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Vinography: A Wine Blog
Sat Jun 27 20:53:36 EDT 2009
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Vinography Images: Lone Trees -

Lone Trees
Every week, photographer Andy Katz sends me a new image to post here for your viewing pleasure. I never know what I'm going to get, but I do know that it's going to be good. This week, when I opened his e-mail, something different happened. Everything got quiet, and I smelled freshly cut grass, bee pollen, and felt a warm breeze....

Amazingly, we are not lost, but I wouldn't care if we were. Just as I give up and decide we have no idea where we are, another road sign appears that tells us indeed, we are on our way to Montepulciano. It hardly matters, though, because it is one of the most beautiful days I've ever experienced in my life. I have a gorgeous woman sitting next to me in this little rattle-trap of a rental car, and moments ago, as we snapped our picture standing in a field of orange poppies that stretched out across a Tuscan field behind us, I realized that this was the woman I needed to spend the rest of my life with.

"Yes!" Ruth says, triumphantly, "we're going to get there!" And so we are, winding our way from the walled city of Siena to the picture perfect hill town of Montepulciano where we will wander the cobblestone streets, drunk first with love, and then later with Vino Nobile de Montepulciano.

Suddenly we round a bend and on our right, the hills roll up and away towards the horizon like the frozen surface of a turbulent green sea, undulating and chaotic except for a single oasis of calm. There, amidst the pitching waves of new wheat is a little gem -- a tiny island populated by perfect cypress trees that we recognize instantly as the quintessence of Tuscany.

Ruth and I both immediately have the same longing: to photograph. In the emotion of the moment we naively believe that by fixing this image onto film we will preserve this feeling that runs through both of our veins, and capture this beauty that we have been swimming in for more than a week together.

"Oh my God," she says. "We gotta stop and take a picture of those trees!"

I look at my watch, torn.

"We've gotta be close to Montepulciano by now," I say, anxious about getting there in time to do some serious wine tasting.

"We can get a photo on the way back...." I hesitate for a moment as the urge to stop nearly becomes overwhelming.

"It won't take more than a minute," she says, almost pleading.

But my brain wins over my heart, and the hesitation never completes, and even at the limping pace that our little car can keep, the trees are passing behind us now, and the landscape continues to unroll in front of us, and soon the perfect day fills in the gap and smooths over the little seam that is left in our memory for lack of an image.

And the day was perfect. And the wine was good. And we were in love.

And by the time our little tin can of an automobile rounded that bend in the road again, it was dark. We were sated with yet one more fantastic meal, but not enough to avoid exchanging a glance as that little stand of trees swished by in our mind's eye, and in the darkness outside.

We all carry with us many images, but some seem quite indelible, fused like vertebrae to create the spine of our experience -- the bright line we can trace back through our lives without fail.

Ruth and I will always remember that moment, wistfully, and definitely with a bit of a chuckle. She says "that proves you should always listen to your wife, even if she isn't your wife yet."

And I say that I will never really need that photograph, which is the honest truth. It could never hold what I hold in my mind's eye and in my heart.

But just the same, I know that she is absolutely, positively, right.

And now, thanks to my friend Andy, we've got a photograph of those very same trees.

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning an archive quality, limited edition print of this image please contact photographer Andy Katz through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Vinography regularly features images by photographer Andy Katz for readers' personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect the copyright on these images.

There are wine tastings, and then there are wine tastings. And then, there are experiences that completely transcend a bunch of tables with vintners standing behind them pouring their wines. I've been to a few "destination" wine experiences, some of which have been great, but none of which have been better than the International Pinot Noir Conference that takes place every year in McMinnville, Oregon.

Scheduled over a long July weekend every year, IPNC is one of the most relaxed and intimate wine tasting experiences I've had the pleasure of attending, not to mention the fact that it also involves some extremely high quality wines in a gorgeous setting.

One of the top draws of IPNC, apart from the idyllic nature of the program, is the heavy representation of Burgundy at the conference. Too many events in the San Francisco Bay Area that are focused on Pinot Noir might as well be subtitled "With a California Focus." But despite taking place in the heart of Oregon's Willamette Valley wine country, IPNC draws some top Burgundy producers, and occasionally, top Champagne producers as well.

This will be my second year attending IPNC, and I'm very much looking forward to it. If you're interested, you can check out my coverage of the 2007 event:

Submerged in Pinot Noir: IPNC 2007
Wine Jeopardy at IPNC
Dinner Wines Day One
The Secret Life of Pinot Noir
Grower Champagnes
Al Fresco Tasting Notes from IPNC
Tidbits and Gossip from IPNC

This year's program includes many of the highlights that made the 2007 program so impressive, including the rosé tasting, the al fresco tastings on the lawn, lunches in wine country, the grand dinner (one of the most impressive large scale catering jobs I've ever seen), the famous salmon bake, and more. Jancis Robinson will be the master of ceremonies this year, and will be joined as a speaker by David Schildknecht from The Wine Advocate, along with top winemakers.

If you're looking for a compact vacation that includes some truly exceptional wine tasting, a beautiful setting, a mellow atmosphere, and fantastic camaraderie, you can't go wrong with IPNC.

I'm not sure if it still applies, but for a while they were offering to give you a six pack of wines for $0.01 for each full weekend ticket you purchased. Give them a call and see if it still applies.

International Pinot Noir Conference
July 24-26, 2009
Linfield College
900 SE Baker St.
McMinnville, OR 97128

Tickets for the full weekend is $975, and always sell out. This year may be an exception, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't grab your ticket as soon as possible. On its face, the price is pretty inexpensive, and all the more so knowing the proceeds support a charity focused on offering health care to vineyard workers. You can register at www.ipnc.org.

The weather is generally perfect for this event, warm or even hot and sunny during the day, and cooler at night. Casual dress, sunscreen, and a sun hat and you're set.

See you there?

By W. Blake Gray

One of the main characteristics of Japanese is its vagueness. Language is culture, and Japanese helps people get along in crowded, resource-poor cities by preventing hard feelings in conversation.

Here's a good example of how this works: In a business meeting, everyone sits around the table vaguely feeling out each others' position until eventually everyone realizes what they're expected to say. Thus the first and only vote is almost always unanimous.

Here's a more frustrating example: I think this sake is named "140" (hyakuyonju) because it's the 140th attempt at crossing Aomori's native Hanafubuki rice with the more famous Yamada Nishiki, which doesn't usually grow so far north.

However, I can't confirm that; the Japanese describing it is just too vague. All I know is that in the crossing experiments, somehow this rice got the number "140." Maybe that's the number of wins Aomori native Daisuke Matsuzaka expects to pile up in Boston. Maybe it's just a mellifluous number.

