Wine Club Insider back.

We just hosted our biggest event of the year this past weekend, and one of my dearest friends, Scott, came to town to help out. Now Scott is a big time wine guy, and we have had many a conversation of bottles of good wine, ranging from some of Napa’s best to Italy’s finest… Scott and his lovely wife Marci (some folks think we all pretend to like Scott just so we can be around Marci!) take a yearly trip to Italy, and have developed quite a respectable cellar, except for the fact that Scott drinks it faster than he can collect it!

Anyway, we were lucky enough to be able to stay in the penthouse suites of the world famous Coeur d’ Alene Resort, and let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, THIS is a hotel room! Their main restaurant, Beverley’s, also has one of the top wine lists anywhere.

Of course, to be a good host, i had to take a few bottles for the evenings, and I must say that choosing through your cellar for special treats to share with friends is amazingly enjoyable!

Since Scott and Marci live in Dallas, my choices were a bit biased toward highlighting the northwest, with a nod toward Napa and Italy, in honor of my friends:

I decided on 6 bottles,as well as port style wine, and a dessert wine. Here were my choices:

1) 2003 Stag’s Leap Artemis. Stag’s Leap’s “second” label, this is still a very respectable wine, though not as deep as the Cask 23 or Fay offerings.

2) Buty Winery’s 2003 Rediviva of the Stones, an award winning Syrah/Cab release from Caleb and Nina Foster. Their wine club is called “Friends of the Beast.”  www.butywinery.com.

3) Pend O’reille Winery’s famous L’Ouevre, of which I’ve spoken highly of.

4) Caterina’s 1999 WIllard Family Vineyard Cab

5) Renaissaince Vineyard’s 1983 Founder’s Reserve Cab - one of the finest wines I’ve ever tasted, bar none. 26 years old, and still has to be decanted for a few hours!

6) Altesino Brunello de Montalcino - One of Italy’s best wines, and one of Scott’s favorites.

For my port, I actually chose a port style wine, the 1995 vintage port from St. Amant vineyards near Lodi - awesome!

For the dessert wine, I went back to Renaissance for their 1989 Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc. Deep amber, rich, sweet - an amazing end to a great weekend of work, comradeship and wine drinking with dear friends… it doesn’t get much better!

Cheers!

Wine Club Insider out.

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Wine Club Insider back with you.

Just got back from a triathlon club meeting… I’m aiming for a 70.3 (1/2 Ironman) in a couple of months, and was actually presenting some stuff tonight… great fun, good fitness, and it justifies the wine as a “training aide…”

It’s coincidental that we’re talking about Merlot today… I got to try the VERY nice 1999 Willard Family Merlot from Caterina Winery - www.caterinawinery.com - that I mentioned last week… it was even better than the last time I tasted it a year or so ago, and looks to have another 5 years or so until its prime… wow, what a nice wine!

Merlot is the other Grand Daddy of red wine grapes, or should I say “Grand Pere?” The other key Bordeaux grape, it is also, like Cab Sauv, an offspring of Cab Franc, and predates the Cab Sauv by a few years.

Merlot is a more medium bodied wine, and ripens earlier than Cab Sauv. It also blends very well, making it uber-popular with wine makers world wide.

The movie “Sideways,” for all its quirky charm, and heaped with blessings from the Pinot Noir industry, did many wine drinkers world wide with lead character Paul Giamatti’s irrational dislike for Merlot. One of the bits of ironic humor was in the final scene when he sits at the table in the diner to drink his treasured bottle of French Bordeaux… which ends up being a Merlot!

Yes, two of the world’s most famous, rare and expensive wines are both close to 100% Merlot…  Petrus (around $3000/bottle for futures) and Le Pin (even more than that!) are both Merlots.

Merlot is also going to be the number one red wine grape (again) by the end of 2009, it looks like, surpassing Cab Sauv.

Merlot is often used to add body and softness to the oft-harsher Cab Sauv, and is grown most everywhere Cab Sauv is, though tends to do better in the cooler areas of the AVAs where it doesn’t ripen quite so early. It is the largest varietal in France, and is becoming more and more popular world wide. In the USA, it is hugely popular in Napa, and is making greater inroads in the Pacific Northwest, where wineries such as Leonetti, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Isenhower, and yes, Caterina are making notable and praiseworthy wines.

