Dundee Hills Tasting (Thursday - Day 6)

This was the last of our wine tasting for this trip. Six days of tasting over 10 days was enough. Here's where we went...mostly tasting Pinot:

• Rex Hill Vineyards
• Domaine Drouhin
• Domaine Serene
• Argyle Winery
  
• Torii Mor
• Erath Winery

During this trip we visited 42 wineries..not too bad!

Favorites for me:

• AVA - Lake Chelan
  
• Riesling (sweet) - Terra Blanca Winery
• Dessert - Zerba Cellars
  
• Cabernet - L'Ecole No. 41
• Malbec - Wapato Pint Cellars
• Syrah - Lake Chelan Winery
  
• Pinot - Domaine Serene
  

Woodinville and Leavenworth Tasting (Monday - Day 4)

On Monday, we visited:

• Chateau St. Michelle (no tasting)
• Januik
• Gold Digger Cellars (Okanogan Estate)
• Kestrel Vintners
• Bergdorf Cellars
• Pasek Cellars
• Maison de Padgett Winery

Time to enjoy the evening happenings of Leavenworth, WA.

Benton City wine tasting (Day 3 - Sunday)

We visited:

• Terra Blanca Winery - great Late Harvest Riesling
• Kiona Vineyards
• Seth Ryan Winery

Then we drove to Tacoma for some family time.

Walla Walla Wine Tasting, Day 2

Saturday brought us to:

• Basel Cellars
• Balboa Winery
• Beresan Winery
• Waters Winery
• Va Piano Vineyards
• Trust Cellars
• Zerba Cellars (Oregon) - Semillon Ice Wine!
  
• Dunham Cellars
• Patrick M. Paul Vineyard
• Patit Creek Cellars
• Otis Kenyon

Busy day!!!

Walla Walla Wine Tasting

Friday is finished...here is where we went:

• Woodward Canyon Winery
• L'Ecole No. 41 Winery
• Waterbrook Winery
• Three Rivers Winery
• Reininger Winery
• Amavi Cellars
• Spring Valley Vineyard
• Slight of Hand
• Fort Walla Walla Cellars

More tasting here tomorrow. Sunday = Benton City. Monday = Woodinville and Leavenworth. Tuesday = Lake Chelan. Thursday and Friday = Oregon Pinot. Many wineries to be hit on this trip!

Wines from the weekend

It is Sunday night and we are back from a weekend trip to the mountains with some friends. We did some damage to our wine inventories.

Friday night:

• 2006 Aresti Merlot Reserva (sangria)
• 2006 Page Mill Chardonnay (sangria)
• 2006 Caves des Papes CdP La Reserve des Argentiers
• 2005 Ladera Syrah Napa Valley
• 2005 Folie a Deux Cabernet
• 2004 St. Clement Cabernet Napa Valley

Saturday night:

• 2006 Francis Coppola Black Label Claret
• 2007 Weingut Allram Gruner Veltliner (sangria)
  
• 2005 Stags' Leap Winery Cabernet (2 bottles)
• 2006 Joseph Phelps Syrah
• 2006 Hop Kiln Zinfandel
• 2006 Nickel & Nickel Pinot Noir Spring Hill
• 2000 Paradise Ranch Chardonnay Ice Wine
• 2004 Meeker Zinfandel Fro-Zin
  

2008 Taste of Howell Mountain

I am headed to the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena this afternoon for a wine and food tasting and a silent/live auction: 2008 Taste of Howell Mountain. Pics and an update later!

[Update: won two silent auctions! Not even close on the live auctions, though. Are top bids (what we would pay for) were often at or below the starting bid. Pics will have to wait as I dropped my camera into some water.]

[Update 2: camera was saved after weeks of desiccating in the refrigerator. Here they are!]

New Year's Eve blind wine tasting

We had some friends over for dinner/NYE celebration yesterday and enjoyed some great wine! Here is what we had...

