| California Wine Country 2007 |
| My Visit to Napa, Sonoma & Livermore Valley Wineries |
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Pleasanton California. Outside of the fact I knew it
Software, I knew very little about it before this year.
you that. But thanks to my new job this year as a
software instructor for Oracle, I have become quite
familiar with the Mayberry like town. Pleasanton is
about a 45-minute drive southeast from San Francisco,
depending of course on traffic. It is a quite the little
suburbia sandwiched around a tiny town square that
gives it an illustrious charm. One other alluring
feature about Pleasanton is that it is within short
driving distance to the Napa and Sonoma Valley and a
mere fifteen minutes from the Livermore Valley Wine
Country, home of Wente, Concannon and a whole host
of other up and coming wineries.
My first trip out to Pleasanton occurred at the end of
May and carried over into the first of June. I wasted
no time in booking and making some appointments in
Napa Valley with some wineries. The trip wasn’t all
pleasure; I had some club shipments to pick up too.
Okay, who am I kidding, even that was a lot of fun! I
belong to a number of winery club memberships and
most of the wineries on this visit were to ones that I
belong to. I got to go and re-visit Chateau Montelena
and Burgess Cellars to pick up some club shipments
that were ready to go out and had a little time to taste
some wines and take a few more photos. Two of the
newer wine clubs I joined were Honig and Chappellet.
Chappellet had sent out an invitation for me to come
visit them, as if I needed an excuse to do so!
Naturally, I quickly picked up the phone and made the
appointment to do just that. I already knew where
Honig was located, having visited their neighbor,
Frog’s Leap, the year before and so I gave them a call
to schedule a visit as well. I spoke to David on the
phone (He is a member of the hospitality team) and
told him that I was a member of their wine club and the
President of a wine club back in Dallas, Texas. His
words to me and I quote, “We’ll come on up here and
we’ll get ya drunk!” I don’t think I could have been
any more excited to visit a place on earth!
Last year when I visited Napa Valley for the first
time, it was in no small part because of the opportunity
to meet Michael Chiarello from the Food Network and
Napa Style. So in honor of Michael, I thought I would
find a place that had a tie in to Michael Chiarello’s TV
show and that of course if Trefethen winery. In case
you didn’t know, Trefethen winery is the location
where Michael films his “Easy Entertaining with
Michael Chiarello” show for the Food Network. The
Trefethen’s are also close and personal friends of his,
so I thought it would be neat to see what the winery
was all about. I will tell you this much, it was probably
the most in-depth and comprehensive winery tour I’ve
ever taken as you will see later on the Trefethen page.
I made a short visit to the Plumpjack Winery one day
and I managed to pop into Robert Mondavi’s winery
to pick up a particular wine that I have been collecting
for some years now. Although I did not stay long, I
must say it is quite impressive, but very, very
crowded. In fact, now is a good time for me to give
you a few pointers about visiting Napa. One, it is
worth seeking out the wineries that are off the beaten
path. In other words, get off of Highway 29 where
there are rows and rows of wineries, albeit some
fantastic ones including Opus One, but also tons and
tons of cars and drunk tourists. The tasting rooms are
overcrowded and no’ one at the winery has any time
whatsoever to give you some one on one feedback or
insight on the winery. People moan and groan all the
time to me about how you have to pay to taste the
wines. Well, wine isn’t cheap and unlike other
beverages where you can have an infinite supply of it,
there is only so much wine made every vintage. The
wineries in my opinion that are located off of Highway
29 have to charge you something to taste their wines,
otherwise they would go bankrupt from all of the
freeloaders burning through their entire wine
inventory. And make no mistake, the crowds at these
wineries consist of about ten to twenty percent
genuine wine enthusiasts and about eighty to ninety
percent of people looking for a nice cheap place to
catch a buzz.
The second point you should strongly consider before
taking a trip to Napa is to call ahead and book an
appointment. Honestly, it really makes all the
difference in the world. I am not talking about calling
the day before or even the week before for that
matter. Put some thought into it and plan ahead.
