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Pride Mountain Vineyards
During our last trip to Napa, we were able to identify at least 3 new wineries that we’re interested in partnering with in the upcoming months. While we’ll wait until after shipping those wines to talk about them I did get a chance to taste and take a tour at Pride Mountain Vineyards during my time in Napa. Pride’s probably not a fit for any of our clubs, not because of quality but because they are already extremely well known.
Having not personally spent a lot of time on Spring Mountain it was good to get a chance to explore in person, I have enjoyed Pride’s wine on quite a few occasions because my business partner/brother in law has been a club member for some time.
The trip up Spring Mountain starts easily enough. Turn off Highway 29 in St. Helena (one of the cutest small towns you’ll encounter anywhere) and make a right on Spring Mountain Drive. It’s a windy mountain road without services (yes we had gas this time, unlike here or especially here) and the drive up to Pride which sits atop the mountain took the better part of 15 minutes and included a few fun moments like being tailgated by a VW Bug and having a semi truck decide that it needed 3 feet of our lane on a curve. It seemed appropriate to be there on a rainy, foggy day because the GPS had put us into white space well before we found the winery itself.
The tour at Pride is reservation only, although I hear telling them that you have a reservation can sometimes be as good as actually having one and takes about an hour while costing $10 per person. I do believe they will credit that $10 towards one of your wine purchases however.
We started in the tasting room with another couple (from Pennsylvania and Toronto respectively) and were able to taste their Chardonnay which is a solid selection grown in Carneros. It shows hints of lemon, orange and nuts (almond, walnut?) while having a basic sense of acidity. Retailing for $37 I can see a lot of people liking the wine, personally I tend to look for more acidic whites in that range.
After that we were taken to a map of the vineyards at the side of the tasting room which also included a picture of the Pride family. Theirs is, in many ways a quintessential Napa story having moved to Spring Mountain to grow some grapes and retire in relative anonymity. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, in large part because Parker gave their first Merlot a 94 point score. After the short and enjoyable history lesson, we moved outside.
I expect our time outside was shortened quite a bit due to the weather, but our host whose name and business card currently escape me after traveling (currently attending Sonoma State in their Wine MBA program which is very cool I might add) showed us that they have a small example vineyard planted in the front of the tasting room. They plan to let visitors pick a grape off the vine and taste how different it is from grapes you find at the grocery store. I think this is a great idea and should give visitors an even bigger connection to the wine that they find in their glasses.
We then walked toward the caves and learned the most interesting part about the winery…..more tomorrow!