To whet our appetite with cheese and other morsels, we started with:

2001 Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon Bosche Vineyard

The suggested wine varietal for the tasting was Chateauneuf-du-Pape. As a group, we haven't had much French wine experience (Napa and Sonoma are too close to ignore!), so we decided to expand our horizons. I planted a decoy in the mix just for fun. After the tasting, we tallied up the scores and came up with this ordering:

5. 2005 Gilles Barge Cote-Rotie Cuvee du Plessy - this one seemed to be tainted
4. 2000 Chateau Laroque - my favorite!
3. 2005 Orin Swift The Prisoner - the decoy
2. 2004 Patrick Lesec Chateauneuf-du-Pape Chasse Temps - #1 for 3 tasters
1. 2003 Chateau La Nerthe Chateauneuf-du-Pape - #1 for 5 tasters

(Note that CdP was hard to fine on short notice...so other French wines were substituted.)

We enjoyed the rest of the wine with dinner (chicken, pasta, seafood gumbo) and also opened up four more bottles:

2002 Sterling Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve
2000 Pierre Gaillard Cote Rotie Cote Rozier
2005 Simi Dry Creek Valley Late Harvest Zinfandel
2005 Mount Palomar Chardonnay Solanus Late Harvest

And for the New Year's toast, we opened up some champagne:

N.V. Marcel Hemard Champagne ORIGINE
N.V. Charles Heidsieck Champagne Brut Reserve
N.V. Jeanmarie Champagne Cuvee Brut

Happy New Year to all!!!

Blind tasting night with friends

We spent Saturday evening hosting a blind wine tasting with some friends. The rules were simple...bring a somewhat pricey wine (>$75). My thinking is that a Napa cab would be the default selection brought by guest (my personal bias running rampant?). I was surprised that only two were Napa cabs. Here is how they rated, along with a link to CellarTracker (the best wine site for tracking your personal collection):

1. 2001 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Napa Valley Merlot
2. 2003 Cliff Lede Poetry Napa Valley Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon
   
3. 1997 Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
4. 2004 Tenuta Sette Ponti Oreno Tuscana IGT
5. 1994 Lyeth North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon

In the end, we were all winners as each of us had the opportunity to enjoy great wine with great food (lamb, ribs, salad, rosemary potatoes, sausage fried rice, several cheeses and a variety of desserts) with great friends. We decided to have a blind tasting every three months and to select themes around a specific varietal. We also realized mid-tasting that we should have planted a wine in the mix for fun...either something more reasonably priced or just all together different. Next time!

Tasting along the Wine Road in Sonoma

We spent the weekend up in Sonoma and participated in the 9th Annual Wine and Food Affair. Of all the visits that we have made so far this year, this one had to be the most scenic. Sonoma offers many different varietals and the land is very hilly, so the contrasts and colors and forms (combined with the beautiful weather) was something to be experienced. Glad we were able to go! On Saturday, we visited:

1. Arista - The most beautiful place we visited
   
2. Hanna
3. Alexander Valley Vineyards - Bought a 2004 Syrah
   
4. White Oak - Picked up two of their 2004 Napa Valley cabs
   
5. Simi - Bought a 2003 Landslide Cab, a 2006 Late Harvest Chardonnay and a 2005 Late Harvest Zinfandel
   
6. Bella
7. Zichichi
8. Gopfrich - Picked up a 2005 Estate Cuvee
   

Saturday wine tasting

We went wine tasting on Saturday and visited several wineries in Napa. The Stags Leap District Winegrowers were hosting their annual Vineyard to Vintner (V2V) event and we hit most of them!

1. Nickel & Nickel - (not part of the event, but we had free access to their Spring Barrel Tasting.) Our favorites (out of the 13 tasted!) were the 2006 C. C. Ranch and Rock Cairn cabernets). The barrel room was absolutely beautiful!
   
2. Baldacci Family Vineyards - Tom Baldacci was cooking some nice sausage and steak on the grill in front of the cave. We learned his "secret" for tenderizing his steak and will be trying it out soon
   
3. Shafer Vineyards - Was pretty busy here. They have a great name, so not surprised.
   
4. Ilsley Vineyards - The tasting was out on the porch. Too bad the porch was small. We left shortly after arriving.
   
5. Silverado Vineyards - This place was BIG! Probably the most corporate on the Silverado Trail.
   
6. Taylor Family Vineyards - We met Jerry, Pat and Sandy. Bought a Reserve bottle here.
   
7. Pine Ridge Winery - Only offering two wines (a red and a white). The skewers off of the grill were quite tasty (serving both lamb and shrimp).
   
8. Steltzner Vineyards - They had the tasting in their cave and sampled a 1985 Cabernet...one of their oldest. Near the entrace, they keep many of their library wines...look for all the dust in the cabinets to the left.
   
