Wine Words & Video Tape

Wine, Words and Videotape

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Posts Tagged ‘California’

Napa Valley: HALL Cabernet Sauvignon

Written by JW. Posted in California

IMG_8240You could be forgiven for feeling something of an underachiever following a trip to HALL, the ambitious state-of-the-art boutique winery on the outskirts of St Helena in California’s Napa Valley. Created in 2002 by serial entrepreneur Craig Hall and his wife Kathryn Walt Hall, the property is founded on the site of the old Napa Valley Co-Op. The centerpiece is a stunning new winery and tasting room, given an almost transparent air with floor to ceiling glass. In contrast, set beside it, is the renovated stone Bergfeld Winery established in 1885. Works of art are dotted about the gardens, including a giant silver rabbit that jumps Watership Down-like, out of the vineyard, as if making a bid for the St Helena Highway out in front.

Napa Valley: Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet

Written by JW. Posted in California

2008-Robert-Mondavi-Winery-Reserve-Cabernet-Sauvignon-750ml-Front-Label-TIFF-CA-ECM2015369-Revision-31-1.tif

Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was one of Napa’s foremost wines in the 1970s, as much a product of the effort and genius of Robert Mondavi himself as the famous To Kalon vineyard in Oakville that, by and large, provided the wine’s core of great Cabernet fruit since its inception. Fast-forward forty years since the first Reserve Cab was first released and much, seemingly, has changed.

Napa Valley: Silver Oak Cellars & Twomey Cellars

Written by JW. Posted in California

silver-oak-napa-valley-vinyardSilver Oak Cellars’ vineyards in Napa Valley

There are a number of unusual things about Silver Oak Cellars. Firstly they make only Cabernet Sauvignon, strange here given that even if the Cab’s the main event there’s usually plenty of serious tinkering with other varietals. Secondly the wines are aged exclusively in American oak. Also they produce two versions, one Cabernet from Napa Valley fruit and the other from fruit grown in the Alexander Valley. It was three vintages of the Napa Valley blend – 2008, 2005 and 2002 – that were shown by Vivien Gay at the Napa Valley Vintners’ tasting this summer. In addition identical vintages of single vineyard Merlot from Twomey Cellars were also shown, Silver Oak’s distinctly francophone sister property.

Napa Valley: Stag’s Leap District

Written by JW. Posted in California

 

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Shafer Vineyards in Stag’s Leap District

Out of all the Napa Valley’s individual viticultural areas, Stag’s Leap District, off the magical Silverado Trail, is surely the best known. The area, pioneered in the 1960s by Nathan Fay, the first to plant Cabernet in the district, shot to fame in the now legendary Paris blind tasting in 1976. The quality of fruit from Fay’s vineyard attracted Warren Winiarski to establish Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars on adjacent land beneath the rocky promontories known as Stag’s Leap in 1970. It was his 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon that French judges placed ahead of Mouton, Haut-Brion, Montrose and Léoville-Las-Cases et al in that tasting. Not bad for wine from vines then less than four years old, only in their second harvest. The importance of the Paris tasting can’t be overstated. It was an immediate statement that France didn’t have an exclusive right to the best terroir and emphasized that there were exciting vineyard sites the world over yet to be discovered. Clearly the district around Stag’s Leap was one of them.

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