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Ground Broken on Napa Valley’s, Frank Gehry-designed, Hall Winery!

They broke ground today on the southern fringe of St. Helena for what is likely to become one of the valley’s landmark drawing cards – a winery designed by the world’s leading architect, Frank Gehry.

The sign out front – today. Who knows if the font will change in the future... perhaps to something more dramatic, echoing the architectural originality of what Frank Gehry is doing to the winery’s roofline?

The ground-breaking ceremony, at Hall Winery this afternoon, follows four years of extensive planning, community input and design consultation and precedes a period of just about as many years, the time that it will take to build the multi-structured winery.

“Build” is a bit of a misnomer, because part of the project, financed by winery owners Craig and Kathryn Hall, aims to uncover a small winery building called Peterson-Bergfeld, that was built in 1885 and then covered up by a larger winery facility in 1910. People driving by the property today, and I am one them, never, ever have an inkling that inside the large warehouse building is a smaller, older winery building dreaming to see daylight again. Like a genie from a bottle.

“We’re doing the inverse of what the French did at the Louvre,” says winery owner Craig Hall. “They hired I.M. Pei to flank an old building with a new structure (the glass pyramid). We’re doing just the opposite; we’re going to flank Frank’s contemporary, undulating structure, our new Hospitality Center, with the historic, 122-year-old, Peterson-Bergfeld building. It will be a central feature of our new winery.”

Oh that it were that simple.

The Project

In reality, according to winery president Mike Reynolds, the Hall Winery Project will take up to four years to complete and will have three distinct stages. The intent is to allow the Halls to continue to make wine in their existing facility and operate their tasting room while building a new winery all around – and over – themselves.

The centerpiece of the completed winery will be the Gehry-inspired Hospitality Center where all future tours will end. Over this tasting room will be a dramatic, undulating roof similar (in originality, flow and movement) to the world famous structure that Gehry designed for the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. The winery roof is being called “a wooden cloud,” “an homage to the trellises found in Napa Valley,” and “a covered ballroom.” Take your pick.

What it is not is forgettable. It is unlike any other structure in Napa Valley. It outdances Michael Graves’ wonderful and whimsical architectural flourishes at Clos Pegase; it goes beyond many of the design elements of Herzog & De Meuron, whose work at Dominus, in Yountville, is so respected.

Gehry’s choice of materials for the Hall project and the design itself are not as flashy as what was chosen or drawn for the Guggenhiem in Bilbao, Spain. Or maybe they are and we’re just used to that shiny, undulating roofline that initially looked as though it would be more at home in a kids’ playground than atop one of the world’s great art collections. It's likely that, once opened, Hall Winery will be talked about in the same breath as the Guggenheim, which raises the level of all the boats, or wineries, in Napa Valley as a tourist destination.

Visitors to Hall Winery over the next three-to-four years, will be greeted by this matchstick model of how the finished winery will appear.

The small, matchstick’d architectural model that guests “oooohed” and “ahhhhed” over this afternoon helps one understand what the finished property – with multiple buildings – will look like. The thing, though, about these small models is that elements that are supposed to have a WOW factor often lack sizzle. The undulating trellis over the Hospitality Center on the scaled model, for example, looks more like a crushed Panama hat than it does a splendiferous, original Gehry roofline. But give Gehry and the local architect of record, Jon Lail, a chance to do their magic and we are all likely to be drooling over the completed winery.

Contrary to what many locals anticipated, the finished Hall Winery will not have an undulating, highly reflective titanium roof like the one on the Guggenhiem, nor like the flashy roofline of the Hotel Marqués de Riscal, a Starwood property, in Rioja, Spain, which Gehry also designed. (For the record, that roofline looks like a squashed, pile-up of Nascar race vehicles after multiple rollouts on a wet track. The Hall Winery roofline’s a whole lot more organic in structure, and a whole lot more organic in material, certainly if they opt to build it in wood.)

A close-up of the “undulating, trellised roof line” that will be the hallmark of Hall Winery.

Gehry says his team hasn’t signed off on the final materials of the undulating winery roof. It may be made of solid wood, or of laminated wood, or of a new material called icrete, which Gehry describes as “a dough-like mixture like pasta dough.”

“You mix icrete, extrude it through a roller and shape it over a form. When the material hardens, it has the shape of the thing it was draped over.”

Gehry and his design partner, Edwin Chan, admit that they do not yet know the tensile strength of icrete and so, before signing off on its use, tests are being conducted.

Gehry explained to guests at the ground-breaking ceremony what was wrong with each of these 40 mounted wall models, why they were rejected in the four-year design process.

To invent and fabricate the shapes of their highly visible undulating roofs, Gehry’s team turns to aviation software – the programs used to build planes. “Our finished blue prints are reliable to 7 decimals of accuracy, despite their complexity,” says Gehry.

