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Montelena and Marcoux shine at Benchmark Dinner

33 is the name of a brand of beer I used to drink in west Africa.

33 is the atomic number of arsenic.

33 also happens to be, in French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese, the word a patient is asked to say when a doctor listens to their lungs with a stethoscope (Trente-Trois… Trentatrè… Treizeci şi trei… Treinta y Tres… and Trinta e Três).

More significantly, to readers of this column anyway, the importance of 33 is this: it was the number of very lucky individuals invited to the annual Benchmark Wine Group dinner in Yountville last week.

Fortunately, for these 33, there was no beer, arsenic or stethoscopes present.

“Invited” is such a loaded word because 33 guests “were invited” but they each had to pay $185 to attend the event.

Benchmark Wine Group is one of the Bay-area wine merchants from whom I personally buy a lot of wine…. rare stuff, premium stuff, pre-arrival stuff, and cellared stuff from private collections. But always GOOD stuff. And, for the record, I never get a trade break or inter-winery discount; I pay full retail, or e-tail, like everyone else.

Dave Parker, founder of Benchmark Wine Group.
Hey, Dave, lose the tie! This is Napa Valley!

Benchmark Wine Group was founded seven years ago by Dave Parker, whose earlier claim to fame was that, in 1998, he launched the first-ever, continuous online wine auction house (Brentwood Wine Company). 

Dave’s even earlier claim to fame was success in the high-tech venture world. Some guys buy vineyards with their new wealth; others buy wine companies. Dave, who’s a maverick, did both.

Anyway, back to 33.  For as long as anyone can remember, Benchmark has been holding special event dinners like the one last week. The annual dinner in Napa Valley is held during the first week of June, to coincide with Wine Auction Napa Valley.

And so, 33 guests from Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, Arizona, and nearby Bay-area towns assembled for a taste of the good life last Wednesday.

While there were not 33 wines served (too bad you missed that theme, Benchmarkians!) there were more than enough wines opened, all out of the Benchmark cellar.

Dinner was served at Bistro Jeanty, in trendoid little Yountville, which, in case you have been living in a cave, has the highest number of great restaurants on a per capita basis in America. Whitney Farris, from Benchmark, selected a wide range of young and aged wines from many countries to complement the fare.

Here’s what we ate and drank, with my tasting notes added:

Hors d’oeuvres
Gruyere cheese croquettes, pear and endive salad on endive spear

NV Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs

It’s always festive and refreshing to start a multi-course dinner with a great sparkling wine. For starters, this is the only time in the evening when there is no pressure to evaluate the beverage at hand. Why is that?

Another observation: Sparkling wine – and this Schramsberg is a really good one – acts as a sort of transmission fluid, helping lubricate social gears, ease guests forge new relationships, and awaken one’s palate for the courses to follow.

Entree
Salade de latitude or beet and mache salad 

2006 Aubert Vineyards Chardonnay, Lauren Vineyard WA96-98

A pale, straw-colored wine, with the hue of pear juice. Only paler. A very French-style Chardonnay, with good attack, a beautiful balance of acidity and fruit and great length on the finish. 93 points.

One of my observations from dinner, where guests assembled to judge wines, pair them with food, and really get into the analysis of what’s being poured:

EVERYONE AT THE SAME TABLE SHOULD BE POURED WINE FROM THE SAME BOTTLE.

I noticed – and experienced throughout the evening -- that wines poured for guests at our table often came from two different servers who descended on our table at the same time. Or when a bottle was emptied halfway through serving our table guests, the waiter went to fetch a fresh bottle, which was poured for the rest of the table.

This really makes evaluating wine – and sharing the experience with one’s tablemates – frustrating, if not downright impossible.

My glass of wine may have come from a challenged bottle, while the person sitting directly next to me may have a textbook-perfect example of the wine, poured from a different bottle.

Remember, folks: THERE ARE NO TWO IDENTICAL BOTTLES.
There is really just similar wine in similar bottles.

So, at the Benchmark dinner, I started to riff poetically about my Aubert and someone at our table, who was poured from a different bottle, had a totally different reaction to the wine than I did.  When we tried to share what we thought was a common experience, we each first thought that the other guy must have a lousy palate. In fact, I only discovered halfway through dinner that we had been drinking totally different wines with the same name, but poured from different bottles.

2002 Peter Michael Chardonnay, Cuvee Indigene IWC94+


Much more yellow than the Aubert, a New World bruiser with steroidal features: wood, spices, oak all nicely integrated but all of it shouting, cubed to the power of 3, certainly relative to the Aubert. Even so, judged on its own merit, this wine was also a 93-pointer. Or at least MY wine was. I am not sure everyone at my table had the same experience, as some were tasting Peter Michael Chardonnay from a different bottle.

First Main
Coq au vin or Daube de Boeuf

1996 Jadot Bonnes Mares WA94-96
A somewhat challenged bottle, producing a slightly tired wine with touches of saddle leather, sauerkraut, mushrooms on the floor of a forest, a bit of dankness, soy, and then a sweep of sweetness in the middle palate. My wine showed a hint of oxidation. When I tasted the wine served to another guest, poured from a different bottle, the revelation was dramatic. The second bottle was brighter, there were no hints of oxidation, the fruit was stronger, more focused and there were spices in the middle palate that just weren’t evident in my glass of this wine. Overall, I’d score the combo of these wines 92 points. Don’t ask about the math, or algebraic formula, to reach this numerical attribution – it’s lost in the scribbles of my dinner notes.

2004 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir, Cohn Vineyard WS97


Aromas of fresh latex paint (in a good way!) and of leather seats in a new car (also in a good way!). Had a Port-like attack, very syrupy, very BIG, very reduced. Concentrated flavors of fruit, chocolate, but almost a parody of what Pinot Noir should be like. This represents a style of winemaking, which produces over-extracted, over-concentrated, over-alcoholized wines. The finish on the Kosta Brown was mostly hot, rather than pleasant. 90 points.

Of the two wines served with the daube, the Jadot from my tablemate’s glass, was the most complementary. It fed into the rich dish, cleansed my palate, made me want to go back to the beef dish. The Kosta Brown behaved like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, attempting to Smack Down the daube and keep it down for the count of three. No let up, no relief. Just a bruiser.

Second Main
Tuna au Poivre or Filet au Poivre

1987 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon Estate WA98

I had six bottles of this wine in my own cellar and finished the last bottle years ago, when I thought the wine had hit its peak. When I saw this wine on the dinner menu, I thought, for sure, it would be over the hill.

But the wine poured at dinner exhibited monumental freshness – like the thing has another 10 years to go!

For me, this was the Surprise Wine of The Night. I had so few expectations about this 22-year-old California Cab, yet it exhibited a powerful, fresh nose, with loads of ripe black and red fruit. On the palate, it was delicious, hinting at roasted nuts, cherries, and blackberries. Very youthful. If others at the tasting read these notes and think I am on drugs to make these comments, all I can do is remind them: NO TWO BOTTLES ARE ALIKE and my Chateau Montelena was sensational. Period. 95 points.

1982 Gruaud Larose WA96

Let’s be clear about the filet au poivre. It should have been called “poivre au filet” – pepper with steak. Because there was so many freshly crushed black peppercorns on both the top and bottom sides of my filet that the fiery blackness obliterated the wonderful Gruaud that was in my glass. NOT a successful pairing.

I resorted to Damage Control to revitalize my palate – hunks of bread liberally smeared with butter.

My suggestion to Jeanty – lightly roll only the edge of the filet in crushed peppercorns, not the top and bottom sides of the filet, which provide too much exposure. The beef had way too much pepper for ANY wine that might have been selected to complement the fare.

In fact, the only beverage that might have complemented my “poivre au filet” would have been water forced through a fire hose.

But back to the Gruaud. Leather, pencil graphite, and rose petals on the earliest whiff. But underneath, and certainly evident over time, was the appearance of brett-y, sweaty, vegetal elements that ultimately result in this being the only sub-90 pointer wine of the evening. 89 points.

1996 Gaja Langhe Conteisa WA93-95
This wine, according to Parker (Robert, not Dave), falls well within the window of drinkability, yet the bottle poured at Jeanty was so tight, so young, so closed that there was little over which one might wax poetic.

The nose was tight. The early sips were tight, revealing little. The wine showed no characteristics to reveal origin or age. I found myself asking: “Is this one of those wines that is ageless… or never-ageable?”

Every once in a while, one finds a wine that just never, ever wants to evolve; it kind of gets stuck in time and is either unwilling, or unable, to mature (sort of like me). This Gaja Barolo might just be one such wine. At 13 years of age, there is not a hint of evolution, or movement. 90 points.

2003 Marcoux Chateauneuf du Pape, Vieilles Vignes WA99


Wine of the Night. I predicted it, because almost every time you pour a killer Chateauneuf du Pape, the harmonious Grenache-Syrah blend eclipses all the other wines on the table. This evening’s Benchmark dinner was no exception.

The 2003 Marcoux is still young. It exhibited bright ripe red fruit on the nose, and delivered a BIG Grenache bomb hit on the initial sip. This wine has so much fruit that it hides the 16-plus percent alcohol. The wine has layers of complexity, a rich, pillow-y middle palate which soars, and a finish that makes you beg the waiter to go find another short pour. 97 points.

