Odd Bins

Just a few random musings over the last couple of weeks of tasting and touring.

Several months ago, Kathy and I had a very civilized tasting up on Sage Canyon Road in St. Helena, with Tiffany Buchanan, hostess extraordinaire of Napa Valley’s Neyers Vineyards.

We always love when some fur-flung winery shouts out to our ‘hood via a vineyard designation on their label. Neyers’ winemaker Tadeo has previously called back to das roots: Zin from Pato; Mourvedre from Evangelho; and most tastily, a couple of years of Tommy Del Barba’s Zinfandel grown a few blocks from our old (circa 2009) homestead (see photo above).

Dig this: Eric Asimov, in The New York Times, rated this Zin in his selected top ten. Jon Bonné, wine dude for the San Fran Chronicle puts it in his top 100 wines of the year.

I call Tom (he’s in the slim Oakley phone book), and hang up upon no answer. Seven minutes later, I get a return call from Tom Del Barba. Daddy had no idea that his juice won such love. Imagine me being the one to tell him that.

We head south to Livermore last weekend, and the release event for La Rochelle, our Pinot Noir-centric winery pals, sharing real estate with Steven Kent Mirassou and his eponymous (minus the surname) concern. Always nice to taste and then pick up our selections without paying for shipping.

And Pinot winemaker Tom Stutz always brings it, sourcing Pinot fruit up and down the coast, this one from Santa Cruz.

OK, you’re no doubt fatigued from Das Oldee Ty-mee Sugar Mill stuff., but we can’t help that 3 Wine Co had a release party the other day; the other wine was a Spinelli Mourvedre (Matt Cline insists on calling it Mataro). And he’s pretty tight-lipped on the whole “Spinelli” vineyard-location-in-Oakley thang. Nonetheless, it’s outrageous juice, kickin’ it CoCo style.

And then we leave early, thinking that we might take an adventurous highway trip across a levee bridge to find Miner’s Leap winery, a Clarksburg joint that we’d never visited before.

Crossing a bridge did not have to happen; we just look for the patrons congregating on the civilized patio below the levee roadway, an entire 12 inches above sea level.

We’d endured a bit of a cold snap in our neck of the woods, but one would never know it this past Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining on the outdoor tasting bar, the fire pit was smoldering, and the pet friendly digs were awash in canines, cats and Cinsault (among other varietal bottlings). Check out Kath’s second photo: So, what were YOU doing mid-January, 2013?

The varietal Cinsault was crazy: lots of cherry stuff. And then, we find out, via the back label, that the label’s great-grandpa was a convicted bootlegger in WA state’s town of Bothell in the 1920s, before being granted a presidential pardon upon Repeal.

All in all, a sweet couple of weeks for this couple of Oakley wine-lovers: a smattering of good press, good Pinot and a good Prohibition story.