And you’re going to enter your $75 Cabernet in a competition?

Take my Appellation — Please!

Wine’s dirty little secret No. 1

Is Frankenwine coming to a bottle near you?

A realistic view of Napa's middle-class real estate market

And you’re going to enter your $75 Cabernet in a competition?

The California State Fair once again presented Daryl Sattui with the Golden Winery Award, recognizing his V. Sattui Winery as the top winery in California for 2007.

This marks the third time in the last four years that V. Sattui was bestowed this honor. This award is presented annually to the winery which has the greatest number of wines winning the highest number of awards.

Of the 28 V. Sattui wines submitted, 23 won awards, a record the winery says no other winery has accomplished in the State Fair Wine Competition.

The biggest award was for V. Sattui’s 2004 Preston Vineyard Cabernet, voted Best Napa Valley Cabernet and also the Best Red Wine from the Napa Valley out of hundreds of other wines submitted.

The winery's other big awards include:

Double Golds for 2004 Preston Vineyard Cabernet Best Napa Valley Cabernet & Best Red Wine from the Napa Valley, 2006 Marsangnier, 2006 Semillon (Sonoma) Best Semillon from Sonoma County, 2006 Semillon ( Napa Valley) Best Semillon from the Napa Valley and 2005 Crow Ridge Zinfandel, and golds for 2006 Dry Riesling – Best Riesling from California and 2006 White Zinfandel – Best White Zinfandel in California.

The California State Fair is the largest state wine competition in California. This year 650 wineries entered nearly 3,000 wines from around the state.

Not to take anything from the V. Sattui wines, but you’ll recall that this is the competition that called Charles Shaw (“Two Buck Chuck”) the best Chardonnay in California.

I tasted that wine, by the way. While I certainly wouldn’t call it the best in California (or even in Trader Joe’s where it’s sold), it’s a pleasant wine, light, showing fruit but not too much, not oaky or reeking of caramel and vanilla. It’s a great deal for $2, and competitive with most wines that cost far more.

Of course, I don’t like typical big, buttery California Chardonnays, so it’s not surprising I find the Charles Shaw version quite pleasant. I like the Sauvignon Blanc even better.

Also note that wineries get to choose the wines they submit, and though I doubt that they'd cheat by picking the best they make, this always raises questions among those who find it difficult to believe a wine made in such large quantities is that uniform.

Anyway, a winery must be very optimistic to  enter its wines in competitions. There's only one winner in a wine competition; everyone else loses.

Some wineries that make very good wines were embarrassed by being bested in the results -- and I don’t think those results are particularly valid or relevant.

Aug. 13, 2007

Take my Appellation — Please!

The recent decision by the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB) to stop issuing new wine appellations while it reevaluates them might be great news for some grapegrowers. Those appellations (American Viticultural Area) might be superfluous:

If Jerry Seinfeld were telling jokes to wine geeks, I can hear his routine:

“So we spent a ton of money and lobbied to get Pope Valley gerrymandered into the Napa Valley appellation even though it isn’t part of it geographically and has different soils and climate.

“Now we’re going to seek our own American Viticultural Area and spend more to convince people it’s really distinct!”

[Raucous laughter from happy wine drinkers]

He could tell a similar joke about Oregon, Washington, Lodi and many other wine-growing regions:

“Oregonians have finally convinced Americans that the state is a good place to grow wine grapes, especially Pinot Noir. So they’re dividing the wine regions into increasingly obscure bits, inevitably playing down Oregon. Is this designed to confuse customers? I think it’s a plot by Russian River Valley Pinot growers personally.”

“Most people barely realize Washington state makes good wines, much less that the Columbia Valley does. Wahluke Slope? Rattlesnake Hills? You must be kidding.”

And “Lodi is being jigsawed into six American Viticultural Areas. Lodi? Six! The local grape commission has fought hard to finally gain deserved recognition for the area as a premium-growing area instead of just a place you get stuck. Now we’re going to slice it into pieces you can only find with a GPS.”

Maybe one of Rodney Dangerfield’s one liners works better:

“American winemakers are adopting the French system of geographic designations so they can copy France’s recent success in wine!”

That reminds me of the minor Bordeaux winemaker who once asked me when Californians were going to adopt the French system and start mandating  varieties, planting methods and yields. I almost laughed until I realized he was serious.