Myself, I love it. A great Merlot is a joy to drink… softer somehow than other reds, often “fleshy,” and filled with flavors of currant and plum, two of my favorite tastes in wine.

So, put whatever prejudices you might have aside, and take up a glass of good Merlot and join the rest of the world in appreciating this grand old grape! There might even be a Merlot wine club out there somewhere… hmmm…

Back tomorrow with Cab Franc, another of my favorites!

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider out.

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WCI here again… welcome back.

So far, we’ve talked about a variety of wine clubs, with the majority being “Winery” clubs… clubs operated by an individual winery, selling only wines from that winery. Today, I’d love to tell you about another great find!

On our way out of Napa (headed for Sonoma, which, I know, I know, is a terrible sacrifice), we drove north through Calistoga, and came upon the Wine Garage (www.winegarage.net), located in, yes, you guessed it, an old garage just south of the Petrified Forest turnoff to Sonoma.

We’d heard rumors of this place, and so, still having a little room in the car for more wine, we stopped in.

Let me tell ya, this place is cool! Their “grabber” is that no wine in the store is sold for more than $25/bottle, even if it’s worth more.

Todd, the owner, searches the valley (s) high and low for great and interesting wines, buys the lot, and passes the savings on to you, by pricing the wine between roughly $10 up to $25 per bottle… this is an awesome wine club gift opportunity!

Their wine club works a little different, as well, as you tell them basically whether you like rad, white and mixed, and every few months, they send you 6 bottles of small lot, interesting wines that you just can’t find in most wine shops. They also guarantee the wines they send you: if you don’t like them they’ll buy them back from you or exchange them.

One of the other cool things is that you can order quantities of ones you like, all at a good discount.

Their variety is really amazing, and though they don’t have the “big” name wines (usually because they are priced prohibitively) the ones they have sent me stack up great, at a fraction of the cost. They’re maybe not the most famous, but they are well crafted wines destined for good things, including my wine cellar!

I highly recommend the Wine Garage, so check them out and tell them WCI sent you!

Tomorrow, we take the dusty wine roads over to Sonoma!

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI back, with just a few comments on wine clubs…

There are literally dozens of different wine clubs, using dozens of formats; some deliver monthly, some quarterly, some twice a year, some once a year. Some give you an allotment that you must take, others give you a choice. Some give you red and white, some white, some red, some sweet. Some only offer wines from a single property, others “shop the world,” so to speak, on your behalf. No matter your preference, there are wine clubs to meet your needs.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll talk a bot about several of these options, but for today, we’re going to finish up the trip to Napa.

The sun was low in the sky, and we were nearing the end of a perfect Napa Valley day. Our guide (and driver, thank goodness!) pulled in to V. Sattui (www.vsattui.com), a fascinating winery that I had never really heard of, located just across the road from Dean and Deluca (www.deananddeluca.com), which also has a wonderful selection, by the way.

V. Sattui is one of the most decorated wineries in California, and only sells their wines direct from the winery, and to their large and loyal wine clubs, of which I have been a proud member for almost ten years. They ship monthly, and the variety of wines they offer is pretty staggering. They have everything from crisp white to huge single vineyard Cabs, Merlots, Zins, Sangios, and even a great selection of dessert wines.

They have a marvelous deli, a picnic area, a bar b cue and a great store… it is one of the most fun, enjoyable wineries to visit, and we had a terrific time. They have some extraordinary vintages in their library collection, including several from their famed Rutherford, Suzanne’s and Morisoli vineyards,

Though it was only a dream on my first visit, Daryl Sattui, the current owner, has also just recently completed the Castello di Amorosa, a 121,000 sq. foot Tuscan castle on the side of Diamond Mountain. There they sell Italian-style wines, amongst the gardens, the dungeon and the moat! It is truly one of the most spectacular settings in all of Napa.

We finished our day with a great dinner at Etoille, the restaurant located at Domaine Chandon, one of the best champagne houses in the USA (www.chandon.com), and headed back to our B&B, with 10 cases of wine in tow, and a delightful Napa Valley glow about us.

