Touring with Travelogues

Outside of wine, travel, photography, and storytelling have been passions of mine. Recently I decided to combine all four in a series of travelogues I will present in Florida this spring, starting with a travelogue at The Wine Exchange in Tampa, FL on February 12, 2013.

In March, I will be headed to Estero, FL to present a wine safari travelogue and tasting at the Rapallo community. I look forward to the chance to share my travels and adventures in wine with other wine enthusiasts and travellers.

Below are some of the slides from trips to France, South Africa, Italy, Napa, and Spain. Check back as I update this site to include the details of these trips and links to help you plan your next wine trip. 

Cheers,

Laura

From the Cellars and Vineyards of Napa and Sonoma (Part 2)

On our second day in Napa we had made two appointments for tastings—one for Reynolds Family and one for Del Dotto.

Reynolds Family Winery is owned by Steve and Suzie Reynolds who gave up their dental practice to fully embrace the challenge of turning a chicken ranch into an award-winning winery. Their hard work and determination shows in their wines, one of which is aptly named Persistence.

As we sat outside at one of the tables overlooking their duck pond, we tasted five of their wines. I particularly enjoyed the’07 Napa Chardonnay which was long and silky on the palate with notes of citrus, melon, roasted pineapple, and vanilla. We also enjoyed the ’05 Estate cabernet, and the ’05 Persistence, a blend of Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Petite Verdot, and Merlot.

Both of these reds were very well-balanced, with dark fruit, chocolate, spice, and mineral components and enough tannins to see you through to a long finish. We bought a few bottles to take back with us to the rented house in Calistoga and ended drinking one right there, as we nibbled on the bread and cheese we had brought along with us.

When we finished our picnic lunch we realized we had enough time before our next appointment to do a quick tasting at Turnbull. Turnbull has been a favorite of ours ever since we happened upon one of their Napa Valley cabernet and instantly fell in love. In 2008, we just couldn’t get enough of their ’05 Napa Valley Cabernet and went on a search for every last bottle in stock in Roanoke, Virginia, our home town. Even though the ’05 cab was their largest production to date, when we arrived in the tasting room in October 2009 they only had five cases left of this wine in stock.

Part of the reason for the success of Turnbull wines is that despite producing some very quality wines they have managed to keep prices down to a reasonable level for Napa. All wines are made from grapes grown on Turnbull-owned properties and at present they have 200 planted acres of vines. I was surprised to find some Tempranillo along with the Merlot and Sangiovese in their ’07 Old Bull Red. Later I would find that Vincent Arroyo, a well-known Napa grower and winemaker is also growing Tempranillo, but it’s not something you see everyday in Napa. Old Bull a well-priced juicy, crowd-pleasing kind of wine that would be a very welcome guest at your next Super Bowl party. The Barbera, Cabernet, and Cabernet Franc in this wine give it enough testosterone to pair with a spicy chili or chicken wings.

Up until now Robert and I had been sharing tastings but when we left Turnbull and arrived a Del Dotto, we decided to have our own glass thank you very much. Robert and I had visited this tasting room the year before and we had tasted enough Del Dotto wine to know that we didn’t want to be wrestling each other for the last sip in the glass.

Del Dotto is a family-owned winery with properties in both Napa and Sonoma. David Del Dotto is the son of Dominic Del Dotto a native of Lucca in Tuscany and he credits Dominic for instilling in him an appreciation for good red wine.

David and his wife Yolanda started out with a property on Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena and initially sold most of their grape off to other winemakers but eventually decided to keep the good stuff for themselves and make the best wine they could make. Gary Galleron consulted at the beginning and since 1997 Nils Venge has been the consulting winemaker.

The Del Dotto family had recently opened a stunning Venetian-style tasting room in St Helena. However, since our family had never been to Napa before we opted to go to the Del Dotto historic winery location in Napa where we could get barrel tastings in their 120 year old wine cave, the second oldest wine cave in Napa. We were fortunate to get the facility manager as our tour guide and he proceeded to fill our glasses with ten or so wines thieved from the barrel. This was more wine than we could swallow, literally, but he encouraged us to splash the sides of the wine cave with any leftover wine in our glass.

David Del Dotto has been experimenting with various cooperages for years and during the cave tour your are invited to sample the same juice from two different barrels—one French oak, one American oak—and taste for yourself how barrels made of different oak impart vastly different characteristics to a wine. We were asked to vote for our favorite and in our tour group of eleven the votes were pretty well evenly split. This just shows that there is no universally superior oak—it’s just a matter of taste and what you want the oak to bring to the wine.

I was particularly enamored with the '08 Del Dotto Cinghiale Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. Our barrel taste so impressed us that we bought futures. Of course, the wine will be a different wine once it makes it into the bottle but I was blown away by the complexity and elegance of this Pinot Noir even at this young stage in its’ life.

From the Cellars and Vineyards of Napa and Sonoma (Part 1)

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.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Heading out for a vacation that will include visits to Canada, Croatia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece.

What am I packing?

Here's a list of the must haves:

• Quick dry undies
• Picnic baggie: includes cheese knife, wine screw, plastic utensils, tea towel/tablecloth
• Camera
• Passport
• The Wine Century Club application/checklist
• Map for Italy
• Manila envelope for trip confirmations, vouchers, etc.
• Guide book recommendations condensed to two printed pages
• Bill Clinton on speed dial in case we get lost (just kidding)

What do you pack for a wine soaked trip?