Look for wineries that are mid sized or smaller and
way off the beaten path. When you call ahead, you
give the wineries a chance to prepare for you and they
appreciate that. Often times you are rewarded with a
much more generous experience as a result. I know
this drives all of you spontaneous improvisers nuts,
but a trip to Napa or even Sonoma really involves
some time, thought and careful planning. That
includes restaurants and where to stay too! The
difference in the stories you tell versus the
spontaneous crowd will be quite different. While they
are standing in line and waiting for a half hour just to
get a spot up at the tasting bar, you were sampling
wine from the barrel with the winemaker at a boutique
winery or having a glass or two with winery owners on
the back patio like Leslie and I did with Robert & PJ
Rex of Deerfield Ranch in Sonoma. All right, enough
of my soapbox.
One suggestion I received last year from Jim Burgess
of Burgess Cellars was to stop by Taylor’s Refresher
for lunch. They have all kinds of wonderful
sandwiches and food, but what they are really known
for are their hamburgers and shakes. Many of the
locals eat here too so you never know who you might
run into. How about a little Duckhorn Merlot with that
Cheeseburger? Taylor’s Refresher can make it
happen. The best advice I can give you though is to
get there early or you will be standing in a very long
line. Jim gave me another great piece of advice as
how to beat the line too, but I will keep that to myself!
Around the back of the restaurant are plenty of picnic
type tables set up in the grass to eat, although, I am
usually too excited to stay and eat there, opting
instead to grab my food and head off to the next
winery. I’m such a wine geek!
Around the last of July, I found myself back in
Pleasanton for work again. This time I was armed
ahead of time with the knowledge of it’s proximity to
the Livermore Valley wine region. There is actually a
really great website that lists all of the Livermore
wineries and whether they have tastings and tours and
what their hours of operation are. Wente is probably
the most famous of them all, so I wanted to check
them out, but I targeted a couple others as well. At
the top of my list was a little boutique winery that
specialized in Pinot Noirs made with fruit from all over
the state. Ironically, none of that Pinot Noir fruit
came from Livermore Valley, but they had some
heavy hitters like Gary’s Vineyard in Santa Lucia
Highlands. The name of this winery is called La
Rochelle. I tasted three of their Pinot Noir wines and
completely flipped! They will not be unnoticed for
long, trust me!
I only had Monday to visit the Livermore Valley and
my flight was late so time was really limited. Flights’
being delayed seems to be the common place these
days. I won’t mention the airline I was flying, I just
don’t think that would the American thing to do! So as
a result, I had to cut my visits down to two wineries
and I had an appointment with Wente. As you will see
from their page, I got to experience a first for me and
that is I got to witness first hand the bottling of wine
on premise in action. I filmed it too! It is a pretty cool
thing to see I must tell you!
The end of the workweek for me was that Friday, but
the fun was just beginning. Leslie flew up to meet me
in Pleasanton and after a night of fine dining and a trip
to a local comedy club, we headed out to Sonoma
Valley for the weekend. This was my first trip to the
Sonoma Valley and I must say, it is quite a bit larger
than Napa. All of my preconceived notions about
Sonoma vs. Napa turned out to be completely false!
All I’ve ever been told is that Sonoma has more of a
laid back feel and it is less crowded. When? That is
what I want to know? Even some of the smaller
wineries off the beaten path we visited were two and
three rows deep at the tasting bar. There were
several big highways going through the valley, most
notably highway 101, and as a whole it seemed much
more urban than the complete country-like feel of
Napa. It didn’t stop us from having a wonderful time
though.
For starters, I had booked us for a two-night stay at
the Birmingham Bed & Breakfast with our most
gracious and hospitable hosts, Nancy and Jerry. I
booked early enough to get the Red Room, which
came complete with the only upstairs patio/balcony.
Nancy prepares an amazing, and I do mean amazing,
breakfast that she conjures up featuring fresh food
from her own garden. Both the food and presentation
was so good, I believed it came from a fancy hotel.
