family Vineyards, located in the Oakville sub-region on the Silverado Trail. Miner produces a great range of wines, and they source fruit from several regions in California for their wines. Their Bordeaux variety based wines understandably come from their own and other Napa Valley vineyards, they source viognier from Madera (not Madeira), their sangiovese comes from Mendocino, and their pinot noir comes from the Santa Lucia Highlands. Dave Miner clearly has identified these regions as producing exceptional fruit for these specific varieties. The wines are very good, quite full and fruit driven examples, but not heavy or alcoholic. They have a really great Champagne-inspired cellar where they store their barrels, and their direct marketing wine club program is probably one of the best I have seen.

Miner cellars

From here I headed down to Clos Du Val, one of the wineries also included in the 1976 Paris Tasting for their 1972 Cabernet Sauvignon. I was fortunate to have tried their entry level wines back in Melbourne and was very impressed that even at that level they were expressing their origins. The original winemaker when established in 1970 was Bernard Portet, brother of Dominique Portet, who both grew up in Bordeaux where their father was a technical director of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. The brothers clearly have Bordeaux in their blood, Dominique settling in the Yarra Valley and Bernard and in the Napa Valley. The focus at Clos Du Val is naturally on the Bordeaux varietes, and they are the only winery I visited who utilised semillon in a SSB blend. The Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignons were outstanding, and the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignons even better. The winery is a lovely chateau inspired building, and the vineyards utilise numerous viticultural techniques.

Clos du Val viticultural management

Stags' Leap Winery, part of the Treasury Estates group, is located on a truly historic site. It dates back to the mid-1800s and had a varied and interesting background. It was actually one of the original owners that named the estate the region is named after, from a Native American legend of a stag that would escape hunters by leaping off a precipice into mist-covered valley. At one point it was run as country accommodation and during prohibition a "Speak Easy" was secretly run in the cellar. One of the first in-ground swimming pools was built here, and during WW2 the pool was used by servicemen for its healing properties whilst on furlough. The cellar under the hill was excavated by Chinese migrants who worked on rail-roads as they were experts in explosives. The wines today are very good fruit-driven wines, and utilise Rhone-varieties to make rose and red blends. It is a great tour, particularly for its historic significance.

Stags' Leap Winery

Often confused with the previous winery I visited, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars who were established around the same time as Stags' Leap winery were re-established, is just down the Silverado Trail. It was this winery who won the 1976 Paris Judgement with their 1973 SLV Cabernet Sauvignon, only their third vintage! Now owned by Chateau Ste Michelle and the Antinori family, Stag's Leap produce exceptional wines from exceptional vineyard sites. Consequently several of their wines are exceptionally priced, but still reasonably considering some of their neighbours. Many of the wineries included in the Paris Tasting are celebrating the 35th anniversary, and Stag's Leap are no exception. The SLV Cabernet Sauvignon is an extremely contemplative wine, very brooding and dark with balance and length, and I heartily endorse it if you can find any.

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars

Click here to see more photos from Day Two in the Napa Valley.

In the Valley (Napa Valley, California - Day One)

Interesting wine fact; California produces about 30% more wine than all of Australia. The Napa Valley is without doubt the most famous region in California. However, less than 5% of California's production comes from the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. And yet the Napa Valley is the second most visited place in California, after Disneyland, which shows how important wine tourism is here. As previously mentioned I began contacting wineries in California before I left Australia, and those I contacted in Napa were by the far the most responsive. It was nice to have a few more appointments to fall back on, but as I was relatively unfamiliar with most wine from the Napa I didn't know what to expect. Driving up the 29 Highway towards my first appointment you realise how important the wine business is here, with extensive and dense plantings constantly and a winery every 100m or so. No wonder they call this the Vegas of wine!

