I invited family members from Canada and Scotland to join Robert and me in Napa Valley, California for five days. None of my family members had been to California wine country before so I wanted to give them a taste of wines that generally do not escape our borders.
Our first stop was Saddleback Cellars, the proprietor of which is Nils Venge, one of California’s hottest consulting winemakers. Nils has been making wine under his own label and for others for a very long time. He’s an unpretentious kind of guy who likes nothing more than kicking back with a well-crafted wine and some good country music blaring from the speakers, but he takes wine-making very seriously and consistently creates some of the best value wines in what is typically a very pricey neighborhood, the Oakville floor.
The tendency on the floor is focus on the big reds, the high-priced cabs this part of Napa is so famous for. Nils does offer the best of Napa fruit in his cabs, merlots, and zinfandels but he is equally attentive to the whites in his Saddleback Cellars range, and we tasted a very lovely ’07 Viognier and very impressive ’07 Napa Chardonnay. Nils also does a nice, crisp Pinot Blanc, offering aromatics of green apple, melon, and honeysuckle, which we have tasted and enjoyed over multiple vintages and consider to be one of our favorite hot weather whites.
We were tempted to linger at the picnic tables bordering the edge of the vines but we had another appointment down the road at Gargiulo Vineyards. Jeff Gargiulo and his team have been making estate wines in Oakville since 2000 with fruit from two properties—the Money Road ranch and 575 OVX. Kristof Anderson joined as winemaker in 2003 and uses gravity-fed techniques to gently coerce the best flavors and aromas from the grape. We tasted the ’06 Aprile Sangiovese/cab blend, Money Road Cabernet, and the 575 OVX G Major Seven Study, a Bordeaux-style blend which was my favorite of the bunch with bramble, blackberry, cassis, and vanilla on the nose and a smooth, well-balanced finish.
It was obvious this was going to be a music-themed week when Grammy winning artist/songwriter Billy Dean passed by the tasting room on his way to the recording studio (which sits among the vines) and our hosts asked him if would play us a song. He set down his glass of chardonnay, grabbed a guitar from Jeff Gargiulo’s displayed collection, sat down, and played his song “ The Penny” much to the delight of all.
Can you think of a better way to start a week in Napa and Sonoma?
Check back next week for Part 2 of our adventures in Napa and Sonoma.