Every study done proves that Napa Valley (and Napa) is by far the most valuable word you can put on a bottle of wine made in America, as Fred Franzia knew when he paid millions of dollars for the “Napa Ridge” name so he could slap it on bottles of cheap Central Valley wine. Nevertheless, now Napa vintners are insisting on promoting their own tiny appellations as if there was any difference between Rutherford and Oakville that more than seven people could distinguish blind.

Napa Valley now contains all or part of 13 AVAs, maybe to be more soon (Calistoga and Tulocay are pending, and maybe the aforementioned Pope Valley). Yes, there are differences between them, but most of the wine in Napa Valley comes from a few broad categories: the cool area south of the Yountville hills that trap the cold air from moving north; the warmer but rich upper valley floor, and the low alluvial slopes or "benches" from there to north of Calistoga; and the mountains.

Napa Valley wineries have traditionally stuck together, a huge strength compared to those in Sonoma, who squabble and often didn’t even mention that also-valuable name prominently on their labels until recently when it was mandated by law.

Of late, however, I’ve seen intense economic competition developing among Napa’s almost-400 gentlemen (and lady) vintners, and one response is to promote the so-called “sub-appellations” heavily. And that always leads to discussion of the differences between the appellations, with the obvious implication: “Our is better than theirs!”

Every time they do this, they’re chipping away at the strength that Napa has so carefully built.

People today don’t relate too well to geese laying golden eggs, but I think most of us understood what Joni Mitchell was singing about, “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”

That’s just what these Napa wineries are doing. They’ve got paradise, the most valuable “brand” in the industry, and they’re trying to disassociate themselves from it. Incredible.

Aside from people who write about wine like me and a few wine educators and people who work as paid AVA directors, who does this benefit? Almost no one.

About 1 percent of potential wine buyers care or should care whether a wine is from Oakville or Rutherford. In fact, there’s far more difference between the grapes grown in the west side of the two areas and those from the east 3 miles away than between the two adjacent townships north and south.

Most wine buyers respond primarily to grape variety, brand name and image and price, with recommendations from friends and experts also important.

They don’t care about appellations, especially ones they’ve never heard of. A few years ago, consumer research found consumers ranking the Ozarks higher than Stags Leap for wine because of the familiarity of the name. And if you’re reading this, I assume you know better than that.

Admittedly, if you’re trying to attract tourists, location matters, but beauty trumps wine quality in this case, and fortunately, some top wine areas are very pretty.

Don’t get me wrong. I love learning about and explaining the nuances of terroir, but I also find seminars on the relationship between the chemistry of organic sulfides and sensory perceptions fascinating, and I make part of my livelihood writing about them. But vintners who want to sell their luxury wines would do well to read Vanity Fair and Town & Country rather than the National Geographic Magazine, and do a good job explaining their own wines, not trying to convince people that the little piece of dirt they share with a few other wineries is a reason to buy the wine. 

Aug. 20, 2007

Wine’s Dirty Little Secret

Most wine in America is drunk without food

While we who write about wine rarely address it, most wine in America is drunk alone, not with food. The majority is enjoyed in place of cocktails or just hanging around with friends. Still other glasses are poured after dinner.

By contrast, most wine in traditional wine-drinking countries of the Mediterranean is consumed with meals, and considered as much a part of those meals as bread – which is almost universally served.   

That makes a big impact on the type of wines enjoyed.

If you’re drinking wine with a meal, you want something to complement the food and make it taste even better. Most regions traditionally only made a few types of wine, and that was enjoyed with everything served. Nobody worried much about whether it matched the food; the food and wine evolved together.

There were some surprises, too. Many regions in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece as well as France and most of Austria, Switzerland and Germany  traditionally favored white wines. It’s only recently that snobbishness has declared that red wines are better.

Those white wines, however, tend to be fairly acidic – crisp is a nicer term – and rather neutral, not full of strong flavors that clash with the foods.

Likewise, the reds tend to be a bit tart with a subtle balance of bitter tannins that enhance the food.

Few people drink either these bone-dry, somewhat acidic reds or whites (or the very popular dry rosés) alone. When wine critics visit Italy and Spain, for example, the winemakers try to get them to enjoy the wines with olives, cheese and tasty sausages and ham. They all make the wine taste better.