As a journalist, I hate that vagueness -- it makes reporting anything from Japan a challenge, as you get notebooks full of quotes that, translated, essentially mean, "Maybe so." I can't help but wonder, as I struggled to get information on this product, how much Japanese exports would benefit from a trade export organization with English skills.

Oh wait -- there is one. I went to JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization, where I learned the following about Aomori rice:

"The value that is delicious by the security that only the person who ate understands.

Please enjoy it in your mouth."

OK, at least we know where to put it. Let me tell you what I do know.

Aomori prefecture is the snowiest in Japan -- even more so than Hokkaido. Aomori is at the very tip of Honshu, and even in summer it's foggy and windy.

The prefecture is 66% covered by forest, and the rest mostly by farmland, such that a visiting English teacher posted somewhere on the web, "There's nothing but rice paddies here."

Aomori is fairly poor and has been losing population since it peaked in 1983, because young people don't want to pursue the number one industry -- agriculture. When they get to Tokyo, they have to relearn how to speak, because Aomori is famous in Japan for its unfashionable rural dialect. They also have to learn to have fun, because all there is to do in Aomori at night is carve artwork in the rice paddies -- which they've gotten quite good at.

Aomori grows 75% of the garlic in Japan and 52% of the apples. It also grows more yam and burdock root than any other prefecture. But we didn't come here to talk about garlic or burdock root (though we can talk about Calvados if you like).

Nowadays we believe that the best wines come from marginal growing areas -- areas that are too cold to guarantee a crop every year. Could it be true for sake as well? There are so many factors in creating great sake that it's hard to tease out the influence of cool climate.

But Aomori prefecture, with only 1.5 million people, has 45 sake producers. Nishida, maker of this sake, likes the area so much that it uses the Denshu brand just for junmais, and has a second brewery in Aomori where it makes its more famous brand Kikuizumi. And it's not the only famous name from Aomori, because Momokawa, which has an outpost in Oregon, has its home base there.

Nishida's Denshu Junmai is one of the most popular junmai sakes in Japan, regularly making local lists of top 10 junmais. The 140 is a more recent product, created in 2003.

Nishida claims over and over that all their Denshu sakes are "handmade." Here we get back to vagueness -- what does that mean? The rice can't possibly be polished by hand (down to 40%, hence daiginjo) in this day and age. But what the heck, it's good sake. When it comes my turn, I might prepare to possibly express an opinion in the direction of approval.

In any case, remember to follow the official instructions, and please enjoy it in your mouth.

Tasting Notes:
Aromas of fresh cream, peach, white chocolate and orange pith. There's plenty of fresh fruit (peach and apricot) up front. You taste a jolt of alcohol (it's a hefty 17.0%) in your first sip, but then it turns quite smooth, with a long creamy finish. It's not the most complex daiginjo ever, but it's rich and smooth and crowd-pleasing.

Food Pairing:
In Aomori they would drink this with seafood stew, but I think it's fine with miso-glazed cod or other dishes where the creaminess would match the food's texture.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $45 for 720ml

This sake is difficult to find online. Look for it at your nearest specialty sake retailer.

W. Blake Gray is a former Japan resident whose first wine book in Japanese will be published in August. Please enjoy other writing from him at wblakegray.blogspot.com.

I just returned from a weekend as a speaker at the 27th annual Aspen Food & Wine Classic, the grandaddy of all food and wine festivals. This was my second opportunity to attend the festival as a speaker, and, like the first year, a doubly special honor, as Aspen also happens to be my home town.

DAY 0
I got the opportunity to kick off the weekend's festivities as the guest speaker at a luncheon for the Aspen Chamber Resort Association. My job was to entertain, to guide the attendees through the wines selected for the lunch, and to thank the ACRA for everything that they do to support the Classic. The ACRA takes responsibility for all the invisible logistics of the festival, including the setup of all the various venues for seminars, the signage around town, the coordination of all the volunteers, among many other things.

The speech was my opportunity to admit my childhood crimes of lying about my age to some of these folks so I could begin earning money to support my burgeoning fireworks habit as an adolescent, and to thank them for not running a background check on me.

My favorite of the wines selected for the luncheon (not by me, but by the sponsors, Wines of Spain) was the 2008 Martin Codax Albariño, Rias Baixas, Spain:

Pale greenish-gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of unripe pears and wet stony aromas. In the mouth it is bright and zingy with lemon zest and mineral flavors that incorporate a hint of wheat in the crisp finish. Score: around 9. Cost: $14. Where to buy?

That Thursday evening, the parties began, of which the highlight was certainly the Wines of Spain party, at "La Casa de Jose Andrés" a house where celebrity chef Jose Andrés and a host of assistants threw a lavish BBQ, featuring whole spring lambs roasted on a spit by the river.

Here's the (admittedly crappy) image I took of the idyllic scene on my iPhone:

Along with my chorizo sandwiches, lamb crostinis, and roasted lamb lettuce wraps, I drank some very nice Priorat from Viñedos Ithaca, among other things, and discovered a new cheese (Goat aged 5 months) called Abrigo from Valencia.

That evening the most exciting party for me is the Magnum Party, where for most people, the ticket in the door is a magnum of nice wine.

I brought the 2001 Pride Mountain Vineyards Merlot which disappeared quite quickly once it was opened. Good stuff:

Medium ruby in color, this wine has a soft, dark nose of plum, cedar and forest floor aromas. In the mouth it is all plum, with nice balance, barely perceptible velvety tannins and hints of tobacco and black cherry on the moderate finish. More than anything, a pleasure to drink. Score: around 9. Cost: $120 for 1.5L. Where to buy?

Other highlights of that evening:

2005 Winter Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa. Score: between 9 and 9.5
1992 Diamond Creek "Volcanic Hill" Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa. Score: around 9.5.
1984 Freemark Abbey "Sycamore Vineyard" Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa. Score: between 9 and 9.5
2004 Hundred Acre "Ancient Way Vineyard - Summers Blocks" Syrah, Napa. Score between 9 and 9.5

The Diamond Creek was definitely the best bottle I have ever tasted from that producer, whose wines I often don't care for nearly as much as most other critics. The Freemark Abbey was of course, a special treat, as it was in pristine condition and simply delicious.