Mingling with some of the other guests was a lot of fun
too and each night, we’d open a bottle of wine and sit
outside and play a game of ‘Uno’ or two. The B&B
was located right on Highway 12 and within walking
distance to a few wineries including Kenwood and
Chateau St. Jean.
Taking the Wine Spectator’s advice, we visited
Bovolo, a restaurant located at the back of Plaza
Farms ( a food specialty store) in downtown
Healdsburg for lunch. You can sit out back and eat on
their little patio, or since they prepare a variety of
picnic type of meals, you could take it to go and enjoy
at a winery that has places for you to eat. We had a
Caesar salad and a spinach and proscuitto pizza that
was marvelous.
Speaking of places to eat, our B&B hosts had
recommended to us the Glen Ellen Inn for dinner and
they made a reservation for us to eat there that
Saturday evening. Good heavens it was fantastic! I
forgot to take my camera, but we sat outside by a
garden and fountain and thoroughly enjoyed every
minute and forkful of our experience there.
On Saturday, we first visited Siduri, a boutique Pinot
Noir winery located in a warehouse. I will go into
more detail on their page. After lunch at Bovolo, we
headed to the Alexander Valley and stopped into the
tasting room at Hanna. Talk about gorgeous. It is
located on a hill and surrounded by vineyards. Worth
checking out just for the view alone and their wines
were very good as well. It was unfortunately crowded
though. The next winery we stopped at was a
complete and total circus. It was the Rodney Strong
Winery and I believe they had some summer concert
going on there and it was overrun with people
crowding around the tasting bar. Again, the wines
were very good though. We finished our tasting tour
on Saturday at a winery way off the beaten path in the
Russian River Valley known as Hartford Family
Vineyards. They are known for their Pinot Noir and
Zinfandel wines more than anything else and in fact,
came in first place in our recent Pinot Noir staff
tasting. This was a little more laid back compared
with the last two wineries, but we still had fight our
way to the tasting bar.
Sunday was to be a completely different story and one
that someone like me could only dream about. After
Nancy’s unbelievable breakfast, we headed over to
Chateau St. Jean at 10:30 in the morning for a private
VIP tasting. (another thing that must be set up in
advance) First of all, the winery is simply
breathtaking. If you are in Sonoma, at least drive up
into the winery and take a walk around the gardens.
Yeow! The place is huge and I am sure later in the
day it gets extremely crowded, but it sure is nice. On
our VIP Tasting Tour, we headed over to the actual
Chateau that the family lived in for quite some time.
The tasting took place in a private room upstairs
overlooking some gardens and vineyards. The wines
we sampled were all of their top blends and single
vineyard offerings and each one was incredible,
including the Cinq Cepage. Ever heard of this wine?
It is a former No. 1 wine on the WS Top 100 list. They
also had a spread of gourmet cheeses for Leslie and I
to taste with the various wines. And oh, by the way, it
was just Leslie and I and our host in this tasting, no’
one else. Our host, however, was truly the one
responsible for making this experience so
remarkable. His name was Felix and he was from
Germany, still complete with a little, but charming
German accent. The conversation we had with Felix
at first was all about Chateau St. Jean, but it soon
turned towards worldly topics and a heck of a lot of
laughs courtesy of my Texas Hic sounding wife. He
made our time there incredible. In fact, the tasting
was only supposed to last an hour or so and we wound
up spending three hours there!
Our last stop was to the home of Winemaker and
Winery owner, Robert Rex and his wife PJ. For me it
was extremely gratifying to sit and listen to every
word Robert said about his early days of winemaking
in the Sonoma Valley and the characters he ran into
along the way. I will go into all of the juicy details on
the Deerfield Ranch page, if you are a wine
enthusiast, you cannot miss this page!
I hope you will visit some or even all of these winery
pages and see and read their remarkable stories. Pop
a cork, pour a glass and get comfortable and cozy in
front of the computer and take a peek!