The favorite aperitifs of the Mediterranean are not white wines, but sparkling wines like Cava, Prosecco and Champagne, whisky (Scotch), bitter digestives like Campari and soda, or licorice-flavored pastis and its cousins.

In America and many other countries that don’t have a long wine tradition, however, the most popular wines are formulated to taste better alone. By far the most popular is slightly sweet, fruity Chardonnay smelling of vanilla and caramel from oak barrels (or chips) and butterscotch from the malolactic process that converts its tart malic (apple) acid to soft, buttery lactic (milk) acids.

There wines are a far cry from traditional French Burgundian wines made with the same relatively neutral Chardonnay grape, which tend to be crisp and light and don’t have the other flavors we associate with Chardonnay but are the result of winemaker manipulation.

We also like soft Italian Pinot Grigio, and, increasingly, Spanish Albariño, both good with foods but also pleasant alone. Sauvignon Blanc, the traditional runner-up white here, is often made soft and easy to drink for that reason.

For reds, the most popular wines to drink alone aren’t tannic Bordeaux, but fruit-filled, often sweetish wines such as Zinfandel, Merlot, or Shiraz, many from Australia or Chile.

This phenomenon extends to the high end of the market, too. Expensive “cult” Cabernets and Chardonnays are picked very ripe, making intense wines that are better for socializing than drinking with food. After all, if you’re going to open a bottle of California cabernet that cost hundreds of dollars, you want to savor it, not hide it under food.

There’s nothing wrong with either type of wine, but it’s important to keep in mind how you’ll serve a wine before buying it. And don’t hesitate to experiment. Wine prices are at their lowest in years, making it truly a buyers’ market.

 -- end--

Afterthought: The dirty little secret of Napa Valley: I believe that it produces far more white Zinfandel than any other wine. That’s because the two biggest producers, Beringer and Sutter Home, are based here.

Of course, virtually none of the grapes used in these wines are from Napa Valley, but the wineries were grandfathered into being allowed to use “foreign” grapes (from other counties). New wineries have to use mostly Napa grapes.

There’s nothing wrong with white Zinfandel anyway. It’s the fourth most popular varietal wine in America. But I don’t like it, just as I don’t like $50 oaky, buttery Chardonnay. Plenty of people do, however, including my sister; she drinks no other wine in spite of my attempts to introduce her to other types. 

August 27, 2007

Oxbow Public Market

Oxbow Public Market is rapidly becoming a vital hub of Napa life with its interesting food markets and other places to shop as well as many options to enjoy food, wine, and other beverages:

• Five Dot Ranch with sustainably produced, natural beef products.

• Whole Spice

• Pica Pica, serving Venezuelan arepas -- grilled corn flour-based flatbreads filled with various options.

• Kitchen Library, focusing on cookbooks and periodicals

• Heritage Culinary Artifacts, selling food-related antiques

• Tillerman Teas, serving and selling teas.

• Anette’s legendary chocolate

• The Olive Press, with an olive bar, olive oil and accessories

• Three Twins Organic Ice Cream, producing ice cream on site in a few months.

• Oxbow Wine Merchant with a huge square tasting and drinking bar, rooms for private tastings and dinners, and a full kitchen so it can serve meals, not just snacks.

•  The Oxbow Cheese Shop

• Taylor's Refresher is a cross between the one in St. Helena and the one at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, with retro booths inside, a counter and lots of seating outside with heaters and shading.

• The Fatted Calf is a full butcher shop that will feature pork products, notably sausages, as well as other meat, but ironically in spite of the name, not beef. They make and age the charcuterie and salumi at the store – the whole complex will be full of food production as well as sales.

• Model Bakery will move all its bread baking out of St. Helena to the new location, leaving the pastry in St. Helena.

• Kanaloa Seafood

• Ritual Roasters

• Hog Island Oyster bar

• Oxbow Produce Market

• Folio enoteca and cafe featuring wines from Michael Mondavi's Folio Wine Company

Every Tuesday is Locals Night with music, bargains and special deals -- and a big crowd of locals.

Carlin naturally expects the Market to attract tourists, but he’s definitely aiming it at locals. The Market will even offer a membership card for the community  good for special deals of all sorts from the merchants, much like the Napa Valley Vintners’ Napa Neighbors program..

Visitors to California from other states may not appreciate one of California’s rarest  attractions: the Napa River.