The following day, we actually got to a few more wineries, including Sterling (vineyards.com">www.sterlingvineyards.com), and Clos Pegase (www.clospegase.com), with its ten million dollar art collection displayed in the tunnels, before flying home, with the beginnings of a great cellar flying along with us.

Napa is a wonder, and we’ll talk more about it over the next few weeks, as we continue down the dusty wine roads!

Cheers,

WCI

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you’re enjoying a wonderful holiday with some great wines to go with it!

I’d love to hear what everyone’s drinking with their turkey… please drop me a comment/note and let me know, so we can post your preferences. At our place, we’re having a very nice Ste. Michelle Reisling, a David Bruce Pinot Noir from Oregon, and a surprisingly wonderful huckleberry wine called “Huck.” For dessert, we’re having a Cabernet Sauvignon Ice wine (!) from Icicle Ridge winery in Washington. What are your Turkey Day favorites? Drop us a line, and I’ll post your choices next week!

Okay… let’s get back to ”The valley…”

Heading west down the tranquil Oakville Crossroad toward highway 29 and Opus One (www.opusonewinery.com) an almost mystical place to a new “winey…” I mean, this was OPUS, for goodness sake!

Opus is a joint venture between the now-late Robert Mondavi, and Baron Phillipe de Rothschild to produce a “proprietary Bordeaux blend,” of mostly Cab, and a few other varietals, such as Merlot, Cab Franc, Petite Verdot, etc…

This winery is amazing. It is an architectural wonder, that almost defies description. It is also expensive.

We had missed the 10:30 a.m. guided daily tour, so we were forced to enjoy the grounds on our own with our $25 tasting of the famous Opus One, which lived up to its  billing. I bought one, even at the “exorbitant” price of $85/bottle… funny how things change in a couple of years. $85 for a ‘94 Opus now? Gimme a case!

From there, across the street to Mondavi! (www.robertmondaviwinery.com). The famous roof line silhouette greeted us, and we headed in for a tasting of an impressive line of wines. A few samples and a little conversation with the wine room manager later, and we were in a small private room with a couple of delightful library wines; older vintages of special character, kept back by the wine maker as something special.

I bought a couple of bottles of their best, the Mondavi Reserve Cabernet, and we continued our trek. Francis Ford Coppola’s fine establishment (www.rubiconestate.com) where I purchased several vintages of the iconic “Rubicon.”

Across to St. Supery (www.stsupery.com) where I joined the “Divine Wine Club,” and remain a thankful member to this date. St. Superyhas a fairly wide variety of wines, but are best known for their estate grown Rutherford Vineyard Cabs.

How many wineries had we been to so far? Nine? Ten? Eleven, I think. I had truly lost count, but I was determined to make an even dozen–one for each bottle in a case?

Our final stop was V. Sattui, one of the most interesting wineries in the valley, and where we’ll pick up tomorrow, as we hop along the dusty wine roads on our way for some good post-Thanksgiving shopping!

Cheers!

WCI

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WCI back to share the memories of Napa…

We turned left off Silverado Trail onto the Oakville Crossroad, and just a few hundred yards down on the left was one of the iconic wineries in my mind, and many others, apparently.

Silver Oak Cellars, where “Life is a Cabernet,” and every wine would be red if it could… www.silveroak.com

My first glass of great wine was a glass of Silver Oak, care of Bob Kolberg, who managed the vineyards for Justin Meyer, the inimitable founder and icon of Silver Oak. It was then that I realized that wine really could be something pretty special. It had depth, fruit, character… all those words I’d read about (and I read a LOT!) but had never really tasted before.

We turned down the tree shaded lane, with the famous tower right there, just like on the label.

We parked, walked in, and I got my first “keeper” Silver Oak crystal Cabernet glass. (Yes, for a very reasonable tasting fee, you get to taste the wine, and you get to keep to the glass, too!)

We dwelled for what seemed like hours, and even got to chat to Justin himself. We tasted the current release (the famous 1994 Alexander Valley) and even got to taste the Meyer Family Port, a 100% Cabernet-based port style wine. I walked out of there with a 1/2 case of the ‘84, and another 1/2 case of the port, and I was even more committed to “America’s Favorite Cab.”