Cheers!
Shane Johnson
President
Dallas Secret Wine Society
Software, I knew very little about it before this year.
you that. But thanks to my new job this year as a
software instructor for Oracle, I have become quite
familiar with the Mayberry like town. Pleasanton is
about a 45-minute drive southeast from San Francisco,
depending of course on traffic. It is a quite the little
suburbia sandwiched around a tiny town square that
gives it an illustrious charm. One other alluring
feature about Pleasanton is that it is within short
driving distance to the Napa and Sonoma Valley and a
mere fifteen minutes from the Livermore Valley Wine
Country, home of Wente, Concannon and a whole host
of other up and coming wineries.
My first trip out to Pleasanton occurred at the end of
May and carried over into the first of June. I wasted
no time in booking and making some appointments in
Napa Valley with some wineries. The trip wasn’t all
pleasure; I had some club shipments to pick up too.
Okay, who am I kidding, even that was a lot of fun! I
belong to a number of winery club memberships and
most of the wineries on this visit were to ones that I
belong to. I got to go and re-visit Chateau Montelena
and Burgess Cellars to pick up some club shipments
that were ready to go out and had a little time to taste
some wines and take a few more photos. Two of the
newer wine clubs I joined were Honig and Chappellet.
Chappellet had sent out an invitation for me to come
visit them, as if I needed an excuse to do so!
Naturally, I quickly picked up the phone and made the
appointment to do just that. I already knew where
Honig was located, having visited their neighbor,
Frog’s Leap, the year before and so I gave them a call
to schedule a visit as well. I spoke to David on the
phone (He is a member of the hospitality team) and
told him that I was a member of their wine club and the
President of a wine club back in Dallas, Texas. His
words to me and I quote, “We’ll come on up here and
we’ll get ya drunk!” I don’t think I could have been
any more excited to visit a place on earth!
Last year when I visited Napa Valley for the first
time, it was in no small part because of the opportunity
to meet Michael Chiarello from the Food Network and
Napa Style. So in honor of Michael, I thought I would
find a place that had a tie in to Michael Chiarello’s TV
show and that of course if Trefethen winery. In case
you didn’t know, Trefethen winery is the location
where Michael films his “Easy Entertaining with
Michael Chiarello” show for the Food Network. The
Trefethen’s are also close and personal friends of his,
so I thought it would be neat to see what the winery
was all about. I will tell you this much, it was probably
the most in-depth and comprehensive winery tour I’ve
ever taken as you will see later on the Trefethen page.
I made a short visit to the Plumpjack Winery one day
and I managed to pop into Robert Mondavi’s winery
to pick up a particular wine that I have been collecting
for some years now. Although I did not stay long, I
must say it is quite impressive, but very, very
crowded. In fact, now is a good time for me to give
you a few pointers about visiting Napa. One, it is
worth seeking out the wineries that are off the beaten
path. In other words, get off of Highway 29 where
there are rows and rows of wineries, albeit some
fantastic ones including Opus One, but also tons and
tons of cars and drunk tourists. The tasting rooms are
overcrowded and no’ one at the winery has any time
whatsoever to give you some one on one feedback or
insight on the winery. People moan and groan all the
time to me about how you have to pay to taste the
wines. Well, wine isn’t cheap and unlike other
beverages where you can have an infinite supply of it,
there is only so much wine made every vintage. The
wineries in my opinion that are located off of Highway
29 have to charge you something to taste their wines,
otherwise they would go bankrupt from all of the
freeloaders burning through their entire wine
inventory. And make no mistake, the crowds at these
wineries consist of about ten to twenty percent
genuine wine enthusiasts and about eighty to ninety
percent of people looking for a nice cheap place to
catch a buzz.
The second point you should strongly consider before
taking a trip to Napa is to call ahead and book an
appointment. Honestly, it really makes all the
difference in the world. I am not talking about calling
the day before or even the week before for that
matter. Put some thought into it and plan ahead.