Dessert
Crepe Suzette or Seasonal Bread Pudding


1932 Massandra Red Port 

Massandra sounds like an Internet radio station, something akin to Pandora. But, in fact, it’s a near-200-year-old winemaking collective near Yalta on the Black Sea, in the area known as the Crimea.

In the 1890s, seven football field-length tunnels were bored deep into a Crimean mountain, creating the region’s largest wine cellar.

Not long after, a certain Prince chose to cellar his private wine collection at Massandra, in the passively chilled underground cellars. The Prince’s library became known as “The Massandra Collection,” which contained thousands of wines from all over the world.

When rich folks weren’t storing wine at Massandra, they were making it there. These locally made wines were notated, as being from the “Massandra Collection,” though “being from the Massandra Collective,” is more accurate.

Wines from the Massandra Collective have always tended to be sweet. The area boasts 4,400 acres of Muscat, Tokay and Pinot Gris vines. There are also a handful of wines made from grapes that sound like the names of Japanese baseball players -- Ekim-Kara, Lapa-Kara and Metin-Kara, to name a few. (Aren’t these the Dodgers’ First-, Second- and Third-basemen?)

For dessert at the Benchmark dinner, two examples of really old Massandra Collective wines were served. Dave Parker had made it a personal quest to get them for the Benchmark cellar. Whitney chose to serve them at dinner.

The 1932 Port is the color of maple syrup. The use of the word “Port,” by the way to describe this beverage is somewhere between modestly inaccurate and poetic license. I, for one, think of “Port” as coming from Portugal and being made from the classic grapes from that region. I tend to treat the word “Port” as I do “Champagne.” Sparkling wines made from Chardonnay or Pinot Meunier grapes from other parts of the world should not be  called “Champagne.” Same, too, for Port, but this is only MY way of thinking.

So this 1932 Massandra “Port,” has none of the color, depth, or intensity of flavor of old, real Ports. (I am thinking specifically of the classic vintage of 1927, which produced “Ports,” of forehead-slapping intensity.)

By contrast, the Massandra is a weak sister (okay, brother, in these gender-challenging times). More like a “curio” from the past, than a “Port” from the past. But when you are lucky enough to be tasting a handmade, 77-year-old, artisanal wine – this is a time to reflect, a time to be humbled, a time to be thankful. Hallelujah. 90 points.

1923 Massandra Kuchuk Usen Madeira

The color of apple cider, this beverage tastes as though the bartender has mixed an old Madeira with some middle-aged tokay, and thinned out the concoction with some fresh Muscat. The bottles poured were imported by Sothebys, resold to Bonhams and bought by Benchmark. They’ve traveled a fair bit from their origin in the Crimea.

This Massandra “Madeira” (again, you can question the appropriateness of the term “Madeira” for a Crimean wine…) has touches of mint, spearmint, and pear. It is another “curio” wine, and I am grateful for the opportunity to taste such an old, rare, world wine. 90 points.

… and just when you thought it was over….

… Whitney brought out one more dessert treasure, another wine, which I  had never tasted. But this one from the New World.

2002 Sine Qua Non, Mr. K Noble Man.
From the ever-inventive Manfred Krankl, comes this sweet dessert wine made from Chardonnay plucked from the Alban Vineyard. The wine was sweet, young, deliciously acidic and, at the end of a very long, very vinous dinner, overkill.

The wine exhibited flavors of maple, and the juice you might get if you crushed fresh walnuts and removed the oils. Sounds weird, I know, but that’s what you find in the inventive wines of M. Krankl. 90 points.

If you were not one of the lucky 33 to attend the Benchmark Private Dinner in Yountville, fear not – your chance may yet come!

Benchmark hosts similar dinners in different cities across the country throughout the year.  In fact, Benchmark has just announced the schedule for the remainder of the year:

Minneapolis dinner September 24. 
Chicago dinner September 26. 
New York City  - the date is not yet firm, but the event will likely be held in October or November. 

You wanna find out more? Contact Whitney at wfarris@benchmarkwine.com.

If you’re a big shot with lots of friends, you might even invite Whitney into your home to conduct a private tasting – no matter where you live. 

“If someone assembles eight to 12 people, I will work with them to co-host a dinner in their home or at their favorite restaurant. I bring wine from Benchmark, and work with the chef, or caterer, to design the menu. The cost of such a private event, to cover the wines, ranges from $150 to $250 per head,” says Whitney.

Sounds like one helluva special birthday gift or unique surprise party. Just make sure you invite napaman!

Auction Napa Valley Gets Under Way…

Call this America’s best (fill in the blank)*.

*(Party? Annual wine auction? Charity fund-raising event? Four-day food and wine love-in?) Some how, each of these definitions is correct.

Whatever you call it, the 29th Auction Napa Valley is half over, having started Thursday. Guests paid $2,500 per person for full-attendance privileges. The climax is always a spirited live auction, which includes individual lots for wines, trips, and even cars, often surpassing $500,000-plus per lot.

Napa Valley Vintners, the non-profit trade association responsible for promoting and protecting the Napa Valley appellation, organizes this annual event to raise funds for local charities.

Since inception, the event, the country’s premier charity wine auction, has raised more than $85 million, pledged by thirsty bidders. While the wines they bid on generally leave the valley, their funds stay here to subsidize local healthcare, youth services and affordable housing.

Napa Valley Vintners, which represents 350 area wineries, invited napaman to attend the first half of the weekend’s events. So consider this a half-time update.

Thursday

 

Under the auspices of Napa Valley Vintners, many local wineries opened their doors for auction attendees. Some offered special events. But every winery poured its top wines and offered complementary appetizers. Auction guests zoomed around the valley, from 11 am to well after dusk, checking out the many winery parties.

Napaman used the opportunity to update tasting notes on the wines of three wineries.

First stop was Round Pond, in Rutherford, the home of judicious Cabernet.

Winemaker Brian Brown and Round Pond owner Miles MacDonnell.

Round Pond is a family affair, owned by a brother and sister team, Miles and Ryan (that’s a her) MacDonnell. They have owned the 360-acre property for some time, but until recently, sold all the fruit to top Napa Valley wineries.

A few years ago, the MacDonnell’s decided to keep five percent of their fruit to craft a signature blend for their own label.

The setting of Round Pond is glorious. The architecture of the main building is memorable, as are the wines.

2007 Round Pond Cabernet Sauvignon
I really liked the barrel sample of 2007 Cabernet, which is Cab and a squeak (three percent) of Petit Verdot. This wine, crafted by winemaker Brian Brown, is beautifully structured, expressive and not overpowering. When released this fall, it will retail for $60.

I would love to find this wine blindly inserted into the July Rutherford Dust Society tasting to which napaman is invited; it would be fun to see if I like it as much then and discover, too, if I can pick it out blind in a line-up of 20 unknown Rutherford Cabs. Don’t know how I’d like it then, but sure did like it Thursday: 94 points.

Next Stop – The Lore of Tor was in Store

I jumped at the chance to attend Tor Kenward’s open-house: More than a dozen different blends of Tor’s delicious wines were poured at one of my favorite victual venues in Napa Valley, Mustards Grill.

Amidst Mustards’ raised organic vegetable beds, Tor Kenward set up tasting tables.

Tor winemaker Jeff Ames and Brittany Savory pour the winery’s top Syrahs, and Cabs at Mustards Grill.

Napaman doesn’t generally love outdoor tastings; gusts of wind whip essential, compacted aromas out of the glass and the heat of a Napa Valley midday sun can makes one’s palate lazy. So my appreciation of Tor’s wines was probably challenged, but of the 13 wines I tasted, two really stood out:

2006 TOR Cabernet Sauvignon, Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard
Love the wine, don’t love the price. You expect a wine of this price -- $150 – to deliver the goods, and this one does. But in this economy, how many wine drinkers are rushing out to buy triple-digit wines?
I found this to be a sensuously rich – ethereal really – wine, filled with fresh ripe red fruit and a hint of Virginia tobacco (given Jeff’s roots, maybe it was Alabama tobacco?). Gawjus jus.  94 points.

2006 TOR ROCK Syrah, Hudson Vineyard
A thrilling wine. The best of the Syrahs poured, a truly pleasurable purple paean. I adore the intensity of this Syrah, the balance and elegance. And, oh yes, the price – back in the ballpark of reality: $60 for this 95-point wine.

Later the same day…

Julie Johnson, owner/winemaker of Tres Sabores

To round out the day, napaman visited a hidden Rutherford winery, Julie Johnson’s Tres Sabores. She hosted a party for friends, and loyal customers from around the country, offering five different wines to taste.

Her 2007 Pourque No? (the question mark is on the label) brought to mind a famous Paul Masson marketing line: “We will sell no wine before its time.” Because this 2007 wine is being previewed, and sold, before its time.

The background: Last year at Auction Napa Valley, Julie offered her 2005 Pourque No?, which was a delicious, solid, 92-pointer. This blend of Zin, Cabernet, Petit Sirah and Petit Verdot is always a crowd-pleaser, especially at the price: $25. I’ve even seen it for as little as $20 in the economic downturn.

After Julie sold out her modest production of 2005 Pourque No?, she introduced her 2006 Pourquoi No?. It was so good that she blew through her entire production before year-end. That was the wine Julie expected to offer guests at this year’s auction party, but there wasn’t a drop to be found in the realm.

