Wein, Weib & Gesang! [7/10 - Napa Valley]

Where to start? Our first realization in Napa was that there are way too many wineries and way too little time - have a look at this wonderful map provided by the Napa Vintners and you'll get the idea: Map of Napa Valley - luckily we are used to tough challenges and so Julie crafted a battle plan that would take us to 5 of these fine establishments before boarding the Wine Train for a gourmet dinner @ 6.30 PM.

Here are the 5 wineries we made it to:
Sterling
Beringer
Rutherford Hill
Stag's Leap
Hess Collection

and here are the results from the JTWM jury:

Sterling: Gorgeous setting, the only winery featuring a ski resort style gondola taking visitors from the parking lot to their tour and tasting rooms. Their tour is great, very well laid out in beautiful and spacious modern, white, Mediterranean style buildings. Their wine, well, unfortunately, I can't say anything good about their wine really. Of the 4 kinds they served on the tour (2 whites & 2 reds) none were memorable or even decent - this winery was the tour highlight in terms of views and the low light in terms of wine. Our advice to Sterling: try spending more money on the wine and less on the presentation (read the on site Gondola).


Beringer: Good mainstream kind-a large winery. Not really all that impressive or outstanding in any way - decent wines and decent setting - but with a bit of a 'fast food' flavor to the experience given the many people they serve. If I remember correctly Julie quite enjoyed their Chardonnay - a wine that I mostly fail to enjoy, so can't comment on whether that was a good call or not :).


Rutherford Hill: The one with the Cave - something we were quite excited about. These guys dug their own large hole (ok: Cave) in the cliff wall to allow their wines to mature in perfect temperature and humidity. The latter being important, as it means the barrels will have to be topped off less often, hence letting less oxygen into the maturing wine, which is considered a good thing (hey - I did learn something!) Unfortunately this superior technique wasn't really noticeable in the wines we tried on site. They also get minus points for a having a tour that is a little on the long side (without tasting stops!), a bland tour guide and finally for allowing large numbers of non-wine drinkers on the tour (what's the point?!)


Stag's Leap: My personal tasting favorite. This winery is small and there is no fuss, aka intricate (read lengthy) tours and gift shops - it's just a short hope from the parking lot to the tasting room where you can get right at it. There are no non-wine drinking tourists at this place. We loved their red wines, which are very rich and full bodied and even their Chardonnay is decent (read non fruity).

I'll add a side note here: While touring Napa the Sebring shone more than ever - it was the perfect vehicle for 'hopping' from vineyard to vineyard in style, while enjoying the warm California breezes and the magnificent views on all sides and I think we got quite a few jealous looks on this day.


Hess Collection: Last stop on our day tour and Julie's favorite (think she liked the Lion in their logo...) - the "Collection" refers to the extraordinary artwork they feature on site - truly amazing and a nice touch. Wines were above average and their Syrah in particular a feast, so we decided to bring a case back as Julie's birthday present. Which led to what seemed to be hours of confusion for their poor sales person, to much amusement to us, until he overcharged us by $100 -- we got that settled and came out with a beautiful, logo embellished, wooden case (which I of course didn't take any pictures of - so you get to enjoy a shot of my talisman frog visiting their scrumptious pond instead).


6 hours of wine tasting in the sun & 100 deg. F. can be a challenge, so we were truly excited about boarding the wine train the evening, ready to kick back and enjoy the views and food without having to do much ourselves. It was a pretty ride, although we were a bit disappointed that other guests did not go to the same lengths as we did in terms of finding a wearing proper evening attire - but that's a story I'll leave to Tim to tell some other time...