Opus One winery, one winery for one wine

My first visit in the Napa Valley was to Opus One, which was a joint venture between Mr. Napa Robert Mondavi, and the Rothschild family of Bordeaux. Robert Mondavi made wine in the Napa from the 1960s and basically introduced quality into the region, and was an advisor and mentor to many. The partnership was to create an iconic Bordeaux blended wine, and to this end they built a winery for this very purpose. The architecture is some of the most striking and unique in the valley, the limestone used was brought in from Texas. In the winery no expense has been spared, and reminded me of the kind of investment that had been made at Chateau Latour when I visited last year. They have the finest barrels, a sorting table with at least 10 sorters working, and a laser-sighted fruit sorter which precisely measures the size shape and colour of berries.

Barrels are important here

Opus One is a cabernet sauvignon led blend of the classic Bordeaux varieties, which sees at least two years in new oak barrels. Whilst the flavours are extremely opulent and full, the new oak tends to dominate on the palate (understandably). The wine is clearly designed like a Bordeaux First Growth, to be cellared for at least 10 years before integration and approachability. It is a pretty amazing wine, and relatively good value at $200+ per bottle, but personally I prefer wines that can be drunk on release and deserve to be cellared, not required to be.

This is what it's all for

I then drove all the way up the valley floor, and popped into Schramsberg which is the only American owned sparkling house. Having worked for Chandon in Australia for four years I am very partial to good bubbles, and I had also been recommended to visit as the tour is quite special. Unfortunately due to the time of year Schramsberg were fully booked most of the week, and they don't have a license to just taste wines, it has to be part of the tour. Mildly disappointed I kept heading up to Chateau Montelena who's chardonnay won the 1976 Paris Tasting, and was the subject of the film "Bottle Shock" (haven't seen it, mixed reviews). Although I explained my background and the nature of my travels, because I didn't have a business card I couldn't taste the wines FOC, the first time it has happened since arriving. Slightly more disappointed and mildly cross...

"Chateau" Montelena

Fearing that I would continue to suffer these problems I again popped my head into Quintessa, another purpose built facility for one wine, not unlike Opus One. Fortunately the staff were a lot more receptive, and luckily I was able to tack onto another trade visit that was going on. I whisked through the winery (they all look pretty similar, hate to break it to you), and then looked at a vertical tasting of the Quintessa across four vintages. The Quintessa is a more velvety and soft style without compromising on structure and tannins, and interestingly uses carmenere, a traditional Bordeaux grape that is now almost exclusive to Chile. Of the four vintages all the other guests loved the 2007 as it was a classic full-bodied and rich Napa style, but I was quite partial to the 2006 and the 2004 was still showing very young.

An insightful tasting

Frog's Leap has a really interesting story, and I heartily recommend visiting. The cellar door is actually more like a two storey, traditional American country house. The bottom floor has separate rooms that are all open and free-flowing. The second floor has all the administration offices, and has an opening to the first floor so there is great use of natural light. The winery buildings look like huge barns, there are beautiful natural and native gardens, and they offer a lovely tour of the property with wine tasting.

A unique and engaging tour

The Frog's Leap vineyards are all totally organic dry-farmed, and they also utilise some biodynamic practices. According to Frog's Leap this allows the fruit and therefore wines to better express the terroir of the site. I would have to agree that the wines were very unique from a lot of the wines I tasted in the Napa, and therefore it makes sense. The Sauvignon Blanc was the first wine they produced back in the early 80s, and is very good. I was quite impressed with their Merlot, as it looked more like a full-bodied pinot noir, very restrained and light. The Syrah was also very good, and in general the wines are very well priced.

A warm and inviting visitor centre

No visit to the Napa would be complete without visiting Chandon, if only to see how different it is to Chandon Australia. It is a much larger facility, and the visitor centre is definitely equipped to handle the number of visitors the region gets. There is a Michelin-starred restaurant named Etoile, which would unfortunately be well out of my budget. They have tours and events, its very well equipped. The wines are designed for the US palate which calls for more fruit and less acid, and they succeed in making good wines in this style. It is a shame I didn't get a better chance to look around, but my appointment confirmation seemed to have gone missing. No matter, still got to see it.

One of the most visited wineries in the world

Click here to see more photos from Day One in the Napa Valley, California