So Julie bottled her 2007 Pourquoi No? slightly ahead of schedule to have product ready for the auction crowd (and for restaurant beverage managers, who love this wine and who hate to be out of stock, regardless of vintage).

The result is a wine that, after only a short spell in bottle, needs time to age, put on some fat, gain focus, and broaden its shoulders. The subtle sweetness of the 110-year-old Zinfandel, which Julie gets from Calistoga, and which constitutes 70 percent of the blend, is missing in this young wine. It’s there, but will need several months to show. There are muddled notes of raspberry in the 2007 blend, but the wine is nowhere near as bright and delicious as it will be if this wine is given a few months to recover from bottle shock.

(Many wines go through ‘bottle shock,’ a period when the wine, or some of its component grapes, appear to be dumbed-down; the wine is less exciting, offers fewer, sometimes no, regular flavor characteristics. Winemakers call this effect ‘bottle shock.’ It can occur two weeks, or two months, or even a year after bottling, and can last months in some wines, or as long as years in some Bordeaux wines.)

I look forward to revisiting this wine at the Rutherford Dust Society in the summer to learn how it is evolving.

Friday

Site of the 29th annual Auction Napa Valley – Robert Mondavi Winery

Some 2,500 people converged on the Robert Mondavi Winery for Friday’s indoor/outdoor food and wine fest known as Taste Napa Valley. It was a chance for guests to sample the very best food and wines of Napa Valley and to hobnob with the chefs and winemakers behind the glorious fare.

The day is a bit like a three-ring circus; you don’t know whether to be out at the stalls tasting the best food… or be in the Mondavi chai (where wine is barrel-aged) to see the 112 lots, which will be offered at Saturday’s Live Auction… or hang out in the fermentation room, where 120 wineries are pouring their (mostly) 2008 Cabernet blends from barrel.

Perhaps the best way to share what the day was like, is to present the elements in snapshot format:

Dozens of local restaurants participated, each offering a signature item. Rutherford Grill, where you will ALWAYS find winemakers converging, presented house-smoked salmon, served on pointed toasts, sauced with a remoulade.
 

Auberge du Soleil, the ritzy Rutherford resort, presented toasted rounds topped with an assemblage of fava beans, prosciutto, and Berkswell cheese (English sheep’s milk).


A novel way of presenting an innovative chilled treat – from whom else? The French Laundry. Chef Thomas Keller filled small paper cups with watermelon-flavored, shaved ice, drizzled it with olive oil infused with fresh garden basil, and topped the concoction with – are you kidding me? – chopped black olives.

Dale Ray, the new chef at Mustards Grill, and owner Cindy Pawlcyn, serve the restaurant’s classic smoked ribs.

Thomas Keller, owner of the French Laundry, Bouchon and Ad Hoc, all in Yountville, was present to hand out his butter-rich, super-dense, super-moist, brownie-like Chocolate Bouchons, a signature sweet at Bouchon Bakery.


Love the hat! Hiding beneath it is Lori Narlock, a public relations specialist in the wine industry.

Although bidding began a month ago on 112 auction lots offered only in an online format, guests at the Friday event were still making bids right up to cut-off time at freestanding terminals around the Mondavi property.
The top e-bid lot – for $$13,500 -- was for three 6-liter bottles of Arietta Wine, a case of Arietta library wines, and a private charity auction to be held in the winning bidder’s home, courtesy of winery owner and famed Napa Valley auctioneer Fritz Hatton.

Santa Rosa Caricaturist Doug Shannon sketched guests at the all-day food/fun/frivolity fest – Taste Napa Valley – held on the lawn, beside the vineyards, of the Robert Mondavi Winery.
 

Napa Valley Vintners converted Mondavi’s fermentation room into a full-bore tasting room, where 120 wineries presented their (mostly) 2008 Cabernet barrel samples. These were the wines on which guests bid for cases.
Pouring their glorious Cabernet above are Mike and Treva Harris of Harris Estate Vineyards.
The din in the fermentation room approached that which you’d experience on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with jets taking off.  An appropriate simile – as bids for many of these wines headed for the stratosphere.

Full use was made of the Mondavi property. The 42 major auction lots for Saturday’s Live Auction were displayed in Mondavi’s chai, where earlier vintages of Cabernet barrel age.

Lot 1 of 42 lots gives an idea of the grandeur and size of the lots in the Live Auction. Lot 1 offers 135 bottles (!) of fine Napa Valley wine, plus a portrait to be taken by Napa Valley Vintners’ photographer Jason Tinacci, plus a special dinner, plus an album of photos.

No wonder Fritz Hatton is smiling – his lot of Arietta wines received the highest bid -- $13,500 – among 112 lots in the e-auction. Celebrating with Fritz (on left), are Anna Simons (Pope) and Mark Pope, AKA The Bounty Hunter.

Friday Taste Napa Valley event is a time for locals to bump into friends whom they haven’t seen for a while. It was great seeing these three amigos and catching up – Margrit Biever Mondavi and Tim Mondavi, partners in Continuum, their new winery project, and Genevieve Janssens, Director of Winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery.

As napaman was not accredited to cover Saturday’s events, which culminate with the Live Auction, you’ll have to check Napa Valley Vintners website Sunday, after 3 pm, to get Live Auction results and the grand final auction tally.
You’ll find them at http://www.napavintners.com/trade/tm_3_releases.asp

No Wonder GM Went Broke… They Gave my Great-Grandfather $49 billion…

Well, that’s $49 billion in today’s currency, based on compounded interest at seven percent.

 What General Motors actually paid my great-grandfather, Louis Henry Perlman, was $3 million for his invention, at a time before there was any income tax.

Had Louis taken the money and left it in the bank (a stable, reliable one, at that) it would have propelled his heirs – me included – into the stratosphere of wealth shared by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. $49 billion is a lot of cash.

The invention that made Louis Henry Perlman wealthy?

Believe it or not: the spare tire.

Or the “demountable rim for motor-car wheels,” as it was called in 1906, when my great-grandfather filed his application with the US Patent Office. 

Until Louis Perlman invented the spare tire, early motorists had to pry a punctured, deflated tire off the fixed rim of a car wheel, replacing it with a new pneumatic tube. They then had to huff and puff, and inflate the new tire on the spot. The whole process was laborious and dirty.

Louis Henry Perlman, inventor, journalist, photographer – and my great-grandfather.

Perlman’s invention permitted motorists to carry a spare rim on their car, with tire affixed and already inflated. My great-grandfather’s invention enabled drivers, for the first-time ever, to take the wheel off the axle by removing  a few bolts. How ingenious. How simple. How quickly stolen by several manufacturing companies. More about this saga in a minute. First, the family lore.

Louis Perlman was a kindly man, according to stories my mother told. But also an eccentric man, a wealthy man, and in the end, a destitute man.

Louis H. Perlman, my mother, Anne, on the left, and her sister, Grace, at Montrose, NY, circa 1925 or 1926. 

I was inculcated with family lore about Louis Perlman whenever we visited the property in Montrose NY, which he had owned and which my grandfather maintained through the 1960s.

Montrose was a wooded, 55-acre estate which Perlman bought from former Secretary of State William Seward’s family with the cash that he made selling his demountable rim to General Motors in 1904. My family said that they first put it on their car, called a Welch, in 1906.

In addition to getting $3 million in un-taxed cash and GM stock, Perlman was also promised one new GM car each year for the rest of his life, without having to return any of the previous year’s cars.

I vividly recall the barn extension at Montrose, which workmen added to annually, to cover each new car, which my great-grandfather was given. There were dozens of one-year-driven models, lined up side by side, in the long barn extension, with an overhanging roof to keep the cars dry and clean.

My mother (left) and her older sister, Grace, at Montrose, NY, in front of one of their grandfather's GM cars.

 Along the way, family lore seems to have covered up some of Perlman’s strengths and weaknesses, as evidenced by some recently discovered historical material.

Lore may also have mis-attributed the source of Perlman’s wealth. It may not have come directly from General Motors, as my family said, but there sure as hell was major GM money in Perlman’s life; by 1916, my great-grandfather was president of the Perlman Rim Corporation, capitalized with $10 million of private money.

One of Perlman’s business partners was W. C. Durant, president of General Motors. Although they headquartered Perlman Rim Corp. in New York, the firm built the largest – and only exclusive – demountable rim plant in the world, in Jackson, Michigan. The plant, covering five acres, produced 5,000 sets of demountable rims every day, according to an out-of-print Who’s Who of American Industrialists. Enough rims to equip 1.5 million cars annually.

 

Louis H. Perlman and my mother, Anne, at the family home in Montrose, NY, beside the barn. 

Had great-grandfather Perlman just socked the dough away that he made for his heirs, of whom I am one, the family fortune today would dwarf the wealth of many of today’s Forbes-listed billionaires. But fate wasn’t kind to grand-pappy Perlman; he lost most of his wealth in the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing years of the depression and my grandfather was still paying off Louis’ debts in the 1950s, as my mother used to tell me.

But, oh! Was my great-grandfather colorful. Certainly as memorable as a Diamond Jim Brady, or an early Rockefeller, though Perlman’s story, unlike theirs, has been lost in space and time. 

Perhaps a few highlights of his career need to be added here, simply to set the record straight. (And to tease any would-be movie producers looking for a good story for the Big Screen; be sure to call napaman for the screen rights!)

