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trip log: sunday
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August 25, 2002
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Opus One
What a way to start out the day! I'd have preferred to do Opus One in the middle of the day, after I'd warmed up, but its location at the very start of our route meant that we'd have to visit it very early or visit it last. Since I knew there was no way my taste buds would be in any condition to appreciate Opus after five hours of tasting, we had no choice but to go there first.
The Opus One winery is located in a giant pyramid just north of Oakville crossing. The giant ziggurat juts out of the ground as if raised by the gods. ("I feel as if I'm headed up to be sacrificed," I heard one woman say as she was traversing the front stairs. "Don't worry, I think they only kill virgins," I almost said, but I bit my tongue. Didn't want to start the day out with fisticuffs. Wine club, not Fight Club.)
As it turned out, Opus was a good place to start out. They only serve one wine, so you don't have to make any choices. The snoot factor is high, but you don't have to stay in the tasting area; you can wander off to the roof of the ziggurat, enjoying views of the valley like the one above.
The winery is remarkably beautiful and peaceful, if a bit ostentatious. There's not much to do except relax, but it's such a great place to relax that we wound up staying there for forty-five minutes.
And we did actually buy some wine there. We don't buy Opus One -- $150 is a bit out of our price range, and we don't have a good place to store something like that for the long haul. But they sell Overture, a non-vintage wine made from the grapes that weren't quite good enough to go into Opus, for $40 only at the winery. Rebecca and I bought a bottle last year and loved it. So we picked up a couple of bottles for special occasions.
Plumpjack
Plumpjack is an interesting facility. The grounds have a weird, whimsical, Alice-In-Wonderland feel -- oversized picket fences with gaps between them far too large to keep anything out or in, huge doors with handles sized for ogres.
Overall, I was somewhat disappointed with their wines this time. I've had previous vintages of their Cab and can recall being far more excited about it. The Syrah was something of a revelation, though. I wonder how widely available it is?
| 2001 | Reserve Chardonnay | Good fruit. "Sauv. Blanc style", says pourer. Long finish. Many tropical fruits. | $38 | |
| 2000 | Syrah | Medium-bodied. A few notes in the high register. Red fruit. A fascinating wine. Best of the lot -- most interesting, at least. | $40 | |
| 1999 | Estate Cabernet Sauvignon | Strong mocha nose. Smooth California cab. Not particularly interesting. | $54 | |
Miner Family
We continued on Oakville Crossing to the Silverado Trail to visit the Miner Family. This visit was one of the best -- if not the best -- of our trip. I'm grateful to Rebecca for insisting that we come.
Both Miner Family and the Oakville Ranch labels are made here. Interestingly, until 1994, the Miners were partners with R. Lewis (patriarch of Lewis Cellars, one of my favorite wineries) in Oakville Ranch. When heleft to start Lewis Cellars, the Miners started the Miner Family label in addition to Oakville Ranch.
| 2000 | Napa Valley Chardonnay | Soft, round fruit flavors. Oaky/buttery, but in a good way. Manages to stay balanced. | $30 | |
| 2000 | Oakville Chardonnay | Excellent. Crisper flavor. A little sassier. | $35 | |
| 2000 | Gary's Vineyard Pinot Noir | Wow. Heady smell. Fascinating flavor. I won't even try to describe it. | $50 | |
| 2000 | Gibson Ranch Sangiovese | Great nose. Very aromatic. Very drinkable. Here's a wine Rebecca and I could easily compromise on. And at an attractive price for weekend consumption. | $20 | |
| 2000 | Napa Zinfandel | Lighter style, peppery. "Food friendly." | $24 | |
| 1998 | Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon | Lots of cassis. Mountain fruit. Call this a provisional rating -- I'd like to give this another try. | $60 | |
| 2001 | Viognier | This is good. Pear, some melon flavors, etc. | $20 | |
The staff offered us a lot of insight into their winemaking. On the Napa Valley Chard: "You'll find mostly pear and hazelnut type of flavors. We stay away from the tropical style." Which is a great thing -- so many California Chardonnays are all about the tropical fruit. The Napa Valley Chard is 100% malolactic and it shows. When we were given the Oakville, our pourer asked, "how much ml do you think this is?" The Oakville was much cleaner and crisper, though there were still hints of butter. "25%," we guessed. "Nope. 100% malolactic. These grapes are from our highest vineyard and have a very high natural acidity. Because of this, they can go through malolactic fermentation and still retain a lot of crispness."
We actually tasted more wines than I have listed, including two great Cabs from the Oakville Ranch label. Unfortunately, I slacked off on the tasting notes. You know how it is -- you get to drinking and chatting...
This was a fantastic experience. The pourers were friendly and knowledgable, and the wines were fantastic. We bought more wine here than at any other winery, and now that we're back home, we wish we'd bought even more!
Napa Wine Company
The Napa Wine Company is actually a "custom crush" facility. It's a company that offers all the services that you'd need to make wine -- from grape crushing and fermenting, chemical analysis, and barrel storage to bottling, labelling, and legal compliance services. This way, a winemaker could make a wine and establish an entire brand without owning a winery at all!
You'd think that a lot of substandard wines would come out of this facility. But the opposite is true. Some of the biggest names in cult California wines -- Colgin, Bryant Family, Staglin -- started here, although they eventually bought their own wineries and equipment. Pahlmeyer is still here.
But the Napa Wine Company is also a winery in its own right. They own some good valley floor vineyards and make use of their own facilities to make several different wines.
I wanted to come here for two reasons. First, I wanted to taste Pahlmeyer. I knew they wouldn't have the flagship available to taste -- it's made in far too limited quantities for that, I imagine -- but I wanted to try the Chardonnay or the Merlot.