DAY 1
On the first official day of the event, I gave my Cabernet: New from Napa seminar, sharing six wines and their stories with a nearly sold-out crowd of 200 attendees. The wines I poured and discussed with them were (click for my reviews):

2004 Erba Mountainside Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
2005 Lieff "Auberge Road Vineyard" Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford
2006 Fontanella Family Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
2006 Hourglass "Blueline" Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
2006 Jack Larkin Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
2006 Hall Exzellenz "Sacrashe Vineyard" Red Wine, Rutherford

The crowd favorites, by a show of hands, were the Hourglass and the HALL wines, but each of the others had their factions of strong proponents as well.

I also had time to attend one other event besides my own, which was the annual Sommelier Challenge, where top sommeliers compete to "sell" wines to the crowd, who then vote on who did the best job.

I was happy to see the young Jordan Salcito of Gilt Restaurant take the trophy at this year's event. For more details, see emcee Lettie Teague's blog post about it.

Later in the day I cruised through the main Grand Tasting tent, where I got a chance to try, among other things, some Colorado wines, which was a new and exciting experience for me. While the reds seemed to suffer from lack of ripeness, I enjoyed the 2008 Sutcliffe Vineyards Viognier:

Pale green-gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of peaches, cold cream, and ripe pear aromas. In the mouth it is pleasantly balanced and juicy, with good acid, a a nice texture that wraps around flavors of peach, wet stones, and a hint of lemon curd, all of which finish crisply. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $21 Where to buy?

The first day ended with a party at the top of Aspen Mountain in the Sundeck restaurant, where we arrived to the sun setting on the peaks, a red fox capering about on the grass below the restaurant, killer cocktails, and some nice Italian food.

DAY 2
In addition to giving my Napa seminar again, I gave the first of my Sonoma Superstars seminars, where I shared the following stories and wines (click for my reviews):

2006 Flowers Winery "Camp Meeting Ridge" Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
2006 Peay Vineyards "Scallop Shelf" Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
2007 Rivers-Marie "Occidental Ridge" Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
2006 Williams Selyem "Flax Vineyard" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley
2007 Merry Edwards "Meredith Estate" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley
2007 J. Rochioli "River Block" Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley (review forthcoming).

Favorites for the crowd were the Flowers, Williams Selyem, and J. Rochioli wines.

I also got the chance to attend two special wine tastings, which will merit their own postings later: a retrospective of wines from BOND estate, and a survey of Giacomo Conterno's recent wines from the Piemonte.

At the end of the second day, the main event of the evening is the Best New Chefs dinner, where all 10 of the 2009 Food & Wine Best New Chefs make a signature dish for a crowd of well dressed and appreciative revelers. My favorite of the evening was the Uni Ice Cream over Konbu Gelee, by Paul Liebrandt of Corton Restaurant in New York, though I did eat two of the pork belly sandwiches offered by Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook, of Animal Restaurant in Los Angeles. And of course, with great pride I consumed several meatballs from my hometown talent Nate Appleman of A16 Restaurant in San Francisco.

As a sign of my age, my hipness quotient, or maybe just the effort of speaking in front of about 200 people for a couple of hours, I found myself unable to muster the energy to make it to any of the parties that followed that evening, much to my regret.

DAY 3
The third and final day of the Classic is always a bit mellow, and it began with me sharing my selected Pinots with a dedicated group of about 70 wine lovers who got up and mustered the energy to taste those fantastic wines with me in the morning.

I then had a brief TV appearance, as I was interviewed by CEO of American Express Publishing, Ed Kelly, and Food Network TV personality Sissy Biggers for Plum TV:

I finished the day with some rounds in the Grand Tasting tent, which included the discovery of one of the better Proseccos I have ever tasted (though, if you asked someone from the Prosecco region of the Veneto, they'd be miffed that this wine is referred to as Prosecco, since they're trying to restrict use of that name to wines made in their region, despite the word being the proper name for the grape variety):

NV Fantinel Prosecco, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
Near colorless in the glass with fine bubbles, this wine has a mineral, melon-like nose with a bright, almost tangy whiff of freshly baked bread crust aromas. In the mouth it is gorgeously soft with pear and apple fruit, excellent zingy acidity, and a crisp dryness that all combine to lift the spirits. This wine is a lovely sunny day in the bottle if I've ever tasted one, and one of the best examples of the use of the Prosecco grape I've ever tasted, and more remarkable for being outside the traditional growing region. Fantastic. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $14. Where to buy?

And if that isn't a good note to end my account of this year's festivities, I don't know what is. You certainly don't want to hear the 9 hour saga of cancelled flights, sprints down the concourse, and missing baggage that capped my weekend.

I hope to see you in Aspen next year!

A New Leaf
So much attention is paid to the fruit of the vine. Everything in wine, at least from the standpoint of the drinker, is about the grapes. Grape vines are particularly beautiful, though, especially as they are just unfurling their downy little leaves as Andy has so nicely captured here. And more than beautiful, leaves play a crucial role in displaying the health of the vine, shading the fruit, and converting sunlight into the sugars from which we derive so much pleasure. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning an archive quality, limited edition print of this image please contact photographer Andy Katz through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Vinography regularly features images by photographer Andy Katz for readers' personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect the copyright on these images.

There is no single recipe for greatness when it comes to Napa wine, but starting with a great plot of land can take you a long way. The only problem is, a lot of people don't necessarily know a great plot of land when they see one. Sometimes these plots of land can be hidden in plain sight until the right person comes along to notice.

When Jeff Smith's father moved the family to St. Helena in 1964, he wasn't thinking about wine, he was thinking about real estate development. He was also thinking about the tiny trickle of tourists that were making their way up from San Francisco to visit Napa and then turning right around at the end of the day and driving back home since there weren't really any nice places to stay. Without any real idea of whether it would work, he turned a beautiful old home into the Wine Country Inn, and very quickly learned the meaning of "build it and they will come." The Inn ran at around 95% occupancy the first year it opened.

When the neighboring parcel of land came on the market, Jeff's father snapped it up with the idea of building a home on it, and because he liked Zinfandel, he planted a bit of it on the hillside behind the building site in 1977. His way of thinking about the 4-acre vineyard was "landscaping that could pay for itself." He gave most of the grapes to friends in exchange for bottles of wine made from them in return, and sold the rest.

Jeff's father passed away in 1990 and within a year, the vineyard succumbed to phylloxera, and had to be pulled out. Jeff's mother was making ready to sell the property just as Jeff was getting interested in the wine business, but his entreaties to keep the property and replant to see if they could start a small winery weren't convincing. As a last ditch effort, Jeff talked a buddy who was in school at U.C. Davis to get their top viticulture professor to come down and take a look. He did, and in the process of telling Jeff, his friend, and his mother that this was quite possibly one of the best Cabernet vineyard sites he had ever seen, he also pointed out that it sat at the narrowest point of the hourglass-shaped Napa Valley.