My great-grandfather was born November 26, 1861, in Kovno, Russia. Louis was one of three children born to Lesser and Celia Perlman. Lesser, his dad, was a rabbi, who deeming it essential to seek a better life for his family, emigrated to America in 1862, several years ahead of the rest of the family.

Once landing in the US, Lesser moved across the face of the nation, a virtual serial spiritual seeker. He found or started new congregations in Cincinnati, then  in St. Louis and then in Charleston, SC. Within two years Lesser had saved enough funds to bring his family to America. They moved to Utica, NY, where Lesser found a newer, larger congregation.

In his father’s snaking spiritual shadow, young Louis also lived in Providence, RI and New York City.

The younger Perlman, my future great-grandfather, completed his elementary education at Christie Street Public School No. 7 at the age of 15 and then enrolled in the College of the City of New York, where he majored in stenography, bookkeeping and accounting. 

Perlman’s skills in stenography led him to a career in journalism and photography (I appear to have his journalist’s DNA and his entrepreneurial spirit… just not his money…).

Perlman was a co-founder of the Pictorial Associated Press, the first-ever agency to syndicate images and photos to newspapers across the country. My great-grandfather even took and sold the first half-tone illustration ever published in the New York Sun – a portrait of congressman Holman of Indiana.

While the idea of a demountable rim came quickly to my great-grandfather, the financial windfall from it did not. Family lore has it that Perlman got his cash up front from GM in one fell swoop. According to records, which have recently come to light, this was not the case.

In fact, Perlman had to litigate and scrape his way through appellate courts for years to get what was rightfully his from the start.

Although Perlman’s patent application for the demountable rim was dated May 21, 1906, a number of manufacturing firms began to infringe on the application. Records indicate that Perlman was (you should pardon the term) tireless in his pursuit of justice; he defended his patent application in court after court and after seven long, wearying years, at the appeals circuit level, he was finally granted, on February 4, 1913, US Patent 1,052,270 for “the demountable automobile rim.”

In October of the same year, after months of trying to persuade large manufacturers who were making demountable rims, and infringing on his patent rights, granddaddy Perlman sued the Standard Welding Company of Cleveland, Ohio, the nation’s leading maker of demountable rims in the US District Court of New York.

Back into the courts, Perlman waited for a verdict; it came two years later, in August, 1915, when the court ruled that Standard Welding had indeed infringed on the patent. Standard appealed the case but an appeals court, in 1916, ruled in favor, yet again, of Perlman and ordered Standard  Welding to pay my great-grandfather millions of dollars in back royalties.

With his earnings, Perlman decided that it was time to by a suitable, sizable tract of land. He chose Montrose, NY, a tiny hamlet that is actually within the jurisdiction of Cortlandt, a small town located, for those without access to Google Maps, near Croton-on-Hudson, in Westchester County. Now do you picture it?

Montrose had been owned in succession by two Sewards. First, by William H. Seward (1801-1872), who had been Secretary of State for Abraham Lincoln. Then by his son, Frederick Seward (1830-1915).

For the record: Seward the Elder was responsible for purchasing Alaska from Russia for $7 million. At the time, the seemingly goofy acquisition was called "Seward's Folly," or "Seward's Icebox."

 

WIlliam Seward, former Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln.

Frederick, the son, was a journalist and diplomat. Like his dad, he became politically active and was named Assistant Secretary of State, working under – who else? -- his father. Long live nepotism!

When Seward the Younger died, the estate was put up for sale. Along came my great-grandfather.

According to Wikipedia, the Seward Estate covered 30 acres, though I remember my parents telling me that it was a 55-acre estate. It had a stately, rolling, verdant, manicured front lawn that swaled from the huge main house down to the gray waters of the Hudson River, which lapped at the foot of the property.

The mansion, in which I spent summers with my own cousins and an uncle who was one year older than me, had a large dining room, and an adjacent restaurant-sized kitchen. Oh, and let’s not forget what else it had: that barn out back with the added-on-extensions to cover all of Louis Perlman‘s General Motor cars.

Louis was a reasonably private person and does not appear to have had many close friends. My mother always told the story that before he lost all his money in the Depression, Louis would go to New York City, hire a huge ballroom at the Essex Hotel, and invite upwards of 2,000 people off the street to join him for a festive party in the hotel. These were complete strangers.

I can’t determine whether this is strictly family folklore, but I can attest that it was told to me -- it’s what my family recounted when I was a boy.

Louis went on to lose everything in the stock market crash, and left family, not funds, as his only legacy. He had a daughter, Grace Helen Perlman, who was my mother’s mother, and he had a son, Jesse Burke Perlman, who was an ensign in the US Navy.

I remember my mother recounting stories about Jesse’s skills at playing cards, especially bridge and canasta. About the rest of the family, or Louis’ wife, I know very little. 

What any of this has to do with Napa Valley, I haven’t a clue. Except, perhaps, that I am the multi-generational byproduct of Louis Perlman and I live in Napa Valley…  and as I have no other place to tell this story, so it will be told here.

THE Wine Event of the Year - And it’s Only April!

 
Karen Williams and David Stevens, owners of Acme Fine Wines, surround themselves professionally everyday with brilliant wines. For their first-ever “atelier” event, they surrounded themselves with the brilliant winemakers who make them.
Karen and David are pictured here, surrounded by a number of artisan winemakers:
Back row, left to right: Karen Williams, Celia Welch Masyczek, Russell Bevans, Robbie Meyer, Sarah Gott, Mark Herold, David Stevens, Pam Starr, Philippe Melka
Front row, left to right: Mike Hirby, Andy Erickson, Craig Maclean.

Napa Valley wineries and wine retailers will have a hard time this year eclipsing the originality, elevated profile, and attraction of Acme Fine Wines’ first-ever “atelier” event, held this weekend at the merchant’s St. Helena store.

They’ll also have one helluva hard time beating the sheer number and quality of wines poured at the event.

Twelve of the valley’s most talented winemakers were on hand to pour at least three each of their sublimely crafted artisan wines. The winemakers present included, in alphabetical order, Heidi Barrett, Russell Bevan, Andy Erickson, Sarah Gott, Mark Herold, Mike Hirby, Craig MacLean, Philippe Melka, Robbie Meyer, Dave Phinney and Pam Starr. Many poured more than three wines.

Winemaker superstar, Celia Welch Masyczek, was on hand to pour nine of the wines she makes, most on a consulting basis.

Some 100 patrons each paid $175 for the privilege of tasting 50 of Napa Valley’s most treasured wines, the rarest of rare juice. Stuff that you customarily can’t get your hands on even if you have Barack Obama’s cell phone number on speed dial.

Some 120 guests, sommeliers and wine writers crammed into Acme Fine Wines’ small retail space. The food, which was supplied by David Katz of neighboring shop ‘panevino,’ was superb.

The one-of-a-kind tasting was the brainchild of David Stevens and Karen Williams, proprietors of Acme Fine Wines. They felt it was time to host “atelier,” what I’m calling The Triple W – the Who’s Who of Wine.

“At any one time, we stock 183 different wines, of which 65 percent are small production, artisan Napa Valley Cabernets,” says David Stevens. “Today’s event is simply an attempt to let our customers taste what our inventory is all about.”

As there were far too many near-perfect wines being poured, any attempt at scoring them individually seemed nonsensical. You don’t score wines numerically at tastings of this caliber any more than you score the sexy encounters you have on a far-flung beach holiday. You let your memory drift and wistfully think about the highlights of what you tasted….

Okay, let’s say you are a stickler for the point system. Here’s what you need to know:
This was probably the first time I have ever been to such a large tasting where I scored every wine in the mid- to high 90s. There wasn’t anything I rated below 92 points in the group, and there were a lot of 97- and 98-pointers.

From a learning perspective, I chose to focus on the rarest of rare opportunities – a chance to taste all nine offerings crafted by Celia Welch Masyczek, whose wines and talents I have long admired.

Craig Camp from Cornerstone Cellars, winemaker Celia Welch Masyczek and Kelly Fleming from her eponymously labeled Cabernet.

For the record, Celica told me publicly, for the first time, “to drop the ‘Masyczek’ from my name – it’s over! I’m officially now just Celia Welch.”

Thank God. I often found Celia’s last name and that of BV winemaker Andre Tchelicheff to be the two most difficult winemaker’s names to spell right.

What made the Acme tasting special was that it was the first time ever that the consuming public had a chance to taste all nine of Celia’s artisan wines at one time in one place.

The vineyard owners, for whom Celia Welch makes wine, were on hand to support Celia, named Food & Wine’s “Winemaker of the Year” last year.

The striking thing about these wines is their common thread of Celia-ness. You can recognize her DNA in all nine of the wines, eyes closed. They stand apart from all the other exceptional wines poured at the “atelier,” and there wasn’t a dud among the other wines poured.

The hallmarks of Celia’s wines: a core of silk, an abundant ripeness of fruit, impeccable balance and a delicate but persistent lingering finish. These are wines with textbook structure. Each wine is one that you want to “rent” for a few hours, not spit, to let them course through your body, so that you can tell you grandchildren what it was like to drink Perfection.

What’s the secret to your winemaking,” I asked Celia. “You have wines on this table from Stag’s Leap District, Yountville, Oakville, Howell Mountain, Calistoga and St. Helena and they all have an identifiable, common denominator. Call it The Celia touch.”