Look for wineries that are mid sized or smaller and
way off the beaten path. When you call ahead, you
give the wineries a chance to prepare for you and they
appreciate that. Often times you are rewarded with a
much more generous experience as a result. I know
this drives all of you spontaneous improvisers nuts,
but a trip to Napa or even Sonoma really involves
some time, thought and careful planning. That
includes restaurants and where to stay too! The
difference in the stories you tell versus the
spontaneous crowd will be quite different. While they
are standing in line and waiting for a half hour just to
get a spot up at the tasting bar, you were sampling
wine from the barrel with the winemaker at a boutique
winery or having a glass or two with winery owners on
the back patio like Leslie and I did with Robert & PJ
Rex of Deerfield Ranch in Sonoma. All right, enough
of my soapbox.
One suggestion I received last year from Jim Burgess
of Burgess Cellars was to stop by Taylor’s Refresher
for lunch. They have all kinds of wonderful
sandwiches and food, but what they are really known
for are their hamburgers and shakes. Many of the
locals eat here too so you never know who you might
run into. How about a little Duckhorn Merlot with that
Cheeseburger? Taylor’s Refresher can make it
happen. The best advice I can give you though is to
get there early or you will be standing in a very long
line. Jim gave me another great piece of advice as
how to beat the line too, but I will keep that to myself!
Around the back of the restaurant are plenty of picnic
type tables set up in the grass to eat, although, I am
usually too excited to stay and eat there, opting
instead to grab my food and head off to the next
winery. I’m such a wine geek!
Around the last of July, I found myself back in
Pleasanton for work again. This time I was armed
ahead of time with the knowledge of it’s proximity to
the Livermore Valley wine region. There is actually a
really great website that lists all of the Livermore
wineries and whether they have tastings and tours and
what their hours of operation are. Wente is probably
the most famous of them all, so I wanted to check
them out, but I targeted a couple others as well. At
the top of my list was a little boutique winery that
specialized in Pinot Noirs made with fruit from all over
the state. Ironically, none of that Pinot Noir fruit
came from Livermore Valley, but they had some
heavy hitters like Gary’s Vineyard in Santa Lucia
Highlands. The name of this winery is called La
Rochelle. I tasted three of their Pinot Noir wines and
completely flipped! They will not be unnoticed for
long, trust me!
I only had Monday to visit the Livermore Valley and
my flight was late so time was really limited. Flights’
being delayed seems to be the common place these
days. I won’t mention the airline I was flying, I just
don’t think that would the American thing to do! So as
a result, I had to cut my visits down to two wineries
and I had an appointment with Wente. As you will see
from their page, I got to experience a first for me and
that is I got to witness first hand the bottling of wine
on premise in action. I filmed it too! It is a pretty cool
thing to see I must tell you!
The end of the workweek for me was that Friday, but
the fun was just beginning. Leslie flew up to meet me
in Pleasanton and after a night of fine dining and a trip
to a local comedy club, we headed out to Sonoma
Valley for the weekend. This was my first trip to the
Sonoma Valley and I must say, it is quite a bit larger
than Napa. All of my preconceived notions about
Sonoma vs. Napa turned out to be completely false!
All I’ve ever been told is that Sonoma has more of a
laid back feel and it is less crowded. When? That is
what I want to know? Even some of the smaller
wineries off the beaten path we visited were two and
three rows deep at the tasting bar. There were
several big highways going through the valley, most
notably highway 101, and as a whole it seemed much
more urban than the complete country-like feel of
Napa. It didn’t stop us from having a wonderful time
though.
For starters, I had booked us for a two-night stay at
the Birmingham Bed & Breakfast with our most
gracious and hospitable hosts, Nancy and Jerry. I
booked early enough to get the Red Room, which
came complete with the only upstairs patio/balcony.
Nancy prepares an amazing, and I do mean amazing,
breakfast that she conjures up featuring fresh food
from her own garden. Both the food and presentation
was so good, I believed it came from a fancy hotel.