The vineyard, needless to say, was not sold. It was replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon, and enlisting the help of a family friend, winemaker Bob Foley (also of Pride, Switchback Ridge, among others), Jeff launched Hourglass Wine to nearly instant acclaim.

From that 4-acre vineyard, Hourglass produces about 600 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon that are snapped up the moment they are released to the mailing list, and thousands of people wait patiently for their chance to get on that list.

After a few years, Jeff and his wife Carolyn started thinking about buying another piece of land, but faced the difficulty of needing a vineyard that could both compete at the level of quality they already had, and that would be distinctive enough to merit being bottled on its own, as they had no intention of diluting Hourglass.

Over the years, they nearly bought several properties, but backed off each one when they got the feeling it wasn't quite right. They looked pretty hard for almost three years, and gave up. Growing up in the valley, Jeff knew that the kinds of vineyards he wanted were not common, and all the examples he knew about were unlikely to be sold anytime soon, or for a price anywhere near what he could afford to pay.

But then one day, on his way to the dump in early December, he saw a For Sale sign on a piece of property he had driven by thousands of times without a second thought, and something clicked. Across the street from the famed Three Palms Vineyard, this piece of property sits at the neck of Dutch Henry Canyon, and defines the transition zone between valley floor and the hillsides above. Covered in alluvial gravel and cobble, the property is essentially an overlap of two alluvial fans created by the wanderings of the two blue line streams (year-round streams that are marked with blue ink on topographic maps) that drain the hillsides above.

With the help of some investment from friends and family, the Blueline Estate was born, giving Hourglass its own winery facility for the first time, and offering a distinctive new set of vineyard designated wines, of which this is the very first release.

The Blueline Estate Cabernet is made by Bob Foley in exactly the same way that Hourglass has always been made. Incredibly rigorous fruit selection in the vineyard, and then again in the winery, temperature controlled maceration and fermentation, and then a lot of time in the barrel. The wines are aged for 22 months in French oak, of which only about 30% is new -- an incredibly low amount among this wine's peers in Napa.

The Blueline vineyard is being replanted in stages, which means that for now only about 10 of its 20 acres are in production. For now that means this wine is being produced in quantities of about 450 cases, and will be joined in this vintage by about 150 cases of Cab Franc, and 350 cases of Merlot. When producing fully, the winery will be producing about twice that much wine.

Tasting an inaugural vintage of a wine represents the opportunity to taste the aspirations of the people behind the bottle. Jeff and Carolyn Smith were looking for a vineyard that could produce wines that would rival their already stupendous track record. While I'm not prepared to say definitively after tasting the first vintage that Blueline is as good as Hourglass has been in the past, I can say without qualification that it is definitely in the ballpark.

There are some Cabernets that are worth paying more than $100 for, and there are a lot that are not. There are still fewer that I personally would ever pay more than $100 for. This wine, like every wine I have tasted with the Hourglass label, is absolutely in that final category.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a simply gorgeous nose of tobacco, sweet cherry, and the barest hints of toasted oak aromas. In the mouth it is velvety soft and slippery on the tongue, with full rich flavors of juicy cherry, candied violets, and cola. Great acidity seamlessly marries with light, smooth tannins as the wine finishes with a zingy, peppy quality that makes me smile. Rich, profound, and quite delicious, this wine is definitely young and will likely benefit from 3 to 5 years of age.

Food Pairing:
I wish I had been drinking a bottle of this tonight with my short-rib pot-au-feu with horseradish cream, instead of the unremarkable Cotes-du-Rhone I had instead.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $125

This wine is due to be released to the Hourglass mailing list in September. Since the new property will effectively triple or even quadruple Hourglass' currently tiny production, a lot more people will be able to get their hands on a bottle than ever before. That, combined with the current recession, means that it would be a very good time to get on the Hourglass mailing list.

It's hard to believe there was once a time that San Francisco had no major public wine tasting focused on Pinot Noir. I've only been blogging about wine for the last five and a half years, but when I started, no such festival existed. We had a Zinfandel Festival, a tasting for small family winemakers, a tasting for Rhone varietals, a Cabernet tasting, and more, but not until 2005 did San Francisco get a festival dedicated to what has been called the "heartbreak grape."

Now in it's fifth year, Pinot Days has firmly established itself as one of the largest and most exciting Pinot Noir events in America. If you enjoy Pinot Noir or are still trying to figure that out, this is an event that should not be missed.

Like many such events, Pinot Days occurs over the course of a long weekend, beginning Wednesday, June 24th with a small dinner with winemaker Ed Kurtzman and his wines as well as an event highlighting some of the newer producers of Pinot Noir in California. The festival kicks off for real on the 25th with a multi-winemaker dinner at Pres a Vi restaurant in San Francisco. The festivities continue on Friday and Saturday with educational seminars and a bus tour of the Russian River Valley, and the weekend finishes up with the main event: the grand tasting of 200 different producers from around the globe pouring more than 300 different wines. The tasting, as in past years, is heavily focused on California producers, but increasingly draws in participants from Oregon, Washington, New Zealand, and Burgundy.

For details on the various activities as well as a list of the producers who will be pouring their wines for the grand tasting, check out the event web site.

Pinot Days Grand Tasting
Sunday June 28th
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Festival Pavilion - Fort Mason Center
Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94123 (map)

Tickets for the grand tasting are $50 and should be purchased in advance online, especially if you don't want to stand in a long line at the event. Tickets for winemaker dinners and other activities range from $80 to $150. Details are available on the event web site.

Parking at Fort Mason is easier now that it is a paid lot, but for large events like this, you'd be better off parking several blocks away and walking. Or better yet, taking public transport.

Like all such large public tastings, you will enjoy yourself more and learn a lot more by following my simple guidelines: get a good night's sleep, wear dark clothes, come with a full stomach, drink lots of water, snack a little, and SPIT YOUR WINE!

There are people who start wineries and work for a long time to get to the point that their names become synonymous with good wine, regardless of whether their names are on the bottle or not. And then there are those who you wonder at how they managed to avoid having their name on a wine bottle for as long as they did.

Robert Lieff has a long history with wine, and with Napa Valley in particular. How he has managed to only just now end up with his name on a bottle, is in part a testament to his success in his chosen career, but also to the persuasive powers of his wife Gretchen, who finally convinced him a couple of years ago to consummate a lifelong flirtation, and have a wine made in his name.

Even though Lieff Wines is a new project for Robert, it is far from the first vineyard or winery that he has owned.