I also joined the wine club, which is a bit different than many others; Silver Oak only makes two wines a year, the Alexander Valley Cab (Silver label), and the Napa Valley Cab (black label), which are released at different times each year. Every year, I get my announcement and get to order my allotment, and it is one of the highlights of my wine year. I have even given extra bottles away as Christmas gifts, and I must say, they are some of the best-received gifts I have ever given.

I still have 1 bottle of the ‘94, kept for the past 14 years (well, 11 by me, as Silver Oak always spends three years in the barrel before release) for the perfect special occasion; likely my 10th anniversary, which is coming up in the next year or two.

After Silver Oak, we headed basically across the street to another fine, fine winery, Groth Cellars (www.grothwines.com) where we sampled some of their wonderful products, including their Reserve Cab, and a great Merlot, purchasing both, of course.

What a day, and we were barely at 1:30 p.m.!

What’s next? Hmmm… how about Opus One? Okay! See you tomorrow along the dusty wine roads!

Cheers,

WCI

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Ah, the joy of the dusty wine roads!

We finished at Jarvis and headed north on the Silverado Trail, meandering very shortly into the Stag’s Leap District (www.stagsleapdistrict.com), one of the highlight appellations of the Napa Valley. It’s a small “valley within a valley,” just a mile by three miles, home to twenty or so fine wineries, many conveniently located very near the main road!

Trying to be eco-conscious, we tried to pick clusters of wineries we could easily stagger… er… walk between, and so, our first stop was the famous “Stags Leap Wine Cellars” (www.cask23.com) considered one of the “first growths” of Napa Valley.  As a matter of fact, it was in the famous “Judgement in Paris”–the 1976 tasting where their 1973 “S.L.V.” Cabernet shocked the world by beating the best of France in horizontal blind tastings.

Their three signature wines are called “S.L.V.,” “Fay” (after the founder of the Stag’s Leap District), and “Cask 23,” truly a magnificent wine. (They have since added another famous wine entitled “Artemis,” which is a bit more available (and affordable!)) I was forced to purchase a bottle or six of each of these fine products. To speak of their enduring quality, I still have a bottle or two of that original purchase, and whenever a special occasion comes up and we open one, they amaze me again with their depth and quality.

Right across the street was Pine Ridge (vineyards.com">www.pineridgevineyards.com), and their premium offering was the Andrus Cabernet, which is, to this day, one of the finest I have had. (I have one bottle of the ‘95 left, waiting for someone who appreciates fines wines to come by for a visit and give me an excuse to drink it… any takers?)

Next we hit Silverado Cellars (vineyards.com">www.silveradovineyards.com) but it passed in a bit of a blur, other than the fact we had a great picnic lunch on their grounds.

I have to say I was a bit preoccupied by this point, not just because of the great wines we had enjoyed, but because our next stop was along the Oakville Crossroad… Silver Oak, makers of my first great glass of wine, and one of the “must sees” on my list!

Until tomorrow…

Cheers!

WCI

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When last we met…

WCI back with you, remembering the heady first weekend in Napa!

Back at the Zinfandel House, at breakfast that morning, one of the guests raised their champagne and cranberry in a toast: “May this be the last sober breath you take!” And I’ll be darned if it wasn’t!

Wineries somewhat selfishly restrict their hours to a measly 7 or 8 per day, as if they have a life, or families or something, so wanting to get the most out of the limited “visiting” hours in the valley, we started early, after having established our game/battle/drinking plan for the day:

We had the list of the wineries we most wanted to stop at (and that we could get into), and added a couple that George and Bette. We marked them on the map, considered the traffic, and set out, planning to start at the south end of the valley, and working our way back north.

The first stop was a winery that we had never heard of, and that George arranged for us: Jarvis Cellars (www.jarviswines.com)  turned out to be one of the greatest finds!

