Kathy did the research, and off we were to Spring Mountain, up the hill to the west of the Napa valley. We had such a blast on the other side, up Pritchard Hill east of Silverado Trail, that we had to do the do.
OK, one thinks about appointments to taste 95-pointers in a rarified atmosphere well above The Valley.
Welcome to Keenan and a Spring Mt. estate tasting hosted by Laura and pup Scrappy. Not a frill in sight, and Laura was the coolest. Didn’t hurt that the Keenan juice was tasty. Laura even sent us away with ripe figs from the site trees.
Hit Domaine Charbay up the mount. Lucinda led us through the distilling process, and then hooked us up with some of their still wines (as opposed to wines from the ‘still’). On the way to the sermon on the (Spring) mount, we noticed Terra Valentine, an appointment-only winery a couple of hairpin turns south of Charbay. Lucinda called on our behalf for a Valentine rendezvous in an hour, so we repaired to the garden for lunch, a Port-style wine and a cigar. Eleven-thirty ayem, surrounded by Buddha’s Hand citrus and a cloudless blue sky: And how was your morning?
Terra Valentine was outrageous, man! It’s a crazy quilt of a stone fortress built by a self-sufficient European émigré described candidly by Blake, our tasting host, as, well, a “nutjob.” An uber-crisp Riesling on the rock balcony looking down onto the Napa Valley floor merely set the scene. Blake next led us into our formal tasting venue, a sit-down room paneled in spare wood that William Randolph Hearst couldn’t use at his Xanadu down at San Simeon!
Nothing like a grand mash-up of Cabernet Franc and Charles Foster Kane, baybee.
Kath and I had a love/not-like vibe on the Mt. with our next winery, Pride. Guide Tracy was awesome, hooking us up to the fact that the winery straddles both Napa and Sonoma counties: Grapes picked in each county have to be weighed in same for tax purposes. (Check out the boundaries in the photo; and Kath and I used to think that Washington state masking tape on the floor [one side of the tape contained the cases of wine on which the taxes had been paid; the other, not yet] in a bonded winery was tough!)
Our final stop was with Charlie Smith at Smith-Madrone. He, with his bro, has been reclaiming this vineyard from the then-encroaching Madrone trees for almost a half-century. The conversation was frequently interrupted due to Chardonnay grapes arriving from the fields; they had to be tended. Harvest waits for no one. And old-skool is still in session. Beautiful.
Kathy had booked overnight lodgings at Maison Fleurie, a little joint in Yountville just behind restaurant Bouchon, a mere chanterelle’s toss from The French Laundry on Y-ville’s restaurant row. Extra savings for a tiny room chez Fleurie translated into freebie wine-and-snacks Snappy Hour in the brick-lined lounge, as well as a full breakfast in same the next morning. We had a great convo at Snappy Hour with some dude from Philly, who apparently is able to set up tasting appointments with winemakers all over the Valley. His wife holds the glass by the bowl, and he doesn’t seem to appreciate a lot of subtlety in the glass, though he talks a great game.
We pull out of the parking lot for our tasting event at Hess, only to find Homes pulling on a cigarette at the curb. Sigh.
So we get up the hill to Hess, just in time to hear the first set of Kit and the Branded Men, a Bay Area outfit kickin’ it honky tonk-style and featuring mucha-inked Kit Lopez, as well as Glen Earl Brown Jr.
Talked to winemaker Randle Johnson at the “Artezin” tasting booth; turns out that when we mentioned “Oakley,” he got all excited since he’d just talked to Frank Evangelho (of our ‘hood’s eponymous vineyard) that morning. His Artezin label under the Hess umbrella is poised for wonderful things.
We did not win any of the Hess raffle prizes, so we left in a huff. The huff did not start, so we got back to Maison Fleurie in the Prius.
We’ll talk again soon. Day Two was cool, too.
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