As a bright-eyed young lawyer in 1966, Lieff managed to get himself a job working for Melvin Belli, who, at the time, was one of the most prominent lawyers in Northern California. Together, they began work on a legal case that in its resolution, would literally define some of the most famous vineyards in America.

The project was litigation of a trust, where the main asset was 4000 acres in the heart of Napa Valley held by the Stelling family. As the case wound down, chunks of this land were spun out and sold off to become what are now household names in Napa, at least to anyone who knows wine. To Kalon, Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, Bond, and even the iconic Robert Mondavi Winery, all were purchased out of this chunk of land that Lieff and Belli spent almost a decade wrangling about in court.

In the process of all this litigation, Lieff became friends with Doug Stelling, and when Doug ended up getting 12 acres alongside Highway 29 in Napa, Lieff became his partner and together they founded a winery that would be called Far Niente. This particular plot of land wasn't anything special at the time, and included an old farm house that couldn't even charitably be called decrepit. It was completely overgrown with ivy, and had been for so long, that when Lieff and Stelling dragged the ivy off by tying it to their pickup trucks, the local planning and zoning commission sent them a letter telling them they were going to be fined for putting up a building without a permit.

That old farmhouse is now one of the most picturesque of Napa's historic landmarks and Far Niente and its sister winery, Nickel & Nickel, are some of the valley's most recognized brands.

Lieff sold his interest in Far Niente to his partners in 1984, but by that time, he had been bitten by the vineyard bug. From the early 1970's onward, Robert Lieff lived a strange double life. During the week he was building one of the country's most successful plaintiff law firms, and on the weekends he was planting vines and coaxing a 1940's tractor through his vineyards.

Lieff is now well known for his part in building the firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, but his closet affection for wandering around in vineyards led to him partially owning several more wineries over the years, and perhaps more importantly, owning and personally farming a small vineyard in Kenwood. He took viticulture classes at U.C. Davis Extension, and tried to learn as much as he could about how to run a vineyard. In the process, Lieff got to know a lot of people in the wine business, including, most notably, the legendary Andre Tchelistcheff, with whom he traveled through Bordeaux, and alongside whom he was inducted into a fraternal order known as the Commandres de Beautemps Medoc et Graves.

Lieff lived in Napa on and off starting in about 1980, and in 1997 he purchased a 22 acre property on the eastern hills of Napa's Rutherford appellation where he had architect Scott Johnson build him an award winning house. This property was the first arable land Lieff had owned in Napa in some time, but he wasted no time getting vines in the ground. Not with any intention of making wine, mind you, simply with the idea that it would be nice to have some vines around to hang out with and to be able to sell some grapes to neighbors and friends.

And that is exactly what he did with his little three acre vineyard, until his wife planted the seed that grew into Lieff Wines.

Now, with the help of his wife Gretchen, who does all the sales, marketing, and general management, and the help of vineyard manager Jim Barbour and winemaker Cary Gott, Lieff produces around 300 cases of Cabernet from his little hillside vineyard.

With such a small vineyard and production, the crop can be precision tuned by Barbour, and Gott can baby the wine from vine to bottle, which is exactly what happens.

The vineyard is still maturing, and the Lieff's are still settling into their roles as winery owners, but this wine represents the early beginnings of what will undoubtedly become a sought-after label in Napa.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cherry cola and cassis. In the mouth it is juicy and lively, with great acidity that gives it an overall impression of enthusiasm. Medium bodied with smooth cherry fruit and hints of tobacco and leather, the wine has soft, suede-like tannins emerge in the finish, though the memory preserved is one of fruit more than anything else.

Food Pairing:
Given the opportunity, I would love to drink this wine with a chipotle rubbed flat iron steak.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $50

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet

Review by Alfonso Cevola.

Twenty-five years ago, I got a call from a client of mine, originally from Bordeaux, who had a wine bar in Dallas, Texas. "My father is visiting from France and would like to go to Denison, Texas, and see where Mr. Munson lived and worked. Would you like to go with us?"

My friend's father was Raymond Chandou, who studied and worked under Emile Peynaud, and who ran one of the largest and most successful wine cooperatives in France. "You bet," I said. I was definitely in on this trip.

A few years before, while making wine in North Texas purely as an amateur, I had gone to Denison to pick grapes and to find out about some of the hidden Thomas Munson vineyards that were scattered over North Texas. One of them, an ancient field of Carman grapes, became my favorite vineyard for making wine in the area.

More than 100 years after some of those vineyards were first planted, the work that Munson did still influences grape growers and winemakers, as far away as France. The reasons for this are recounted in compelling detail in the recently published Grape Man of Texas, Thomas Volney Munson and the Origins of American Viticulture, by Sherrie S. McLeRoy and Roy E. Renfro.

Munson may still have influence abroad, but he is truly revered in Texas, and Renfro's love for his subject is clear. Renfro's life as a teacher and viticulturist has been devoted to elaborating and working upon the foundation that Munson built. Over the years, he has been as tireless as Munson in promoting the role of grapes and wine in America.

The first third of the book deals with Munson's beginnings. Here he is portrayed as a man searching in the American frontier for his mission. He wandered from Kentucky to Nebraska to Arkansas before settling in North Texas, all the way along looking for his El Dorado. Texas finally provided him with the right environment in which he would set about making his life's work.

Biographical sketches can easily be boring and flat. But Renfro channels Munson, as if all those years that Renfro spent working in Munson's vineyards have allowed him to channel the spirit of a man who was larger than life. Munson was what we refer to in Texas as a Big Tree, and in this book we get to peek inside his head and see his dreams, feel his pain and witness how he went about a making a meaningful life in the American frontier of the late 1800's.

People who know a little about Munson recognize him as one of the Americans who helped Europe deal with their vineyard-destroying phylloxera crisis. That was one of his many accomplishments, but one that still draws French winemakers to Denison, Texas, in pilgrimage to a shrine that saved their lives.

The 1880's saw the peak of the phylloxera, a plague of aphids that burrowed into the roots of European grapevines and destroyed them completely. In that period, events in Africa, India and Afghanistan dominated the attention of world leaders. The world was also in the midst of a financial depression. Vines weren't the top priority, even though they were being ravaged.

It was almost by chance that Munson met with Pierre Viala, the French government appointee from the viticulture institute in Montpellier. Viala was on a six-month mission to find grape stocks that would grow in "marly and chalky foundations." On what seemed almost a last minute change to his plans, Viala headed to Denison, Texas, to see Munson. That meeting would change everything for the vineyards of France.

