Oh, Napa!

This past week, a group of us left the cold temperatures of Washington state and headed south to Napa for a little educational field trip. I personally have not been to Napa in at least six years (except for a conference, where I got to hang out in the Napa Marriott), and was very excited to see what all the fuss was about. Here's how the trip went, and all of the fun things I learned:

Day One:

We land at the Napa airport just before noon, then head to lunch at Oakville Grocery. Such a cool shop with great food. However, this was one of the three rainy days per year in Napa so we got to eat in the van.

VISIT ONE: Benessere Vineyards in St. Helena

This is a pretty small winery (by Napa standards) that specializes in Italian varietals. We got to try some fun library sangioveses, dating back to 1998, and a very good muscat frizzante. We really enjoyed ducking out of the rain and touring their production facility. Here, I learned that it is possible to stay small and family owned in Napa.
VISIT TWO: Vineyard 29 on the St. Helena Highway

This was a special stop, made possible by our buddies at Cordon (thanks, Ken!). As our tour guide reminded us several times, they generally are never open for tours, so we were all made to feel very fortunate for our time at Vineyard 29. This is a winery that predominately sells just to their mailing list, and has some spectacular single vineyard wines. The one exception is a wine named "Cru" that sells just to restaurants. There is almost the same amount of Cru produced as our entire product line. Above are some impressive oak fermenters that are part of their gravity-flow (they use an elevator) system of vinification.

Down in the caves of Vineyard 29, we were able to meet their Director of Winemaking, Keith Emerson, who was great to listen to. Their winemaker is Philipe Melka, who has projects across the globe, including one with Long Shadows in Washington. Apparently, he has the ability to control a bit of the winemaking from his phone - how crazy is that!?! Below, Charlie sips Aida Cabernet in the library. I'm not able to pinpoint my main lesson from Vineyard 29, other than anything is possible, including winemaking via cell phone.

VISIT THREE: This was a non-tasting visit. We stopped by the gift shop at the Culinary Institute of America. My knuckles were white from attempting to keep my credit card in my pocket. How beautiful is this building?

Oddly enough, I don't have pictures from the remainder of the day. We visited Alpha Omega in the Rutherford AVA, also right on Highway 29. Coincidentally, they use Michel Roland (also a Long Shadows winemaker) as their consulting winemaker. I bought a lovely Chardonnay as a gift to my mom for puppy-sitting while I was gone. This is a winery that has only been around for about three years, but makes a ton of wine and pretty much sells it all direct. Pretty wild...

We had dinner at Bottega in Yountville. I wish that I could list everything that we ate, but that would take forever. My favorites were my hubbard squash tortelli and the "polenta under glass" appetizer that we shared. This was a beautiful restaurant where we procrastinated before going back out into the rain. Nedra and I spied on Michael Chiarello a bit while he worked in the kitchen before we finally braved the weather to go to the hotel.

I'm going to have to do Day 2 in just a bit, before I overload blogspot with my posts...