“The secret is… that I don’t have a secret… or a recipe, for that matter,” Celia told me. “I visit the fermentation tanks several times a day during harvest for each of these wines. The texture I seek – and which you call ‘silk,’ – comes from my winemaking techniques, not from the fruit itself.”

Guests jostled for space at the wine stations

Frank Husic, owner of Husic Vineyards, was at Celia’s station to pour his 2006 Cabernet, crafted by Celia. I found his description of the soil on which he planted his vines – on a ridge above and behind Chimney Rock – worth sharing.

“Until we came along in the mid-90s, our land had never, ever been cultivated. A huge swath was cut into the rock and forest; I tell people that the soil was like a bank into which animals and nature had been making deposits for hundreds of years – you can imagine how rich the soil was!”

Take Frank’s soil… add Celia’s magic… swirl them around in your glass.. and you have a stupendous artisan wine, actually one of my highest scoring wines of the event. But remember, who’s counting scores?

Additional shots from the event:


Winemaker Dave Phinney jokes, holding a bottle of one of his many exquisite wines.

Pam Starr and Charlie Crocker of Crocker & Starr fame kibbitz around

Winemaker Andy Erickson pours for guests

Winemaker Mark Herold pauses pensively for a minute between pours

Winemaker Sarah Gott’s wines are like her pearls -- they stand out in any crowd

Interested in ordering some of these limited artisan wines? Contact David or Karen at Acme Fine Wines, 1080 Fulton Lane, St. Helena, CA 94574. Tel: 707-963-0440

Rutherford’s New Cathedral of Wine; Pray … That You Can Get In!

There’s a new, ornate cathedral in the tiny hamlet of Rutherford, at the epicenter of Napa Valley. It’s lined with Italian marble and lit by Murano-style, Venetian chandeliers.

To set the record straight: it’s not a religious cathedral. It’s a Cathedral of Wine – where you go to worship innovative winemaking.

The recently opened Del Dotto Estate Winery and Caves, on Highway 29 near Zinfandel Lane, is a shrine to wine, envisioned and built by Dave Del Dotto, who traces his family’s heritage back to the 1150’s in Venice.

The wine, which Dave makes, is likely far better than what his forebears drank 850 years ago in Venice, but still, Dave wanted to capture elements of his ancestry, so he spent millions to build a Venetian-inspired winery on a 17-acre parcel, which he had acquired 20 years earlier.

“This is the most educational wine tour I’ve ever taken!” exclaims an Hawaiian-born guest on my Del Dotto tour, who eagerly lapped up the wine lore of our knowledgeable guide, Bob Groff.

“It’s SO worth the $50 fee,” said a man on our tour. “An hour in the cave is like going on a vacation!”

Well, that’s one way of describing the tour through the darkly lit cave, constructed out of stone from quarries and old homes in Italy.

Bob Groff, tour leader, long time friend and cohort of Dave Del Dotto, with whom he has worked 20 years.

“We brought 100 containers of stone, marble and ceramics from Italy,” says tour guide Groff. To make the vaulted roof of the cave, for example, they brought over 40,000 well-worn bricks, taken from old buildings. Stonemasons from Italy spent months, carefully chunking the bricks into place in the cave roof.

The detail in the floors and ceilings of the salon and even in the cave induce one’s jaw to drop.

Floor details are exquisite.

Part of the experience here is disorienting; you just don’t expect to find such ornate, Italian touches in a winery in the middle of Napa Valley.

There is also an element of Disneyland about the visit. Four, or five, small groups are led through the cave simultaneously and there is an air of excitement as you “thieve” the barrels, hunting down new, and different, flavor hits.

On the average tour, guests taste wine from eight to 12 barrels. At Del Dotto, ALL wine is aged in 100 percent new oak. As well, all the fruit is organic, it’s all hand-picked, all hand-sorted and only free-run juice is used to make wine.

Dave believes that what changes wine, hastens its maturation, or alters its taste, is a series of things in the winemaker’s toolbox.

As a consequence, Del Dotto makes more than 350 different Cabernets! Many Cabs are in lots as small as two barrels (48 cases).

The Del Dotto caves on the estate property in Rutherford.

There are many permutations to achieve this diversity. At Del Dotto, they age wine in different woods; you may taste, and buy, wines aged in French Oak, or American oak. The level of toast is varied, too. You can have wine aged with a heavy toast, a medium toast, or a light toast.

Then they get really experimental. They have routed U-shaped ridges on the inside of some barrels to expose the wine to more wood surface area, increasing the tannic structure of the wine. Then, to really push the limits, they invented a V-groove, carved deeply into the staves of some barrels, exposing the wine to even more wood.

They experiment with yeasts here, too, Visitors can taste wines made with any of five different natural yeasts.

On reflection, the place is really like one giant wine experiment. You can have your Cab any way you like it; they put visitors into the winemaker’s seat, enabling guests to mix-and-match wines, which they personally like. It sure beats chasing someone else’s ratings to identify wines that you might like.

On my tour, we started by tasting a Cabernet that was aging in a barrel whose oak came from central France. We sipped, slurped and swallowed. Then we walked 10 yards to another barrel; Bob, our guide, inserted his thief (a glass syringe used to “steal” wine from the barrel – hence a “thief”) and filled our glasses with wine that was aging in a barrel made from the of oak of nine different French forests! Although it was the same Cabernet, the wine tasted completely different, modified by the many types of oak with which it had been in contact for a year.

In this fashion, we tasted nearly a dozen different wines – most of them starting out as the same supple Cabernet.

In total, production at Del Dotto is about 10,000 cases, but very few are identical. As you can see, on purpose.

The reception area, overlooking a marble-columned courtyard/salon where you taste bottled wine with cured meats and cheese, after your cave tour.

Dave Del Dotto made his money in real estate and TV infomercials. His sense of educating – and motivating – the public to buy wine isn’t a whole lot different than moving them to buy real estate.

By presenting visitors with many different wines to taste – all made with the same starter Cabernet -- Dave gets guests to identify their own tastes. Essentially, he is enabling guests to customize their own bottles.

Many visitors choose one, or two, bottles aged with a specific oak, or level of toast, and choose other bottles aged in different woods. In this manner, many visitors fill a case, with different customized wines.

Readers may have visited the Del Dotto caves on Atlas Peak Road, and may have read what I wrote about my visit to that winemaking facility years ago.
(Go to http://www.ilovenapa.com/favorite_dark.shtml ) Dave moved into these caves years ago, while he was building his Rutherford dream cathedral.

Dave told napaman that he intends to stay in the Atlas Peak facility for the next two years and may renew his lease on that property when it comes up for renewal.

The indefatigable entrepreneur, Dave Del Dotto, who has just announced plans to build a third winery in Napa Valley. Slow down, Dave – you’ll soon have as many wineries as Steve Martin has had guest appearances on Saturday Night Live (15)!

In addition to finishing his new winery in Rutherford, and starting to plan another in Yountville, Dave has been busy buying land on which to grow grapes.

Today, Del Dotto owns more than 400 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, of which 96 are planted. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Sangiovese are planted.

The fruit comes from five different estate vineyards, the largest of which is Cinghiale (which means ‘wild boar’ in Italian) Vineyard, on the crown of a ridge on the Sonoma Coast, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. This is Del Dotto’s source of Pinot Noir and some Chardonnay.

The salon area of the winery – where you enjoy camaraderie and bottled wine after your cave tour.

After the cave tour, your guide hosts a tasting in the salon, where you are served a plate of charcuterie and cheeses plus house-made pizza. You are also served some terrific examples of Del Dotto’s bottled wines, and if you pass the final exam (just kidding), you are also served house Port, made from Del Dotto’s pressed wine.

During my visit, Dave revealed that he would like to develop a third winery in the valley – on a plot across from Mustards Grill, in Yountville. Dave bought the 13-acre site, which used to be a strawberry patch, and plans to convert it into a “Pompeii-style winery” at which all wines will be fermented and aged in clay vessels – “the way they made wine 2,000 years ago,” says Dave.

According to tour leader Bob Groff, who is wine historian, the term amphora, referring to the clay vessels which have two handles and are used to store liquids, seeds, grain, even wine, actually means “carried by two men.” Hence the reason there are two handles on the newly released bottles of Del Dotto wines aged in clay amphorae.

Yes, it sounds crazy, but for the past two years, Dave has been studying this historic style of winemaking and has been making some tasty Zinfandels and Cabernets, which have been fermented, and aged, in clay.

It’s a known fact that fermenting in vessels interred in the ground keeps the fermenting juices cool, which promotes color and flavor extraction, and aging in clay, or slightly porous material, also helps improve a wine.

Some of my favorite Chateauneufs du Pape are fermented in large cement vessels. And one of my recent favorite Napa Valley Cabs – from Ovid on Pritchard Hill – is fermented in cement. So Dave just may be on to something when he launches an entire series of wines that are fermented and aged in clay.

As making money is as much a rush to Dave as making wine, the Yountmill property is actually on the market with a $12.5 million price tag.

“If we sell it, we’ll make our clay-fermented wines at Del Dotto,” says tour guide Groff. “If we don’t sell it, we’ll move the clay operation to the new location.” Either way, we’re making clay-aged wines.”