In most parts of the United States, navigable rivers are common, but there are very few in California. Most flow to the Pacific Ocean over an impassible sand bar or they dry up part of the year.

The Napa River, in fact, is why the city of Napa is where it is. It sits at the end of the navigable river; above Napa, the river is really a seasonal creek.

During the 19th century, Napa Valley’s largest crop was wheat, not grapes and ships loaded flour to be loaded to feed the hungry citizens of San Francisco. A mural on a building at First and Main Streets depicts that scene.

Over time, however, the river lost its importance in commerce. The river became little more than a sewer carrying the valley’s wastes to San Francisco Bay. Still, it flooded the city a few times each decade, discouraging investment or even maintenance of the city’s core.

It also became inhospitable to the salmon and trout that once traversed the river to spawn up valley.

Fortunately, a few local citizens recognized the importance of the river to Napa, and vowed to end the flooding while restoring the river as Napa’s gem. In 1996 citizens of Napa Valley voted to tax themselves to restore the river and return the river to a natural environment, fighting the floods with flood plains, bypasses and gradual slopes rather than concrete walls.

In the process, the city planned to make the river a focus of recreation and life, with trails, parks and new attractions that would draw people to the riverfront.

The project is well underway. New bridges allow water to flow freely, while buildings were removed from the east bank and the banks sloped to give the water a place to spread. New paths are underway and a shallow bypass will be a park in dry weather. Most dramatically, the old Napa Mill has been restored into a prime visitor attraction, Copia rose in the oxbow of the river followed by the Oxbow Public Market, and the Westin Verasa Hotel will open this summer,.

Many new restaurants, wine tasting rooms, art galleries, shops and clubs have blossomed downtown, and Napa shines at night as it hasn’t since World War II.

Still to come are a path that eventually will stretch for miles along the river with cafés, shops and housing on it downtown, and docks, terraces and other attractions that showplace the river itself. Visitors can already enjoy the river restoration and the path around the Napa Mill.

In a few years, the river restoration will have transformed Napa’s whole downtown.

 A good place to learn more is www.napadowntown.com, while www.napanow.com has a great map of the many wine-tasting venues downtown.

Though you wouldn’t know it from articles you read, Napa Valley isn’t really the glitzy scene you see for a few days each year at  Auction Napa Valley. It’s a farming community, not a retirement community or  destination resort. There’s a very strong sentiment to keep the Valley as is, and people in the valley zealously protect the farm land and fight incursions. There’s as much distain among residents toward those who want to make it a trendy playground for the wealthy as for those who want to fill it with development and tourist attractions.

The worst thing you can do here is something bad to the environment. People who arrogantly ignore environmental and other county regulations and flaunt their success are pariahs among most of the valley community – including other wealthy newcomers.

By contrast, the way to gain acceptance and respect is to protect the environment or help the needy. The local heroes are people like Joseph Phelps, who donated valuable land for farmworker housing, and the late Robert Mondavi, who’s given so much to education and the arts, and the many people who’ve donated their valuable land to the local Land Trust or placed it in permanent agricultural or natural preserves.

Everyone is close to the soil and even the rich act more like farmers than sophisticated city dwellers. The agricultural roots of Napa Valley are never far away, from dinner parties that start at 6:30 and are over by 10, to the jeans and boots favored by residents and the roar of wind machines protecting the grapes on chilly Spring mornings.

It’s often difficult to tell the wealthy vintners --  owners of wineries – from the hired winemakers who make their wine, and in fact, in some cases they are the same people. There’s no hierarchical society like that found in most cities; the life of the valley is wine, and if you’re involved in the wine business, you belong. The former school teacher bootstrapping a winery or the Mexican-born vineyard manager is as welcomed as the rich developer, though naturally people tend to develop friends with similar interests and assets.

The “aristocracy” is the old time families who’ve owned property for decades – even generations -- but they’re not that exclusive and seem to welcome others if they play by the rules: Respect the environment, don’t flaunt your wealth and do good things for the valley and its people. The way for newcomers to get accepted is to participate in charitable  and wine organizations. Giving lots of money to good causes (including big purchases at the wine auction) helps: Wealthy people here spend a lot of time and money supporting each others’ favorite causes. 