Mingling with some of the other guests was a lot of fun
too and each night, we’d open a bottle of wine and sit
outside and play a game of ‘Uno’ or two. The B&B
was located right on Highway 12 and within walking
distance to a few wineries including Kenwood and
Chateau St. Jean.
Taking the Wine Spectator’s advice, we visited
Bovolo, a restaurant located at the back of Plaza
Farms ( a food specialty store) in downtown
Healdsburg for lunch. You can sit out back and eat on
their little patio, or since they prepare a variety of
picnic type of meals, you could take it to go and enjoy
at a winery that has places for you to eat. We had a
Caesar salad and a spinach and proscuitto pizza that
was marvelous.
Speaking of places to eat, our B&B hosts had
recommended to us the Glen Ellen Inn for dinner and
they made a reservation for us to eat there that
Saturday evening. Good heavens it was fantastic! I
forgot to take my camera, but we sat outside by a
garden and fountain and thoroughly enjoyed every
minute and forkful of our experience there.
On Saturday, we first visited Siduri, a boutique Pinot
Noir winery located in a warehouse. I will go into
more detail on their page. After lunch at Bovolo, we
headed to the Alexander Valley and stopped into the
tasting room at Hanna. Talk about gorgeous. It is
located on a hill and surrounded by vineyards. Worth
checking out just for the view alone and their wines
were very good as well. It was unfortunately crowded
though. The next winery we stopped at was a
complete and total circus. It was the Rodney Strong
Winery and I believe they had some summer concert
going on there and it was overrun with people
crowding around the tasting bar. Again, the wines
were very good though. We finished our tasting tour
on Saturday at a winery way off the beaten path in the
Russian River Valley known as Hartford Family
Vineyards. They are known for their Pinot Noir and
Zinfandel wines more than anything else and in fact,
came in first place in our recent Pinot Noir staff
tasting. This was a little more laid back compared
with the last two wineries, but we still had fight our
way to the tasting bar.
Sunday was to be a completely different story and one
that someone like me could only dream about. After
Nancy’s unbelievable breakfast, we headed over to
Chateau St. Jean at 10:30 in the morning for a private
VIP tasting. (another thing that must be set up in
advance) First of all, the winery is simply
breathtaking. If you are in Sonoma, at least drive up
into the winery and take a walk around the gardens.
Yeow! The place is huge and I am sure later in the
day it gets extremely crowded, but it sure is nice. On
our VIP Tasting Tour, we headed over to the actual
Chateau that the family lived in for quite some time.
The tasting took place in a private room upstairs
overlooking some gardens and vineyards. The wines
we sampled were all of their top blends and single
vineyard offerings and each one was incredible,
including the Cinq Cepage. Ever heard of this wine?
It is a former No. 1 wine on the WS Top 100 list. They
also had a spread of gourmet cheeses for Leslie and I
to taste with the various wines. And oh, by the way, it
was just Leslie and I and our host in this tasting, no’
one else. Our host, however, was truly the one
responsible for making this experience so
remarkable. His name was Felix and he was from
Germany, still complete with a little, but charming
German accent. The conversation we had with Felix
at first was all about Chateau St. Jean, but it soon
turned towards worldly topics and a heck of a lot of
laughs courtesy of my Texas Hic sounding wife. He
made our time there incredible. In fact, the tasting
was only supposed to last an hour or so and we wound
up spending three hours there!
Our last stop was to the home of Winemaker and
Winery owner, Robert Rex and his wife PJ. For me it
was extremely gratifying to sit and listen to every
word Robert said about his early days of winemaking
in the Sonoma Valley and the characters he ran into
along the way. I will go into all of the juicy details on
the Deerfield Ranch page, if you are a wine
enthusiast, you cannot miss this page!
I hope you will visit some or even all of these winery
pages and see and read their remarkable stories. Pop
a cork, pour a glass and get comfortable and cozy in
front of the computer and take a peek!
Cheers!
Shane Johnson
President
Dallas Secret Wine Society