To experience Del Dotto Estate and Caves, be sure to leave a good two-hour window in your day. This is not a winery to visit when you’re doing four in a row. This is an eye-opening, one-of-a-kind experience that requires your full time and attention. It’s like one of Dave’s infomercials – it’s in your face and likely to change your thinking.

Del Dotto Estate Winery & Caves, 1445 St. Helena Highway South, St. Helena, CA, 94574. Visits by appointment only. The cave barrel tasting tours are staggered throughout the day, but usually depart the reception area at 11 am, 1 pm and 3 pm. On weekends and holidays, additional tours are offered at 11:30 am, 1:30 pm and 3:30 pm Tel: 707-963-2134.

Coming to Napa Valley - The Woodstock of Wines!

Well, sort of. There are no mosh pits, and no musical acts.

But as far as stars go – the stars of wine, and of wine making – they’ll be present and pouring.

Karen Williams and David Stevens, co-owners of Acme Fine Wines, St. Helena, CA., welcome guests into their A-one (note the door handles) wine shop.

The Big News: David Stevens and Karen Williams are throwing a party next month for some of the best winemakers in America.

Even Bigger News: You’re invited.

David and Karen are the couple who co-own Acme Fine Wines, in St. Helena, (for the record, they are NOT a couple outside of work -- each is happily married to someone else). They have decided to host a Saturday event, April 25, to celebrate great Napa Valley winemaking.

Change that to read: “…. to host a Saturday event, April 25, to celebrate some of the greatest wines you may ever taste.”

This is the stuff you sip, swirl and swallow. Trust me, not much that will be tasted that Saturday is going to be spat.

The official announcement, inviting guests to the Acme “atelier,” a studio, of sorts, for artists working in the wine medium.

Twelve area winemakers will be present, each pouring no fewer than three cuvees, or labels. One winemaker, Celia Welch Masyczek, will pour nine wines for which she is consulting, or fulltime, winemaker.

The rock star winemakers pouring at the “atelier” include, in alphabetical order: Heidi Barrett, Russell Bevan, Andy Erickson, Sarah Gott, Mark Herold, Mike Hirby, Celia Welch Masyczek, Craig MacLean, Philippe Melka, Robbie Meyer, Dave Phinney, and Pam Starr.

Russel Bevan, winemaker of Bevan Cellars, Grey Stack, Showket, Sanglier and Westerhold Family wines.

In advance of the event, napaman.com asked to meet several of the participating winemakers. Russell Bevan broke silence and shared with us a World First: he unveiled that he has produced the world’s first RF (Radio Frequency) tagged bottles of wine.

Russell has hidden a nano-sized Radio Frequency (RF) chip beneath each label of his 2006 Syrah and Cabernet labels. “Mine is the first wine in the world to place an RF chip on the bottle,” says the winemaker. “RF will lead to the reduction of counterfeiting of cult wines and help winemakers speak directly to their consumers.”

Many consumer products are already tagged with RF chips – to reduce distribution and shelf replacement costs in large format stores. Walmart was a pioneer in the field.

Bevan says that, in the Middle East, “90 percent of the cell phones can read an RF tag. It’s eventually coming to North American phones.”

Until our cell phones join this tech-advanced club, wine lovers will be able to tap into their phone a text message number followed by the individual radio chip code that is printed on the back label of every bottle of Bevan Cellars. In an instant, they will receive text message notification that the particular bottle is real, not counterfeit. As well, they will receive a series of follow-up text messages giving the winemaker’s tasting notes about the wine.

Pam Starr, winemaker for Crocker & Starr, Bridesmaid, Garric and Adastra, will pour all of her wines at the Acme atelier.

Pam Starr, who will pour four stunning wines at the wine atelier, says she is enthusiastic about meeting – one on one -- many of the Acme clients, who have been supportive of her efforts. She suggested that it’s as much of a chance for the winemakers to meet their fans as it is for the fans to meet the wine makers. A Vinous Love-In -- without the rain, or LSD, of Woodstock!

“We’re holding the event to showcase the many fine wines, which Acme Fine Wines offers,” explains co-owner David Stevens.

“We originally thought we might hold a massive blind tasting of these wines for the wine blogging community,” says Karen, his business partner. “But the more we worked in this direction, the more we realized that the event would turn into a full-bore, scoring experience – which is not what we want. We don’t want people going away from the event with a head full of scores. We want them to learn from the exposure to these great wines what Acme represents.”

In total, more than 50 wines will be poured at the atelier event, held at Acme Fine Wines, 1080 Fulton Lane, St. Helena. Guests will have three hours from 1 pm to 4 pm, to conduct their tasting, and to meet the rock star winemakers.

Tickets, $175 each, are available from Erin Sullivan at Acme Fine Wines. Call 707-963-0440, or email her at erin@acmefinewines.com. But hurry; tickets, like these magnificent wines, will disappear quickly and be hard to get.

2007 – “The Angelina Jolie of vintages in Napa Valley”

Fritz Hatton, auctioneer at Premiere Napa Valley, gets the room a-rumblin’.

Napa Valley’s winter wine auction for the trade – called Premiere Napa Valley and held this weekend – attracted more than 200 wine buyers from Canada, Japan, China, the UK and, of course from across the US.

One of my favorite wine events of the year, Premiere brings together colorful winemakers and powerful wine merchants. The event is organized by Napa Valley Vintners, a non-profit, trade association representing 350 area wine producers. Dollars raised at the auction are applied to programs, which promote and protect the Napa Valley Appellation.

Saturday’s auction of 200 lots raised $1,487,500, a drop of 33 percent from last year’s all-time high of $2,245,500. Given the state of the economy, auction sales could have been a whole lot worse. While it’s not fair to say that the recent boom in wine sales has gone ker-boom, the wine industry appears to be teetering on the edge.

Wine merchants with whom I spoke at the event, who wished to remain anonymous so that competitors wouldn’t know who was singing the blues confided:

+ “$20 is the new $50 red.” Customers who used to buy $40 or $50 wines have moved down to the $20 range.

+ "Wines priced above $100 per bottle seem to be slightly more immune to the vagaries of the marketplace. Sales are soft but not as precipitous as they are for wines under $100 a bottle." (This is the story merchants tell – whether it’s true is not fact-checkable.)

+ One wine merchant in the Bay area admitted that his January sales, 09 over 08, were down 90 percent for the month. Let me repeat, lest you think this a typo: down NINE-OH percent.

The Food’s as Good as the Wine at Premiere Napa Valley

The winter barrel auction is held at the Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) Greystone Campus, in St. Helena. Upon arrival, members of the wine trade and press have access to 200 unique blends of wine, poured at stations of the participating wineries. These are the wines, which will be auctioned later in the day.

At noon, a tremendous buffet is served and, each year that I have attended, this turns out to be my favorite buffet of the year. The fare is fabulous and perfectly prepared and presented. Hats off to the CIA for serving food to complement the wines. Oh, and a lot of them are served; it’s a veritable group grape grope as guests reach for any of hundreds of different labels. Guests may return to the wine tables, or food tables, as many times as they like for refills, or diverse taste trials. That anyone is awake for the afternoon auction is a testament to the professional tasting skills of the assembled guests.

Bret Lopez and Mimi DeBlasio of Scarecrow. Their wine, made by Celia Masyczek, received the top auction bid - $80,000 for five cases – or $1,333 per bottle.

Participating wineries at the auction donate a unique blend of wine in quarter-barrel (five-case), half-barrel (10-case), or full-barrel (20-case) lots, which are bought by the assembled retailers and restaurateurs to be resold to their customers.

Winemaker Timothy Milos (left) and owner, Marc Cohen (right) of Howell at the Moon, and, in the middle, the smiling owner of Clos Pegase, Jan Shrem.

Each wine is a one-of-a-kind blend, variety, or from a single vineyard unique to the winery. Or the blend may be a collaborative effort among several winemakers. All wines poured were barrel samples, mostly Cabernet based, and mostly from the 2007 vintage.

Judd Finkelstein of Judd's Hill, and Andrew Schweiger, of Schweiger Vineyards.

Prior to the auction, members of the trade belly up to barrels to sample the wines on which they may choose to bid.

2007 – what a glorious vintage

Premiere Napa Valley is really the first time each year that the trade gets a peak at the next-to-be-released vintage of Napa Valley Cabernet. It’s a collective first chance to assess the vintage and determine how consumers will like the wines and figure out how the wines might be priced.

I posed a common question to wine makers, asking them to assess the quality of the 2007 vintage. I asked: “If your 2007 Cabernet were a movie star, who would it be – and why?”

+ Suzanne Groth and winemaker Michael Weis of Groth Vineyards opined: “Definitely Drew Barrymore. Young and crazy and unpredictable, but old enough to know better. Sexy voice, too.”

+ Tom Farella, winemaker for Farella-Park Vineyards, who makes a delicious, approachable Cabernet (I tried his 2004 at his booth and loved the fruit, balance and ripeness): “2007 was a Catherine Zeta-Jones type of vintage; it is really attractive, it’s a big star, it’s an instant classic!”

+ Daniel Bailey, who is national sales manager for Jones Family Vineyards likened his 2007 Cabernet (which I thought was gorgeous, sweet, in a positive sense, and filled with chocolate) called his offering “The George Clooney of wine. It is strong, has a good heart, is sophisticated and has lots of soul!”