Americans were sending rootstock to France, but none were successful. Munson's genius was in pinpointing several specific rootstocks that could be hybridized successfully in France. Munson told Viala that these rootstocks could be found in the Texas Hill Country. This was the pivotal event that saved the vineyards of France.

Grape Man of Texas reads as part biography and part mystery. Renfro's co-writer, Sherrie S. McLeRoy, knows how to spin a yarn, and her considerable skills help to make this an entertaining and valuable reference. The last third of the book is loaded with references, appendices, a time line and something I found most useful: an alphabetical listing of the grape varieties created by Munson. It was there that I rediscovered a Texas wine I made almost thirty years ago. It was called Carman (not Carmen as I had labeled it).

That day when Raymond Chandou, his family and I went to the Grayson County College experimental viticulture station in Denison, we met with Jack Dempsey, the station's vineyardist. Jack was a tall Texan with a welcoming smile and genuine warmth. As he and Chandou got to talking, we discovered that when Dempsey fought in WWII, his final mission included a role in the liberating army.

Comparing notes, Chandou and Dempsey uncovered that Dempsey had liberated the area where Chandou lived. Touched by this reunion of sorts, Dempsey went into his office and brought out an ancient looking book, and gave it to Chandou. The book was Foundations of American Grape Culture, by Thomas Munson.

Tears and hugs later, we said our goodbyes and went about our ways. A Texan had once again saved the French, reinforcing an enduring historical connection between peoples in the two places. France and Texas are both about the same size, fiercely independent, and are both growing larger-than-life grapes and people. And T.V. Munson was one of those giants.

Sherrie S. McLeRoy and Roy E. Renfro, Grape Man of Texas, Thomas Volney Munson and the Origins of American Viticulture, Wine Appreciation Guild 2008, $30.36, (Hardcover).

Alfonso Cevola is the Italian Wine Director for the Glazer's family of companies, based out of Dallas, Texas. Alfonso is a Certified Specialist in Wine and a Special Contributor to the Dallas Morning News and The Sommelier Journal. His wine blog is On the Wine Trail in Italy, posting every Thursday and Sunday. He also recent began another blog, called The Blend, covering wine and spirits.

The pleasures of childhood call to us as adults. The tug of nostalgia is so great that we so often find ourselves indulging in little things that remind us of our early years, and in some cases we throw ourselves passionately into the pursuit of the things we have lost.

Kathryn Hall lost the vineyard that was her childhood playground. Despite having managed the vineyard for nearly a decade, letting it go after her father's death was the right thing to do. But her memories of growing up among the grape vines in Redwood Valley, coupled with her enduring love of wine, meant that was not the end of her career in the wine industry, it was merely the tantalizing beginning.

Hall grew up in Albany, California. Her pharmacist father had dreams of a more agrarian sort, and purchased a vineyard and weekend home in Redwood Valley, north of Ukiah in Mendocino County. Hall grew up loving the time she spent in the vineyards and redwoods, and would return often, even as she went away to college and then law school.

Hall went on to have a very successful career as a corporate lawyer, and while she was working for Safeway, she transferred to Dallas in 1991 -- a fateful move that would launch her into a career of politics and into the love of her life.

Craig Hall grew up in Michigan, and might be the textbook example of a compulsive serial entrepreneur. He quickly moved from lemonade stands and newspaper routes to owning his first apartment complex at the age of 18, and dropping out of college as a sophomore to buy more. After that, there was no stopping him. By the age of 35 he was the second largest owner of apartment complexes in the world, the veteran CEO of several companies, and on the way to becoming a billionaire.

Shortly after meeting Craig, Kathryn Hall made her first foray into politics around that time, and quickly became part of the political scene in Dallas. In 1992 she both made an unsuccessful bid to become Mayor of Dallas, and worked on the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign. Hall continued to be active in politics, maintained ties to the Clintons, and together with her new husband, she became a major donor in the 1996 re-election campaign, setting her up for an appointment as ambassador to Austria the same year.

Before leaving for her 5 year stint in Austria, the Halls purchased a parcel of land and vineyards on the Eastern hills of the Napa valley in the Rutherford appellation, and began construction of a home and a winery. When they returned from Austria in 2002, Kathryn dove headfirst into the winery, launching first the Kathryn Hall brand, and then a few years later the Hall brand.

In 2002 real estate values slumped a little in wine country, providing the opportunity for the Hall's to snap up some additional vineyard land in both Napa and Sonoma, including the site at which they are currently building their estate winery, with the help of world-famous architect Frank Gehry.

The Hall portfolio has continued to grow, and is resolving into two tiers of wines, their Napa Valley Collection, which makes up the bulk of their 25,000 case production, and the Artisan Series of wines, made up of smaller, mostly vineyard designated wines.

The newest addition to the Artisan Series is a flagship wine that they have named Exzellenz, which is the Austrian term, or title, for "ambassador." Made from select blocks of the Sacrashe vineyard, which rolls down from the crest of the hill away from the Hall's residence, this wine represents the finest efforts of the winery, and their most precious fruit from their most important vineyard source.

The Sacrashe vineyard, like most of the Hall's vineyard properties is organically farmed, and has been ever since they've owned it. It is planted mostly to Cabernet, but also contains some Cabernet Franc and Merlot, all of which struggle in an incredibly thin layer of pulverized volcanic topsoil that very quickly gives way to solid bedrock.

Winemaker Steve Leveque (formerly of Mondavi and Chalk Hill) makes this wine and the other single vineyard wines in the custom designed Rutherford winery. Set up for complete gravity flow winemaking with precise temperature control, the winery allows Leveque to practice the kind of hands-off winemaking he prefers, including using native yeasts for fermentation and leaving the wines unfiltered.

This wine was made first in 2005, but in very minute quantities, and did not see much commercial distribution. For all intents and purposes, this 2006 vintage is the first true commercial release of the roughly 220 case production. While the wine is labeled Red Wine (a hedge against the possibility of introducing some other varieties down the road), it is, in fact, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.

While my tasting note below captures the qualities of this wine, it's worth saying that the wine possesses some of the most beautiful tannins I have had the pleasure of experiencing in a young wine.

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of black cherries, roasted fig, wet dirt and dark chocolate. In the mouth it is rich and juicy with a hint of sweetness and a dark core of black cherry and chocolate fruit, with notes of pipe tobacco and . Beautiful, mouth-coating, powdery tannins play footsie with the acidity and fruit, but the mouth feels like it's been left under a blanket of dark cherry fleece. What's not to love about that? This wine possesses some of the sweetest tannins I have ever tasted in my life, to the point that I would have sworn that there was a little residual sugar left in this wine, but both the tech sheet and the winery swear the wine is dry. Delicious.