Second, I'd had a Pinot Blanc from the Napa Wine Company itself sometime last month that I was very impressed with. Based on the restaurant price by the glass, I was hoping that the bottle price would be around $12, in which case I could hardly resist buying a case.
| 2001 | Mason Sauvignon Blanc | "Best selling Sauvignon Blanc in the Valley." I thought it was pretty boring. But then, I'm not an S. Blanc fan. | $16 | |
| 2001 | Napa Wine Company Pinot Blanc | Yeah, baby. This is what I came here for. It's a good wine at $18; but it would have been a great one at $12. | $18 | |
| 2000 | Pahlmeyer Chardonnay | The other wine I came here to taste. The pourer kept talking about how overvalued it was. But there's something sublime about it. It's definitely in another class. | $60 | |
| 2000 | Del Bondio Syrah | Big time barnyard stench. It's like the chickens and pigs they must have used to make this stuff are still in the room. It's been open all day, but it still tastes fresh. This is what I want from a California Syrah. | $25 | |
| 1998 | Fife Max | I was looking forward to this one, but it's just...odd. Could never see paying this much for it. It's a blend of Syrah, Petit Syrah, and Zinfandel. | $40 | |
| 1998 | Showket Cabernet Sauvignon | "Best Cab in the room," says the pourer. It is good. Rebecca likes it, which is always a plus. But for this price, I could buy a Lewis and go see a movie. | $70 | |
My notetaking continued to deteriorate here. We tasted four or five other wines that I didn't record here because I didn't write anything useful. We had the Tria Pinot and Syrah, the Del Bondio Cab and the Madrigal Merlot, at least. Wish I remembered what I thought of them.
Oakville Grocery
On the way to St. Helena, we stopped at Oakville Grocery and picked up bread, cheese, pate, and other sundries to eat on the way. They have a great selection -- the only downside is that everyone knows this and it gets crowded.
It was only here that we realized how late it was getting. We'd started tasting at 11, and it was already getting close to four o'clock, our scheduled stopping time. And we'd only been to four wineries! Last time out, when we'd rented the limo, we visited eight wineries in five hours.
This time, we'd spent more time at each winery and (on average) had more wine at each one. Last year we were concerned primarily with reds and often didn't try the white offerings. And this year, Eman's industry connections ensured that we were poured a lot more wine than last year.
We decided to go an extra hour with the driver and hit one last winery.
Berenger
By the time we made it to Berenger, I didn't care about tasting notes.
| 1999 | Private Reserve Chardonnay | Creamy, buttery, blah blah blah. Well executed, near as I can tell. | $35 | |
| 2000 | Sbregia Ltd. Res. Chardonnay | No notes taken. | $40 | |
| 1996 | Alluvium | Believe it. | $30 | |
| 1994 | Knight's Valley Cabernet | This is really good -- I'll admit it. Very California Cabernet, with just a touch of stink. Maybe I should have bought a bottle of this. | $35 | |
Bouchon
Bouchon is Thomas Keller's other restaurant in Yountville. Bouchon is more of a brasserie or bistro, featuring dinner options such as Croque Madame alongside more traditional entrees like Roasted Chicken and Steak Frites.
One distinguishing feature of Bouchon is that it has a full raw bar. We decided to start with that, ordering the "Grand Plateau", which is comprised of one lobster, eight shrimp, eight clams, eight mussels, some unspecified amount of crab, and sixteen oysters. The lobster, crab, and shrimp are served cooked but cold; everything else is served raw.
I haven't had a great many oysters in my life, so this was very entertaining for me. The sixteen oysters were of four different types, which divided nicely into our group of four.
With the seafood, we had a half bottle of 1998 Schramsberg Blanc de Noir. It was a good pairing, I thought; I'll consider having champagne with any seafood platters or raw seafood I have in the future. (Champagne and sushi?)
Having successfully navigated the first course of the meal, I proceeded to make an egregious error in the second half. That's right, I ordered the steak.
It's one of my personal policies: when you're dining out at an expensive restaurant, Never Order The Steak. One reason is that making a good steak is not the hardest thing in the world. I'm not saying it's easy. I know it's not -- I've screwed up plenty of steaks in my lifetime. But most of the time that's just due to negligence. If you're willing to go out and get a good cut of meat and take a little time out and watch it cook, as long as you follow a few simple rules, you'll wind up with a pretty good steak. A steak doesn't exactly tax the capabilities of the chef or the kitchen staff. When I want a steak, I cook one myself. It's virtually effortless to do, and two times out of three I wind up with something nearly as good as I might get in a restaurant.
The main reason, though, to Never Order The Steak is that one well-cooked steak is very similar to another. Now hold on a minute -- before you get up in arms, I'm saying this is true relative to "The Lamb" or "The Duck" dish that's on the menu. By comparison, "The Steak" is generally a concession to weakness, a dish that's put on the menu expressly for wimps who are frightened off by the thought of Cherimoya and Fennel Puree and dullards who are afraid to ask what the long French word du jour on the menu actually means. They need to put the safety net somewhere for these people. If someone is afraid to order The Steak, what the heck will make them feel safe? Their mom in the kitchen? As a result, chefs don't seem to express themselves very much with The Steak.
And that's the main reason I go out to eat -- to "listen" a very experienced individual express themselves to me through their food.
But sometimes I get suckered in. Occasionally it's the promise of a unique preparation that turns out to be not so unique after all. Most of the time, though, it's just that I have a hankering for steak. I'm always happiest when I don't listen to it. That's what I have to keep in mind.
This time was no exception. You know, it was a pretty good steak. Can't fault it. But it was just a steak.
August 25, 2002 in napa_trip, old_site, wine | Permalink