+ Tim Mondavi, of Continuum, says of his 2007: “This wine is definitely like Meryl Streep – it has a beautiful voice, lots of finesse and elegance, and shows great persistence.” (I found Tim’s 2007 spicy, showing lots of grip, power and if anything, feistiness. I am not sure these are terms I would use to describe Meryl Streep. More like Liza Minnelli.)

+ Judd Finkelstein, of Judd’s Hill Winery says that his 2007 Cab is much like Miss Piggy: “The wine shows a lovely femininity… but once you get to know it… you realize there is a lot of assertiveness and power behind the early attractive attributes.”

+ Marc Cohen, who produces Howell at the Moon, says his 2007 Cab is “most like Angelina Jolie – big, plump, luscious, soft and memorable.”

Auction highlights

Premiere Napa Valley raised a total of $1,487,500 on 200 wine lots.

The highest single bid was $80,000 for a five-case lot of Scarecrow (made by Celia Masyczek). This equals $16,000 a case, or a mind-numbing $1,333 per bottle without mark-ups, taxes, or frequent flier miles.

Celia says she took “the sweetest barrel” from the 2007 cellar and made the best wine she could for today’s auction. I thought the wine was memorable, filled with vanilla, cherry and black ripe fruits, loaded with personality, and textbook structure.

The next highest lots:

+ $42,000 for five cases of Ovid
(I tasted: gorgeous sweet fruit, a stunning silken texture derived from fermentation in concrete and not wood, according to winemaker Andy Erickson.)

Both the Scarecrow and Ovid lots were purchased by Nakagawa Wine Company of Tokyo, Japan.

+ $27,000 for 20 cases of Silver Oak

+ $24,000 for a five-case lot of Shafer Cabernet, taken from a block used in the Hillside blend

+ $22,000 for a 10-case lot of Joseph Phelps Cabernet.

Case price results from Premiere Napa Valley Auction

As some of the lots were quarter-barrels, some half-barrels and some full-barrels, the per case price paid may be a more meaningful way of looking at the results:

+ Scarecrow, $16,000 per case

+ Ovid, $8,400 per case

+ Shafer, $4,800 per case

+ Lewis Cellars, $4,000 per case

+ Realm Cellars, $3,200 per case

+ Hourglass, $3,200 per case

+ Continuum, $3,000 per case

I thought you’d never ask

The 2007 vintage in Napa Valley is considered by area winemakers as excellent.

The year began dry with very cold days and single-digit nighttime temperatures and continued dry with about 60% of normal precipitation throughout the appellation.

The summer growing season was on the mild to cool side; very few days topped 100 F. degrees, even in the warmest locations.

The harvest of Chardonnay began in early August in the Carneros and southern Napa, followed by Pinot Noir. Harvest was just a bit ahead of average.

An Indian Summer delivered warm, clear days when vineyard crews completed the harvest.

That answer your question?

Veni, vidi, spiti (I came… I saw… I spit)*

* With apologies to Julius Caesar, who is best known for his Latin conjugations and for his salad dressing; in 47 BC, the Emperor reputedly said “Veni, vidi vici,” wishing to say “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Unfortunately, English hadn’t yet been invented, so who knows what he really said.

About one-hundred wine writers, wine educators, sommeliers, and earnest wine geeks descended on the Rudd Center at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), in St. Helena, this morning to taste, swirl and spit through a sampling of 60 different Napa Valley Cab-based wines.

The tasting was part of a weekend wine package – Napa Valley is abuzz with wine activities: out-of-town wine writers are on hand for the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, and the CIA is getting gussied up for tomorrow’s annual Premiere Napa Valley barrel auction, which is only open to members of the wine trade.

To keep assembled guest’s tongues flapping, the Napa Valley Vintners decided to host a tasting of local wines. Their professional panel tasted a large universe of 2004, 2005 and 2006 wines from area producers, narrowing the selection down to 20 producers for today’s tasting.

Guests were asked to taste the 60 wines blind (three wines from each producer – their 2004, 2005 and 2006 offerings). No prices were mentioned, no appellations were identified. All tasters had to go on was their palate, and a few water crackers to soak up the excess alcohol.

The wines presented were priced, on release, in a range from $35 to $132. As one discovers in so many blind tastings, price often has nothing to do with quality, despite the marketing attempts of wine producers to the contrary.

My top four favorite wines in the blind tasting were priced across the board, despite the fact that I scored each of them identically with 93 points. Though I must be developing an affinity for higher priced wines; my favorites this year were in the upper tier of pricing. In tastings past, I have often discovered a $45 gem in a pack of $175 wines. This was not the case today.

Napa Valley Vintners

I salute the Napa Valley Vintners for organizing this educational event, but points were lost on execution:

For one thing, chlorinated water was served for rinsing our stemware. The mere introduction of chlorine into any wine-tasting experience is a serious No-No.

The other observation: all 60 wines had been poured into decanters, which were identified by number only. When a decanter was running low on wine (guests poured for themselves), the very pleasant, and attentive, staff topped up the decanters with wine from new, masked bottles of the same wine and vintage. But this essentially dumbs down the best expression of any wine. The solera system, used to make sherry, is NOT an appropriate method for tasting wines blind. Let me explain.

Given: no two bottles of wine are really alike. You can have really great bottles and really good bottles and sometimes even clunker bottles of the very same wine from the very same lot.

When you mix two bottles, the sum cannot ever be superior than the better of the two bottles. If one bottle is compromised it will dumb down the better bottle. So by topping up the decanters of wine, mixing together two, or three, or even four bottles of a vintage… this can only produce a tasting experience that is less than the best single bottle that might have been tasted blind.

In fact, wine writers often go back in a blind tasting to taste a wine again from a different bottle just to learn if there is significant bottle variation. The hosts of this morning’s tasting did no wine justice by blending different bottles of the same wine in the serving decanters.

I tasted through 60 wines and scored them for color, aroma, mouthfeel, attack, intensity, balance, perceived level of alcohol, food friendliness and overall pleasure output.

For the purposes of this report, I will comment on my top four wines, each which scored 93 points. If you find them in the marketplace, trust me, they are luscious, the winemaking is serious, the pedigree is solid. These are keepers!

In alphabetical order, my four top wines, tasted blind, and each scoring 93 points:

2004 Darioush Signature Cabernet Sauvignon
Bright fruit on the attack with a delicious coffee undertow. Beautiful balance, really a delicious wine. Makes me want to run home and grill some lamb chops to serve with the remaining wine in the decanter.
A blend of 83% Cabernet, 9% Merlot, 5% Cab Franc, 2% Malbec and 1% Petit Verdot. $80 on release.

2004 Jones Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon
This is a BIG wine, with a lot of oak still evident on the attack; but there is a gorgeous, silken mouthfeel that comes into play in the middle palate; there is also smoke, chocolate and a very long finish. If this wine were a Broadway play, it would be Phantom of the Opera. It is showy, but you leave the experience humming the main chords and think what a great time you’ve had.
A blend of 98% Cabernet and 2% Cab Franc with Petit Verdot. $80 on release.

2004 Pillar Rock, Cabernet Sauvignon, Stags Leap District
I am not as familiar with Pillar Rock as I obviously ought to be; first time I’ve tasted it blind anywhere and what a discovery! Great fruit on the nose and a rush of fruit on the palate. Perfect extraction, great length, lots of smoky middle notes, and a generous, silken middle portion that is as much about texture as it is about taste. Bravo! $125 on release.

2004 Spottswoode Cabernet Sauvignon
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: by the attack, by the middle palate, by the finish. My tasting notes conclude: “A tremendous wine!” Coffee, toffee, rich ripe black fruits, all in wonderful balance. “This is an alluring wine” I noted on my tasting sheet. And fabulously food friendly.
97% Cabernet and 3% Cab Franc. $125 on release.

A wine writer’s observation

What is interesting about my top-scoring wines: they were all from the 2004 vintage from these four producers. I am not surprised; I like older wines, find it harder to judge, or quantify, really young wines, which are often filled with young wood, and which tend to be more tannic and less food friendly.

For the purposes of education, here are my scores for the other two wines of each of these four Top of Class producers.

2005 Darioush Signature Cabernet, 92 points
2006 Darioush Signature Cabernet, 90 points

2005 Jones Family Vineyards Cabernet, 92 points
2006 Jones Family Vineyards Cabernet, 90 points

2005 Pillar Rock Cabernet, 92 points.
2006 Pillar Rock Cabernet, 91 points.

2005 Spottswoode Cabernet, 90 points (a heap o’ horse – brett, which put me off)
2006 Spottswoode Cabernet, 90 points (after learning this was the 06 Spottswoode (tasted blind), I would conclude that this was poured from an aberrant bottle; I have had the 06 before and it has shown much better. Lost points for bottle variation.)

The Second Best Thing You Can Do in the Dark in Napa Valley!

The Cameo, in St. Helena, is my favorite cinema in America. It’s only one of 24 remaining, independently owned and operated, single-screen cinemas in the whole country. And of these 24, it’s probably the ONLY theater with Digital 3D capability.

If they gave out medals for civic heroism, Shawn Q. LaRue and Cathy M. Buck (what’s with those middle initials anyway?) would be recipients at the top of my list.