Food Pairing:
I would love to drink this wine with a beef daube scented with the herbs of Provence.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $150

This wine is not yet available for purchase on the Internet. It will be released in the Fall to members of the Hall mailing list. You can sign up on the winery's web site.

Below the Fog
While I often find myself praying for sun in San Francisco, I don't ever tire of the fog in wine country. The bright gray blanket and its tendrils have the remarkable quality of making the colors of the earth and vines so much brighter and more vivid. This shot from a Sonoma vineyard is the perfect illustration of this effect. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
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When it comes to family-run wineries, I always enjoy seeing how the many different roles and responsibilities involved in a full-fledged winery are divvied up among the family. Often, the winery benefits from the luck of a child that has gone into marketing as a career, or a sibling that has gone back to school to learn about enology. The combined skills, passion, and familial bond that makes such wineries tick can sometimes make for quite a powerful operation.

I don't think I've ever seen quite the combination represented by Jeff and Karen Fontanella. They're just a young couple in their 30's, but in the space of 36 months they managed to have two kids and build a winery, while both working full time jobs. A feat only possible, but no less impressive, because of their unique combination of backgrounds and experience.

During his freshman year at U.C. Davis, Jeff Fontanella thought he was going to go into sports medicine. But one day, in an attempt to fill his Chemistry requirements, he stumbled into a winemaking class, and experienced the proverbial "first day of the rest of his life" moment. During school he had an internship in the lab at Opus One, and went to work there after graduating with his Enology degree. From there he went to ZD for four years, and after that, to Saddleback Cellars, where he says he learned to do just about everything differently than he had been taught in school.

"Saddleback was essentially the complete opposite of Opus One or ZD in every possible way," says Fontanella. "It's a tiny winery, bursting at the seams, verging, at times, on barely controlled chaos, and everything is done based on gut instinct instead of lab science."

As foreign as the operation at Saddleback was to his rigorous U.C. Davis training and methodology, Fontanella suggests that it was an invaluable opportunity to learn how to singlehandedly run a winery, and an opportunity for him to forge his own winemaking style and philosophy from working in many different ways.

While at Saddleback, Fontanella began consulting as a winemaker to a few other wine labels (among them Carter Cellars, whose wines I have written about in the past), as well as toying with a spreadsheet model of what it would take to have his own winery.

Karen Fontanella met her husband at a Jimmy Buffett concert while in Law School. Amidst all the other Parrot Heads, she was most interested in the friend-of-a-friend that had brought along a magnum of ZD Chardonnay. An aspiring lawyer, she also had developed a taste for wine, and was charmed by a young winemaker bearing gifts for strangers.

The couple dated long-distance while Karen finished her studies and took the bar, and then she found a job in anti-trust law with a firm in San Francisco, moving her to a more manageable distance for the relationship to flourish. When things got serious after a while, Karen moved up to Napa and took a job with a law firm in St. Helena that specialized in the wine industry. By pure happenstance, she ended up working in the division that helps small wineries with all their paperwork and process, from start to finish. After a couple years of this, she then moved on to the legal department of a commercial real-estate developer in Napa, and was responsible for all of the negotiations and interface with the county planning commission.

When they married a short time later, these two had a package of knowledge, experience, and relationships that most people need a team of employees, lawyers, and assistants to assemble, over many, many years. Just ask anyone who has tried to get a permit to build a new winery in Napa recently. The legal minimum time to get a proposal through the planning commission is nine months, but most drag on for years. The Fontanella Family Winery got its papers signed a few days past the nine month mark, and had the winery built and operational about a year later.

Perched on the rolling shoulder of a hill that cascades off the southern end of Mount Veeder, the Fontanella winery is a compact facility that Jeff planned to accommodate about 2000 cases of his own wine, and the few thousand cases of his clients, who take up 85% of the space and make up an equal part of the revenue of this small operation.

The Fontanella Family Winery offers a wonderful glimpse into the birth of a wine brand. Jeff and Karen are just getting started, figuring out what their brand is about and how they are going to build a portfolio of wines. Their current wines are made from various fruit sources that Jeff has access to, but in the near future they may begin to focus exclusively on Mount Veeder. They also have their eye on a piece of their property for planting Cabernet.

Apart from themselves, the winery has only a single other employee. Now that the winery is up and running and they have two kids, Karen has ramped down her hours at her law job to focus on the kids and learn how to do wine sales and marketing as fast as she can.

Their first wines are just the beginning of what I predict will be a successful small label, and if the barrel samples I tasted last month are any indication, there are great wines to come in the near future.

TASTING NOTES:

2007 Fontanella Family Chardonnay, Napa
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of toasted sourdough bread and cold cream with hints of citrus juice. In the mouth it has a soft texture and tastes both nutty and toasty, with a core of lemon and pear with notes of toasted bread. A hint of bitterness and dried fennel seeds creep in on the long finish. Aged in 33% new French oak, and only 18% of the wine goes through malolactic fermentation. 275 Cases produced. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $30. Where to buy?

2006 Fontanella Family Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of tobacco, black cherry, and nice hints of vanilla aromas. In the mouth it is smooth and lush. The wine offers espresso and wet dirt flavors wrapped around a core of black cherry, and reveals hints of nutmeg and cocoa powder on the nice finish. 400 cases produced. Score: around 9. Cost: $55. Where to buy?

2007 Fontanella Family Zinfandel, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of blackberry and black pepper aromas mixed with hints of grapeyness. In the mouth it offers lush blackberry, wet dirt, and black pepper flavors with a nice acid balance. Hints of chocolate emerge on the finish. Aged in 100% American oak, about 50% of which was new. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $36. Where to buy?

There aren't many "secret" public wine tastings in San Francisco, but for several years, the Golden Glass tasting was about as close as you could get to a "wine insiders" tasting. Historically under-promoted, and generally not well attended, this tasting is often described as the single best public wine tasting in San Francisco. I'm not sure that's true, but it certainly is one of the better ones.

This event, which is a fundraiser for Slow Food USA, has focused almost exclusively on small Italian wine producers -- apropos of the fact that Slow Food was founded in Italy. In recent years, however, they have added some more international wineries, including a good number of New Zealand producers. You can see the full list of participating wineries on the event web site.

As one might expect, the food at this event is local, and quite good. From Perbacco to A16 to Blue Bottle Coffee, this event will showcase some of the best artisan food purveyors in the Bay Area. I usually recommend to readers that they show up to public tastings with a full stomach, but this is one event where you might make sure to leave a little room for snacks.

