Wine Tasting in St. Helena
While staying at Harbin Hot Springs this past weekend (see previous blog) we drove back over the hill on Saturday afternoon to visit three wineries in the Napa Valley town of St. Helena. The toughest question in our minds was, "Which three?" There are so many to choose from!
One of my methods for choosing wineries to visit is to pick brands I've tried or seen featured in stores and use the winery visit as a chance to learn a lot more about them and their range of wines. Applying that filter still yielded dozens of wineries I'd like to visit. I narrowed it down further to St. Helena. That was a bit farther from the resort than Calistoga (but we visited wineries there last time) and nearer than Rutherford (which also has plenty of interesting wineries, but they're further away). But even in St. Helena there were at least 7 wineries I was interested in. We picked three at semi-random.
Our first stop was at Freemark Abbey. I'd actually been to that winery once before, in 1998! What a difference 17 years makes. The Napa Valley winery scene has changed dramatically over that time. Oh, wineries still produce great wines, but the amount of thought and energy put into dressing up the tasting experience has increased dramatically. In 1998 the tasting at Freemark Abbey was on the ground floor of one of their production buildings. In 2015 it's in a fancy new "executive event center" type complex they've built. In 1998 the tasting was $5 for 4 pours. In 2015 our tasting coordinator presented us with a menu of tasting choices, of which the cheapest option was $20 for 4 pours. Prices went up from there.
We stared at each other and the prices for a long moment. We were all asking ourselves, "Is this worth it?" We decided to give it a go. I figured as long as we were going to pay that kind of money we might as well enjoy it, so we let the tasting room employee -- a hipster wearing a lumberjack beard -- escort us to a table in the lavishly decorated "library" area of the dining room. We each ordered a different tasting from our hipster tasting coordinator wearing a lumberjack beard. Abditus went for the "classic" sampler. I.e., the one that's 4x the price it used to be. I tried the Cabernet Sauvignon sampler, 4 different cabs for $30. L. ordered the wine and chocolate pairing: 4 kinds of wine paired with 4 kinds of chocolate truffles. Between the 3 orders we had 10 different wines and shared them around. Our lumberjack also brought us a bonus, mystery wine in black glasses and challenged us to identify it without any clues other than its aroma and taste.
At the end of the tasting came the question, "Which wines would you like to take home?" Again we stared at each other and the prices for a long moment. Except this time it was more like 10 minutes. The wines were mostly pretty good. I think two were kind of "Ehh." But the prices were steep. The cheapest was $27, and the priciest we sampled was $100/bottle. Ultimately we all decided none of the wines quite justified their prices so we paid for our tastings and left to visit another winery.
Continued in next blog.
One of my methods for choosing wineries to visit is to pick brands I've tried or seen featured in stores and use the winery visit as a chance to learn a lot more about them and their range of wines. Applying that filter still yielded dozens of wineries I'd like to visit. I narrowed it down further to St. Helena. That was a bit farther from the resort than Calistoga (but we visited wineries there last time) and nearer than Rutherford (which also has plenty of interesting wineries, but they're further away). But even in St. Helena there were at least 7 wineries I was interested in. We picked three at semi-random.
Our first stop was at Freemark Abbey. I'd actually been to that winery once before, in 1998! What a difference 17 years makes. The Napa Valley winery scene has changed dramatically over that time. Oh, wineries still produce great wines, but the amount of thought and energy put into dressing up the tasting experience has increased dramatically. In 1998 the tasting at Freemark Abbey was on the ground floor of one of their production buildings. In 2015 it's in a fancy new "executive event center" type complex they've built. In 1998 the tasting was $5 for 4 pours. In 2015 our tasting coordinator presented us with a menu of tasting choices, of which the cheapest option was $20 for 4 pours. Prices went up from there.
We stared at each other and the prices for a long moment. We were all asking ourselves, "Is this worth it?" We decided to give it a go. I figured as long as we were going to pay that kind of money we might as well enjoy it, so we let the tasting room employee -- a hipster wearing a lumberjack beard -- escort us to a table in the lavishly decorated "library" area of the dining room. We each ordered a different tasting from our hipster tasting coordinator wearing a lumberjack beard. Abditus went for the "classic" sampler. I.e., the one that's 4x the price it used to be. I tried the Cabernet Sauvignon sampler, 4 different cabs for $30. L. ordered the wine and chocolate pairing: 4 kinds of wine paired with 4 kinds of chocolate truffles. Between the 3 orders we had 10 different wines and shared them around. Our lumberjack also brought us a bonus, mystery wine in black glasses and challenged us to identify it without any clues other than its aroma and taste.
At the end of the tasting came the question, "Which wines would you like to take home?" Again we stared at each other and the prices for a long moment. Except this time it was more like 10 minutes. The wines were mostly pretty good. I think two were kind of "Ehh." But the prices were steep. The cheapest was $27, and the priciest we sampled was $100/bottle. Ultimately we all decided none of the wines quite justified their prices so we paid for our tastings and left to visit another winery.
Continued in next blog.