During the summer, the elite we read about in the San Francisco society columns like to party in Napa Valley, with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome, a part owner of Plumpjack Winery in Oakville, joining the Gettys and Trainas at the home John Traina once shared with ex-wife and novelist Danielle Steele, and some locals like the Swansons of frozen dinner and winery fame are members of that informal club. City swells do like to invite other locals to their parties for color, but most Napans don’t take that scene too seriously. They've got vines to tend and wines to sell. That doesn't leave much time to join the beautiful people at play.

What else is there to do in Napa Valley?

Most people who head for Napa Valley are undoubtedly attracted by its picturesque wineries and excellent wines, but there’s plenty to see and do even if you’re not into wine.

The visual and performing arts are natural complements to the fine wines and food of Wine Country life, but in all truth, art and entertainment have been a bit slower to blossom in Napa Valley than edible art. However, they are rapidly catching up, and the Valley offers exceptional attractions in both areas. It also features many outdoor activities but we’ll save them for another time.

Napa Valley contains a number of exceptional collections of art open to the public, and its wineries, restaurants and galleries feature a wide selection, too.

From the south, the major art museums are the remarkable di Rosa Preserve, which exhibits more than 2000 contemporary pieces both inside numerous buildings and outside. Some of the art can only be called bizarre but clearly meets its goal to stretch your senses. Admission and tours are by appointment only, though a galley is open without calling ahead for $3.

The Hess Collection winery in the mountains west of Napa is a fine collection of more mainstream contemporary art. There’s no charge to visit, but most people combine it with tasting Hess’s excellent wines.

Napa Valley Museum in Yountville features many interesting visiting shows as well as a permanent collection.

Mumm Napa Valley includes a photographic gallery with changing and permanent exhibits, while Cliff Lede Vineyards and Turnbull Winery also have galleries.

The amazing sculpture garden at Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford is actually part of the I. Work Gallery collection, and you’re supposed to check with them before wandering over the resort’s grounds. It’s well worth the effort to see pieces of outstanding modern sculptors.

The other major public collection is at Clos Pegase Winery in Calistoga. The building itself is a work of art, and it houses part of owner Jan Shrem’s eclectic collection of ancient to contemporary art.

The cities of Napa, Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga also sport numerous galleries selling art to the public.

The performing arts have exploded in Napa Valley, too, fueled by the restoration of the intimate 1870 Napa Valley Opera House in Napa and the renovation of the 1200-seat Lincoln Theater at the Veteran’s Home in Yountville into a first-class performance center. Both host a full schedule of varied musical and other acts, from popular to classic. Copia also holds regular concerts including outdoors during the summer in its riverside amphitheater. It shows interesting films Friday nights, the Jarvis Conservatory shows art films most Saturdays and opera the other, while Cameo Cinema in St. Helena is an small, old-time theater with excellent screenings.

Many restaurants, bars and clubs in the valley also feature live entertainment, and the tiny White Barn theater in St. Helena attracts dedicated fans. Some wineries, notably Robert Mondavi, hold popular summer concerts.

You can find schedules in many local publications and web sites including www.napalife.com. 

Entertainment in Napa

Napa is also now home to more and more live music and other entertainment.

The newest is Silo’s Wine Bar, now open in the Napa Mill.

It serves Napa wines with jazz and standards. It’s a showcase for Wesla Whitfield and Mike Greensilll, a singer and pianist well known nationwide for their rendering of the great American songbook of classics, and new residents of Napa Valley.

It shares space with the MJ Schaer Gallery. Check it out now from 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Visitors and locals can also catch the eclectic selections of performances and concerts at the exquisite Napa Valley Opera House, probably America’s best intimate concert venue. It has events many nights a week; you can check the latest schedule at www.nvoh.org.

Jarvis Conservatory has art films during the week and the popular Saturday live opera with talented local and visiting pros and amateurs once a month — plus opera from La Scala occasionally.

The Oxbow Public Market has live music each Tuesday evening from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. during Locals Night.

Uva Trattoria has long featured jazz and small ensemble versions of big band favorites five nights a week, Thursday through Sunday.

Downtown Joe’s: also has live music five nights a week; it’s more contemporary and aimed at a younger crowd than Uva’s.

The new Ceja Vineyards Wine Tasting Salon and Lounge is now featuring Latin music Friday nights and salsa dancing with lessons on Saturday night.

Piccolino’s has music some nights, including every other Monday.Other downtown restaurants that feature live music at times include Allegria and the Border.