So if you love good food and good wine, and don't have a lot going on the third Sunday in June, I highly recommend checking out this tasting.

2009 Golden Glass Tasting
Sunday June 21st, 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
The Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason
San Francisco, CA 94123

Tickets are $60 for members of the public (discounted for members of Slow Food and other associated organizations) and should be purchased in advance online.

My usual tips for public tastings: get a good night's sleep; drink lots of water; dress in dark clothing; eat along the way; and if you want to enjoy yourself AND learn something....SPIT!

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of science fiction books, the main character has invented a science called Psychohistory for predicting the behavior of large groups of people. And by large groups, I mean the entire galaxy. Based partly in sociology, partly in history, and heavily in math, the psychohistorians have developed algorithms that can be used to figure out what big groups of people will do in any situation.

I'm not so sure there isn't some sort of algorithm that we might be able to construct to figure out the kind of person (apart from trained winemakers or wine business veterans) who ends up starting a winery in Napa. The path to owning a wine label in Napa seems to required a certain set of formative experiences, the right personality, just a little disregard for risk, and enough money to make it possible.

I don't think I can find a more textbook example of the required ingredients than the story of Dr. Paul Erba.

Erba got into wine during college in the Seventies. Medical students don't have a lot of time on their hands, but when they need to unwind, they need to unwind. Erba and his roommate and a bunch of friends got in the habit of going out and buying a lot of wine, mostly Bordeaux, and getting together to drink and talk about it. "This was back when you could get Petrus and Lafite for $19.99 a bottle," says Erba. "We also made sure to check out what was going on with California wine as well."

What started as a social hobby gradually grew into an obsession. Erba began collecting as soon as he was earning enough to do so, and gradually fell deeper in love with wine. He and his wife started taking all their vacations to Napa -- once, twice, even three times per year. And as he built up his own practice in Radiation Oncology on Oklahoma, he started squirreling away money for a dream that he wouldn't even really admit to himself that he had.

That dream, like so many, started small -- the idea of buying a little plot of vineyard land already planted with grapes -- a couple of acres to make some wine for himself and his friends.

Eventually Erba saved enough to maybe, just maybe, be able to afford a few acres of Napa vineyard. He knew by this point that he really wanted hillside vineyards, as he felt those made the best wine. And so he went shopping, and entered the strange world of Napa real estate.

I say strange, because buying land in Napa is like entering some Twilight Zone, where odd things happen to those who enter. Erba's experience was not untypical. He went shopping for a couple of acres of planted grapes, and ended up with 140 acres of prime hillside land on the back of Atlas peak, and a two year project to put in a 20 acre vineyard, and three more years to wait until the first fruit was ready to be made into wine.

The technical term for this situation is getting in deep. Napa has a habit of turning small dreams into big projects.

Erba dove headfirst into viticulture with his hired consultants and before he knew it, he had a prime vineyard that many have since said is one of the best sites they have ever seen. He didn't know it at the time, but Pahlmeyer had just bought the piece of land next door, and before his grapes had matured, he had folks like Phelps, Cornerstone, and Orin Swift Cellars interested in the fruit.

Much of the fruit is now sold to these labels, but with the help of winemaker Kristof Anderson (formerly at Saddleback and Lewis, and the current winemaker at Gargiulo) Erba makes about 1000 cases of wine split between this Cabernet, Merlot, and Syrah.

Erba Mountainside Vineyards is already way bigger than Erba expected it to be, and that has come with its challenges. Erba still has his day job in Oklahoma. "Gotta pay for those barrels," he says.

When he first started out, everyone told him that the hardest part of the whole operation would be selling the wine, and it turns out they were right. Marketing and sales take a lot of time, energy and money that have been hard to drum up, which is why Erba Mountainside Vineyards continues to fly very much under the radar. Which may not be so great for Erba, but is definitely great for his customers. The wines are reasonably easy to get ahold of, and they're priced well below their quality level, in my humble opinion.

This Cabernet is made from fruit taken from some of the steepest blocks of the vineyard, which approach a twenty degree slope in places. In addition to Cabernet it has small percentages of Merlot, Petite Verdot, Cabernet Franc, and Malbec. It was aged in 80% new French Oak for about 18 months before being bottled. While many producers are currently releasing their 2006 wines, this 2004 represents the current release of the Cabernet, though the 2005 is likely on its way soon.

Tasting Notes:
Inky garnet in color, this wine has a rich nose of cherry and floral aromas. In the mouth it is a lovely, balanced concoction of earth and plum flavors wrapped around a core of solid cherry fruit. Nice acids and sandpaper-like tannins lift the wine into a very pleasant finish.

Food Pairing:
The restrained oak signature on this wine is a welcome invitation to pair it with anything you might like to serve a robust red wine with. I'd certainly recommend trying it with braised shortribs or beef daube or something of the sort.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $55

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Last night I went out for dinner with a couple of colleagues from a business strategy course that I've been taking for a while. One of them has taught me an awful lot in the past couple months, and I've been working with them both to create a presentation that we successfully delivered to a group of 34 of our fellow students today.

Naturally, I brought a good bottle of wine to dinner, and we drank it while getting to know each other better, and talking about the challenges and opportunities we each face in our businesses. The conversation was animated and engaging and just flowed, to the point that the waiter had to remind us a couple of times to look at the menu so we could order. And we were some of the last patrons in the restaurant when we left a few hours later, still engaged in conversation.

As we hopped into the car, one of my dining companions offered the first comment about the wine that had been made all evening since I asked the sommelier to cool down the bottle a little bit for us before he poured.

"That was a really great wine tonight," said my friend. He was right. So good in fact, that it simply did what great wine should do: become part of the fabric of the evening.

While I derive great pleasure from the intellectual aspects of wine, and enjoy talking about it, I also enjoy just being able to ignore it.

But ignore is not quite the right word. In these situations I enjoy every sip from my glass and appreciate the changing character of the wine as it warms slightly and aerates through the evening. But this enjoyment takes place in the background, slightly receded from conscious thought, and distant from the conversation. Like a pleasing background melody from faint speakers we find ourselves humming after a while, wine can be immensely pleasurable when it isn't in the spotlight of conscious thought.

Like a movie critic that has a hard time turning off the analytics even when he takes his daughter to the latest animated film, I'll admit that such moments aren't nearly as frequent in my life as they used to be. But I do know the formula to produce them (good food + good conversation + good timing + good wine, all with people who love wine but don't geek out about it), and I always jump at the chance to enjoy them.

Sometimes wine makes for a better dinner when it's not the dinner-table conversation.