9. Griffin Vineyards - Due to a trademark dispute, they are changing their name.
   
10. Hartwell Vineyards - Bob Hartwell was signing bottles and his Shih Tzu was leashed next to him. She was had quite a reserved temperament compared to another puppy I know...
    
11. Regusci Winery - Awesome tasting room...surrounded by boxes upon boxes of ancient vintages from around the Napa neighborhood

We've been to Chimney Rock Winery, Cliff Lede Vineyards and Robert Sinskey Vineyards before, so the only one that we really missed was Clos Du Val.

Would you like a Silverfish in your Laurel Glen Counterpoint Cabernet?

How did you spend your last Friday evening? Mine started out quite well! I arrived home from work and dinner was all prepared. Once I changed, we began to eat. Our first response was...this wine isn't so good. It was an extremely cheap bottle, so we dumped it down the drain and then decided to open up something from a trip to Sonoma a year and a half ago: a 2001 Laurel Glen Counterpoint Cabernet Sonoma Mountain. I poured two glasses and we dug in. I heard Cammy give a yelp and a then a scream. She said that there was a worm in her wine. I took the glass, looked inside and my first thought was that it was some cork floating. Since the light by the couch was dark, I went into the kitchen to scoop the cork out with a spoon. Upon doing so, I quickly noticed that she was right, it was a bug. A nice wine-pickled Silverfish. Ugh! Yuck! Phooey! DISGUSTING! How the hell did that get there? What kind of an operation does Laurel Glen run? Uggggggggghhhhhh! This bottle, too, is dumped down the drain and we both pledged to never drink Laurel Glen again...

Oh...if you don't know what a Silverfish looks like, see below:

Sunday was Napa wine tasting day

The Silverado Trail Wineries Association had a weekend event where some of the lesser known wineries of Eastern Napa got together to promote themselves. We checked a few of them out, along with a few others (*), that were not part of the event.

1. Judd's Hill - A new vineyard, no longer on the hill.
   
2. Van Der Heyden Vineyards - Wine tasting or wine lecturing? We arrived and were seated while an employee held court and talked about the wine (but didn't feel it was important to pour). We made a move to leave, but the winemaker intercepted us and offered to help. Good that we stayed, as we found that they make an incredible late harvest cabernet (first time to see that!). They harvest the grapes in late November/early December. The 1997 was the best wine to ever set root(?) in my mouth. Purchased the 1997 and the 2002.
   
3. Hagafen Cellars - This one got crowded fast, so we didn't stick around too long.
   
4. Signorello Winery - Discovered that Mike looks like Ray Signorello, Jr.
   
5. * Chimney Rock Winery - We are members here. The red tasting was great...some high-end wines!
   
6. Robinson Family Vineyards - They have a nice, comfortable grassy area to relax.
   
7. * Robert Sinskey Vineyards - One of Mike's favorites. Nice kitchen next to the tasting area. Surprised that more wineries don't provide some good tasting food to complement the wine.
   
8. * Cliff Lede - We are members here. Relaxed and picked up an order of Howell Mountain Poetry.
   
9. * St. Supery - Not on the Silverado Trail...but it was getting late and we wanted to hit one more winery.

We'll be back in a couple of weeks...Chimney Rock has a wine mixing event.

Tracking our wine "cellar"

Okay, so it isn't a cellar...but it is turning into a small collection. We're headed up to Silver Oak in a couple of weeks for their 2002 Napa Valley Release Day, so it will be getting a bit bigger.

And since I've forgotten how much I've paid for most of the bottles and have no clue about scores or drinking windows, I decided to do some surfing and came across CellarTracker. This site allows you to keep a personal inventory and provides anything/everything you need to know about your collection. What I learned about our "cellar":

• # of bottles: 37
• value: $1,128.41
• avg $ per bottle: $30.31
  
• most valuable: 2001 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley (soon to change)
• # from Napa: 15
• # from Sonoma: 10
• # from Central Coast: 3
• # from Portugal: 3
• # from North Coast: 2
• Highest rating: IWC91 (2000 Croft Porto Vintage); CT91.8 (2001 Chateau Souverain Cabernet Sauvignon Winemaker's Reserve)
• # past their drinking window: 1 (1998 Guenoc Langtry Meritage Red)...we'll be drinking this soon