We were in Napa briefly this weekend for a friend's wedding and did a little tasting in the Valley while we were there. We're very much out of touch with the Napa "scene"; even when we were taking semi-regular tasting trips in northern California, our attention had shifted to Sonoma, the better to avoid the insane prices, traffic, status-consciousness, and homogeneity that seemed to have swept over Napa by the first decade of the century. And I must say, I still don't really understand what we just experienced. The Valley now seems to be deeply segmented between old-fashioned "saloon-style" tastings, no appointment necessary, and higher-end by-appointment-only tastings, with exceptionally high fees ($50-75 per person, generally applicable toward purchases), but also lots of amenities, including some that are very appealing -- tours and seated tastings at a relaxed pace, led by someone who actually knows a lot about the operation -- and some that make you laugh and cry all at once ("We are pleased to offer a Tesla charging station for our guests"). I don't know how much of this comes from wineries' desire to avoid the crush of tour buses and bachelorette parties (which I understand and share), how much from the desire to project an air of exclusivity (which I understand even though it dismays me), and how much from the local regulations governing post-1997 tasting rooms (the details of which are opaque to me). But it's interesting, to say the least, and it made this trip different from any other we've had up there, mostly in good ways, because I think, as it turns out, we chose our destinations well.
The one place I really wanted to be sure to visit was Corison, and this was the highlight of the trip. This was our first visit to Corison and, possibly, our first Corison wine, though I may have had one at an offline I can't remember -- but they've been on my radar for a while as a must-try. In addition to the 2013 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2012 Kronos Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, they were pouring a 1999 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and we also wound up enjoying tastes of a 1999 Napa Valley Petite Sirah bottled under the Acappella label and a 2006 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon under the Helios label. Beyond that, we had a tour that allowed us to see just how close the Corison-owned Kronos vineyard is to the adjoining properties that provide the grapes for the Napa Cab, and a lot of conversation about weather variation and soil types and rootstocks and vine age that helped us make some sense of the differences between these properties. What I think impressed me most about these wines was how much potential for development they seemed to have without being overwhelming or inaccessible now; they provide a sense of great depth and concentration while being remarkably balanced and delicate, relative to their power. Both of the young Cabernets leaned toward relatively bright and high-toned fruit, but with a lot of layers of stone, smoke, and flowers lurking beneath that; this Kronos (from a warmer vintage) was a little weightier, longer, and richer in texture, and also brought a slightly wider range of flavors, reaching further into the darker part of the palette, to the table. The 1999 was a treat, showing a very slightly stewed character around the edges that I attributed to age rather than ripeness at harvest, but was otherwise remarkably young and fresh, tannins largely resolved but still seemingly youthful in its flavor profile. The 2006 Helios was a little simpler and softer but still recognizably in the style of the other wines, and seems like it would make for good drinking over the next several years. And, finally, the Petite was delicious, with bright blueberry fruit tinged with red-fruit edges and a little meatiness.
Until doing my research for this trip I had no idea that Failla was actually located in Napa, since almost all their grapes come from the Sonoma Coast. We'd had a bottle of their basic Sonoma Coast Pinot that, while not great, was good enough to make me want to try more, and we had a very nice visit there; the Chardonnays we tried were good but not really our thing; the 2014 Pinots ranged from a solid (Peay Vineyard -- tasty enough, but didn't quite have enough complexity to tell an interesting story, nor the stuffing to hold up to the admittedly light wood treatment -- to the excellent Occidental, which was more intense, with slightly riper and deeper cherry fruit that actually made the wine seem more transparent than the Peay -- to the really outstanding Hirsch, which had a similar intensity and flavor profile to the Occidental but with an ineffable extra few seconds of depth and complexity on the finish that brought a sense of unrealized potential and mystery to the wine. The real revelation here, though, wasn't Chardonnay, or Pinot either, but Syrah: the 2014 Estate Syrah from Failla's property in the Fort Ross-Seaview sub-AVA of Sonoma Coast, was totally transporting. Though I know we're not supposed to judge wines from one place by their similarity to wines from somewhere else, it was a total ringer for an excellent Cornas; savage violets in perfect balance, lively and bright but also deep and meaty. Delicious.
With a little help from the kind folks at Corison, we were able to get in on short notice at Larkmead, too, which Hoke had recommended to me last year; my interest had been further piqued by learning about Dan Petroski's other label, Massican. We had a great experience touring the property and tasting with Laurie, their national sales director, who knows the wines and the property backwards and forwards and was a gracious host. These wines are well out of our usual price range, and we made no attempt to pretend we were going to be big purchasers; that seemed to make no difference to her at all, which was nice. We learned a lot about the history of the estate -- I had no idea that Larkmead's history goes back to the 1870s or that they were one of the big post-prohibition names in Napa along with Beringer, Inglenook, and Beaulieu -- and also about the differences among soil types on the property (in fact, we heard more about soil on this trip to Napa than I think we had in the preceding 25 years put together). And we tasted a number of current releases, including the 2013 Dr. Olmo, an excellent 100% Cabernet from a block on Cortina gravel soil; a 2013 Solari, Cabernet from a combination of gravel and loam; and a 2012 Lark, a Cabernet from the same bale loam soil as Corison's Kronos vineyard. These three were also finished with an increasing proportion of new oak, from, I believe, the high 50s to the low 80s; they're all in the mid-to-upper 14% ABV range. I honestly didn't expect to like them as well as I did; nothing about them seemed hot, jammy, or overblown, and they had a surprising elegance given their scale. The Lark, from a warmer vintage, was totally lush and velvety and, as Andrea says, gives a lot of pleasure of a certain kind now; the Dr. Olmo, brighter and more angular, is more our style. The Solari is the least accessible of the three now, with a big wall of tannin asserting itself up front, but I'd actually put my money on it being the most complete and ageworthy of the three, because with repeated, vigorous agitation it began to show depths of both fruit and minerality that I didn't see in either of the others. We also were really surprised by how much we liked the 2014 Lillie, a wood-aged Sauvignon Blanc that was really deftly done and had a combination of breadth and focus that I think would allow it to develop well for 8-10 years. We also tasted the 2013 LMV Salon, a Cabernet Sauvignon-Cabernet Franc blend that was both much more aromatic up front and a little shorter than the other Cabernets -- not a terrible tradeoff. Unfortunately, we weren't able to try the Tocai Friulano they make from a very small block of old vines on the Estate.
We also made a trip to Inglenook, not so much for the wine as for the tour of the facility, because I've got a thing for history and Gustave Niebaum's stunning old stone winery has plenty. (I hadn't realized that Francis Ford Coppola had finally managed to buy the Inglenook trademark in 2011, reuniting the name with the property.) The wine wasn't bad, actually, though it was nothing to write home about: it's the sort of thing I'd drink without complaint if someone else was paying for it. But I have to give credit to the tour guide, David, who was terrific. He knew history, he knew wine, he had a real personality, and he was very, very good at talking to a group with a wide range of backgrounds and experience, taking everyone's questions and comments seriously, and answering them in a way that was neither too detailed nor disappointingly oversimplified. If you dig this sort of thing, it's a tour worth taking, IMO.
), so I tag along on tastings. I love the Petit Sirah. Apparently, Cathy trained her young daughter to recognize the Petit grapes, which came from vines that didn't "take" when the Kronos vineyard was replanted from Petit to Cabernet!
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