Located at the extreme southwest end of the valley, Jarvis is the highest elevation winery in Napa, located way up off Monticello Road. When we pulled up, there was no sign of a winery, other than a magnificent vineyard. There were no buildings visible at all. After announcing ourselves at the gate, we followed the signs to the “parking meadow,” which was really a meadow. Still no winery.

We followed the brick path–the “Yellow Brick Road,” my wife said, and headed toward the mountain. We rounded the curve, and there, cut into the very bedrock of the mountain was a giant parabolic door, with “Jarvis” carved into the rock overhead.

Once inside, we joined up with the other 8 lucky folks, and were met by our cheerful guide.

Nothing unusual, so far, right? Well, let me tell ya…

The ENTIRE winery is located inside the mountain! Everything! They used giant tunnel digging machines from England to create the magnificent hallways and caverns, all built around the streams and waterfalls running inside the mountain.

Every barrel of their ultra-premium wine is no more than 100 paces from winemaker Dimitri Tchelistcheff’s office. Dimitri is the son of Andre’, widely reputed as the “Godfather” of Napa wine making, and is a legend in his own right.

The attention to detail is amazing: the bathrooms have fiber-optic lights, and the women’s has more stalls than I have ever seen. To get to the tasting room, you cross the stream on stepping stones… all in all, an amazing feat of engineering.

They also have a ballroom that seats hundreds of people, where they host several annual events to benefit arts in the area, including the Jarvis’ own school of Spanish Opera.

During our tasting, William Jarvis came in and chatted with us (as a side note, I’ve been to the winery three times, and he has stopped by on all three occasions) about his wines and his other projects.

This is a stop not to be missed, and it became my second wine club. I joined the “Inner Circle” club first, which allowed you to get credit for bottle of Jarvis you bought at a wine shop or even a restaurant! With that, you get a variety of perks, including tickets to the ball. I also joined the regular wine club, which offers rare and amazingly elegant creations, many of which are only for their members.

Jarvis is highly recommended, and you won’t go wrong in gifting a bottle of their “Lake William” to any wine lover!

Tomorrow, we start down the dusty wine roads north along the Silverado Trail!

Until then,

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI back ‘atcha!

So, my friends, I had my two wine clubs, and was getting a whopping four bottles per month, of which I drank twenty… how’d I come up with that math?

Well, like any good aspiring wine fanatic, I was diligently working toward my “bottle-per-day” minimum quotient. I was starting to spend some serious coin on vino, and loved every bit of it! I had found a couple of very nice, affordable “everyday” wines from Parducci (www.Parducci.com) and Mondavi (www.robertmondavi.com), and started “collecting” the good wines from my wine clubs…

Clubs, you say? Ah, you are an astute reader!

I soon found that wine collecting was nearly as fun as wine drinking, and turns out I had a bit of a knack for it.

How did I decide which clubs to join? Simple… I went to Napa to audition them in person!

Yes, indeed. A couple of months later, just as Spring was springing, I landed in San Francisco, rented a charming mid-size, and headed north along 101 for my first real visit to the “Magic Valley.”

I’d done a little investigating in terms of lodging, and had settled on a great little B&B just south of Calistoga along Hwy. 29. The Zinfandel House (www.zinfandelhouse.com) was and is owned by George and Bette Starke, and is a charming, eclectic house high on the western hills above Three Palms Vineyard, with an awe-inspiring view.

George had been the owner and winemaker at Napa Cellars in the late seventies and early eighties, and was one of Robert Mondavi’s closest friends. He also made one of the finest wines I have ever tasted, the 1980 Napa Cellars Cab.

George and Bette also led the first-ever American wine tour to France, where they toured and tasted at some of the most famous wine chateaus in the world, long before they were closed to the public. Can you imagine drinking ‘45 Mouton, or ‘28 Margaux right from the cellar?

We started a friendship that lasts to this day, and they helped set my itinerary, and in large part, were my mentors as I discovered the joys of Napa and Sonoma.

At our first breakfast, we discussed the wineries I should visit, and George made some calls to get me in to a few wineries not as well known, or a little harder to get into, and for three days, I lived in wine buyer’s heaven.

Stay tuned for a wine weekend of a lifetime when we meet again tomorrow, and continue tripping down the dusty wine roads.

Cheers,

WCI

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