Written by At Uncorked Ventures we spent the last two days visiting wineries, both new and old to us in Napa and Sonoma. I’ll give you a quick primer now and include more detailed write ups at the beginning of next week when I have more time.
Tuesday was a day that we had a number of tasting appointments. We started at Larkmeade which is affectionately referred to as the oldest start up in the valley. We enjoyed the wine and our time there and met an IPhone developer whom will be of great interest for wine lovers.
After Larkmeade we grabbed a bite to eat and started heading over the hill to the Ranch and new tasting facilities on the Audelssa property. Since we were two hours late the first time, we didn’t want to be late again. Going up Mount Veeder was interesting and we did find our way, arriving 45 minutes early. The property itself is breathtaking with views of both the city of San Francisco as well as the spiers of the Golden Gate bridge. As with our first experience with Audelssa, we were impressed by the wine. As an added benefit we were able to meet their resident winemaker Eric, see them sorting fruit and see open top containers of fermenting grapes.
On the way to the hotel we stopped in unannounced at Girard vineyards tasting room. My business partner Matt has had some experience with their wine and I was impressed with the quality/price ratio that they are offering.
Wednesday was a complete day for us. We arrived at Alpha Omega around 7am and spent the next 5 hours or so doing jobs around the winery in accordance with either harvest or bottling. We stirred the lees in oak barrels, we helped to box about 200 cases of wine and we pushed down the grape skins of some pinot noir.
After having lunch at Rutherford Grill we went back to the winery and spent over two hours doing a barrel tasting with their assistant winemaker Henrik. It was a very special experience. One thing we really like about Alpha Omega(and our other partner wineries) is that they take their winemaking very seriously without being pretentious about it. We were are very lucky to have that level of access and we enjoyed our time there very much.
We stopped and tasted some at another location on the way home, without any standouts to speak of.