These movie-mad friends bought the 94-year-old Cameo Cinema, in St. Helena, a year ago and completely updated the intimate 140-seat theater, conducting a $150,000 upgrade to the projection and sound facilities.

Under Cathy and Shawn’s direction, The Cameo is now a cinema gem. It could stand to be called The Bijou, French for “gem.”

“We are probably the sole, independently owned, single-screen cinema in the US with Dolby Digital 3D projection,” says co-owner Shawn. “I am not aware of another.”

Not only that, but with their new state-of-the-art equipment, Shawn and Cathy can now project art-of-the-state. Well, at least art of other states. With a just-installed (last week), hi-tech satellite link, and with some additional low-tech copper wiring, the Cameo can now project live operas from the Met, in New York, or can simulcast the Kentucky Derby, in Louisville, in May. This week the Cameo projected the Presidential Inaugural ceremony live, from Washington D.C., on The Big Screen.

Cathy M. Buck and Shawn Q. LaRue, owners of Cameo Cinema, with their curly-haired Wheaton Dachshunds, Maximillian and Tallulah.

Shawn is from Los Angeles, New York, or Hawaii, depending on which decade of his life you dissect. He has been a social worker and an administrator for the math department at Stanford, but in 1997, he heard the siren of wine screeching. He landed at Swanson Vineyards, in Rutherford, where he was put in charge of the very private, very special, tasting salon for eight years. The Q stands for Quick (honest!), one of Shawn’s two middle names.

Cathy was born near Kalamazoo, MI, and spent most of her entire life within ten miles of her birth site. She recalls going to the single-screen, family-owned cinema in Augusta, MI, Sunday nights, which is what probably propelled her into a late-life career in cinema. She has owned a small machine tool company, owned a woman’s shoe store, been a realtor for 22 years, and as she is the oldest of nine children, she knows how to holler to be heard and get what she wants. But you never see, or hear, a forcefulness when speaking with her. Cathy is pleasant, bright-eyed and, like Shawn, dreams cinema. The M in her name stands for Marie.

The pair met at Swanson’s tasting room, where Shawn worked and which Cathy was visiting. Little did they know that the day the met in the sun would project them into a life in the dark.

The pair discovered that they had a common interest – nay, love – cinema. They were both, for lack of a better description, film fanatics. When they learned that Charlotte Wagner, former Cameo owner, was letting go her lease, the pair teamed up to purchase the Cameo.

“Storytelling is our focus,” says Cathy. “ But storytelling is more than just a story on film; it’s also a story that can be set to music, to ballet, it can be spoken or sung. Our goal is to bring all forms of storytelling to the Cameo.”

One of the cinema highlights of the past year was seeing a refreshed digital print of this classic film at the Cameo.

You know the cliché: behind every successful man there is a woman. Well, a variation of this axiom is true for the Cameo; behind the successful operators is a pair of very dedicated benefactors, Mark Nelson and Dana Johnson, who together operate Nimbus Arts, a non-profit, community arts organization, committed to raising the cultural bar of our community.

I met Mark eight years ago, sitting at the bar at Tra Vigne. He had recently sold a successful medical publications business and was in the process of building Ovid, a winery perched atop Pritchard Hill.

Mark and his wife Dana have been enthusiastic patrons and supporters of Cathy and Shawn; their non-profit foundation helped the Cameo acquire its new DCI-compliant Barco digital projector (complete with Dolby 3D technology) and has encouraged (and enabled) the Cameo’s proprietors to run late-night films for St. Helena teens, and Saturday morning films for youngsters – basically developing a community venue with 24-hour utility. All for ‘the love of storytelling.’

Shawn Q. LaRue stands between the old-fashioned 35 mm projector and the new-age, digital projector with 3D capability.

My hat is off to Shawn, Cathy, and their angel benefactor, Nimbus Arts, for saving our local treasure, the Cameo. By contrast, in the town where I grew up, Toronto, Canada, they have torn down all the significant independent single-screen theaters, including the Eglinton, where I fondly recall seeing “Around the World in 80 Days,” “The Alamo,” and “Windjammer.”

The Eglinton had one of the best sound systems I’ve ever heard in a cinema. But the lust for higher profits, which multi-screened Cineplexes promise, doomed the Eglinton and her sister cinemas to the wrecking ball.

Cathy, Shawn, an original West Side Story poster and an old projector.

While most of the four million annual visitors to Napa Valley are here for wine, and the most dark any of them plan to see is the corner of a wine cellar, occasionally visitors want a chance to “see how the locals live.” And let me set the record straight: there ain’t no better place to find the locals, at least 140 of them, and see how we live, than at the Cameo.

The seats in the theater are plush velour, colored the purply pigment of ripe Petite Sirah. The back two rows offer love seats, so that you can snuggle with your date a whole lot more easily.

The weekly, and sometimes daily-changing films, the live digital broadcasts of world-class opera and ballet, and the comforting, nostalgic cocoon that envelops the movie-goer, are worth the price of admission – which is, by the way, less than what most Cineplex operations charge.

There are 41,000 movie screens in America. Only ten percent of them, or about 4,100 screens, have converted to digital projection. Of these 4,100, only 1,000 have taken the additional step of offering 3D. Among them, the Cameo. 

While napaman.com attempts to speak to visitors to our valley, to tell them what to eat and drink, it would be remiss not to occasionally celebrate The Best of Napa Valley, even when it does not have to do with food or wine.

And in this category, I place the Cameo Cinema, a cultural icon in our small community. If you want to meet locals, know where we hang out, our how we live, this is the place.

The Secret Nest, produced in 1914, may have been the first-ever film projected at the Cameo, which opened in 1915 as the GG (this likely stood for Golden Gate) Theater.

As the saying goes, ‘None of us is here for a long time,’ but with the upgraded Cameo Cinema, in St. Helena, we sure are here for a good time!

Cameo Cinema, 1340 Main St., St. Helena, Ca. 94574.
For movie information, or directions, telephone 707-963-9779, or go to www.cameocinema.com.

“A Painting a Day from Napa Valley”

Cort Sinnes, Napa Valley painter

In these calamitous times, it’s important to have an anchor to ground you daily, something to bring tranquility into this crazy, depressing, financially challenging time.

My daily anchor is an email from Cort Sinnes, a Napa Valley painter, who e-blasts to announce his next new “Painting a Day from the Napa Valley.” These are hand-drawn, painted landscapes, or close-ups of fruit, or images of vines, or the sky, or the Napa Valley horizon. His art pleases my eye, and pleases my soul.

Since September, Cort has hunkered down almost every day to produce a finished painting and email out a photo, which he also posts as “A Painting a Day from the Napa Valley” on eBay, with auction bids starting at $75.

Most images are auctioned for 72 hours; most fetch final bids in the $115 to $125 range, though a few have sold for as much as $325, says Cort.

This guy is multi-talented

“Lemons,” from Cort Sinnes’ “A Painting A Day from the Napa Valley” series.

For the record: I have admired Cort’s artistic talents for some time; when we first moved to Napa Valley, 12 years ago, we were struck by the stunning collage called “Mangia,” (an oversized fork, knife and spoon), which hangs at Bistro Don Giovanni in Napa town. Cort painted it.

Years later, in the late 90s, I found myself writing articles for a magazine called 2nd Home Living. Cort was the managing editor. The magazine fizzled, but our respective passions to celebrate the best of Napa Valley did not.

“’A painting a day from the Napa Valley’ is a kind of love letter to Napa Valley. I’m trying to spread the joy of living here,” says Cort. The very same goals of napaman.com – my own attempt to celebrate life in this special community.

“A while back, I received an email from my sister with a link to a New York Times article describing two artists – one in France and the other in Virginia – who were posting a painting a day on their blogs,” recalls Cort.

“I can do that,” he told himself. And thus was reborn his painting career.

Cort is a Napa native. While a student at Redwood Junior High School, he took classes from the late, and legendary, art teacher, Madilyn Windweh.

“Her classes were like college courses. She taught art seemingly forever and was heavily schooled in the basics,” remembers Cort.

Portrait of the artist as a young man – only 56.

After attending U.C. Berkeley, where he majored in English, Cort turned his back on art for nearly 20 years, becoming, instead, a writer. Over the years, he has written more than 36 gardening books and five cookbooks. He has been editor-in-chief of three national gardening magazines.

Although Cort has a good-sized studio in his house, he usually paints at his kitchen table, while dinner cooks on the stove.

“Everything I paint is ‘of the day.’ I usually try to capture something I have seen that very day in the vineyards, or in my home. I usually start to paint at 6 pm, and work until 10 pm. Then I finish the image the next morning,” Cort explains.

Is this demanding? “Keeping up with ’A painting a day from the Napa Valley’ is like being married to a nymphomaniac,” jokes Cort. “You can’t walk away very far because you know that shortly, you’re going to be called back to repeat the act!”

Cort’s small (usually in the 5” x 7” range) oil, or gouache (non-transparent watercolor) paintings appear five days a week on eBay. The way to learn about these images – and to get your own Joy Meter registering in the “RED ALERT, I’M HAPPY! ZONE” – is to subscribe to Cort’s daily email alerts, each which includes a photo of the painting to be auctioned.

There is no charge to sign up to receive Cort’s emails. And who knows, you might even decide to bid on one of the images.

To sign up for the email alerts, go to Cort’s website, www.cortart.com.