The Players

Craig Hall is chairman and founder of the Dallas-based Hall Financial Group, one of the nation’s largest private equity firms. Kathryn Hall is, in her own right, a successful businesswoman, a community activist and former American Ambassador to Austria, serving two Presidents, Clinton and Bush (the Elder).

Craig and Kathryn have a passion for wine; her family first purchased vineyards in California 30 years ago. Today, the couple own 3,300 acres in Sonoma and Napa counties of which 490 are planted with vineyards, according to Mike Reynolds.

At one point in the ground-breaking festivities today, the business side of Kathryn shone through and it was one of those moments when I would love to have stood up and shouted, with a raised fist, “Good on ya, girl!” for her exuberant entrepreneurial spirit, reminding all those gathered what was going to pay for all the Disney-like pixel dust about to be sprinkled on Highway 29.

Here’s what Kathryn said: “In addition to being a place of architectural grandeur, designed by the world’s greatest architect, we want to make great wine! THAT IS OUR END GOAL.”

Amen, Kathryn, you nailed the purpose of the whole event in six simple words. "We Want to Make Great Wine!"

I have no doubt with Kathryn and Craig, Mike Reynolds and Robert Wilson, winery GM, driving this project – and the winemaking activities – the team will be wildly successful.

In addition to the main winery on Highway 29, where Gehry will wave his magic wand, transforming the property into a world-class, wine destination, the Halls have a second, smaller winery in Rutherford, where they make premium, small-batch wines. (It’s good to see somebody upholding the philosophy: you can never be too rich, too thin, or own too many wineries.)

(L to R) Kathryn Hall, Craig Hall, Frank Gehry and Edwin Chan stand beside a hole in the ground where the new trellised Hospitality Center will magically appear. “Architecture is a lot like a magic trick,” Gehry told me. “You work on a project for many years and then one day, all of a sudden, a building seems to be standing there on its own. And you ask yourself, even though you’ve been on the project for four years, ‘How did that get there?’”

Frank Gehry. Okay, what hasn’t been said about him? The genius who fought Bilbao residents, convincing them to let him design and build the world’s first undulating titanium canopy and stick it on their local Guggenheim, is now 78.

“This will be the first winery I have ever designed and built in the U.S. and it will likely be the last,” Gehry told me. “It will have to be. I am too old to be commissioned for another winery.

What else hasn’t been said about the genius, who told me “you shouldn’t copy nature because you will fail. And you shouldn’t copy history (architecturally speaking) because you will trivialize the past.”

Here’s something we didn’t know about Gehry: When he goes out to dine, his wife orders their wine.

“She knows more about wine than I do,” giving weight to that old adage: Behind every successful genius is a woman… who orders the wine.

Gehry was dressed a lot like Steve Jobs today. All black. Black shiny loafers, black socks, black pants, black tunic, black sports jacket. Just the opposite of his outrageous, original, outlandish, attention-grabbing buildings, which are as sculpturally breathtaking as they are architectural triumphs. It appears Gehry saves the flash for his designs, preferring to dress more casually.

Gehry’s architectural associate, Edwin Chan, a thin, young man who worked with Gehry on the Guggenheim Bilbao project, was also present today. He, Gehry and some 200 other staffers look after a total "of about five projects that are presently in the design stage."

“It’s about all we can handle at one time,” Gehry told me.

The Hall Winery project will bring many elements of life together – Art, Wine, Architecture. The finer things in life," Chan summed up.

The Calendar

The Gehry-designed, Lail-built, Hall Winery will open sometime in 2010, according to winery president Reynolds, “though we won’t put a month on that just yet.”

In the meantime, starting this very weekend, and continuing throughout the entire construction period, Hall Winery will offer special daily tours of the Gehry project. Visitors who arrange in advance, will be able to tour the exhibition of Gehry-driven designs and concepts, which guests were invited to see today. Really striking stuff, especially when you see how many iterations, how many generations of design, were rejected with the goal of reaching Architectural Nirvana.

Tour takers will also be treated to a tasting of current-release Hall wines and a tasting of future wines from barrel. The fee for all this is $25 per person. For locals, and out-of-towners, a complimentary tour of the architectural exhibit will be offered on Sundays. For full details, or to book a tour, contract Hall Winery at 707-967-2620. Tell them you learned about the tours from napaman.com... and you will get absolutely nothing special in return, other than probably a genuine smile.

The Financing

No one associated with the project will comment on the final cost, partially because not all services and materials have been chosen. But given the extensive lead time to finalize a design that would please neighbors and the Napa County Planning Commission, the choice of architect, and the cost of building anything in Napa Valley these years, the completed Hall Winery will most likely rank as the most costly, most heavily trafficked, winery once it opens in 2010, or thereabouts.

“We will be permitted to have 500 visitors a day,” says Hall Winery president Reynolds. When I pointed out that nearby deli’s have as many as 2,000 visitors on a busy summer Saturday, and suggested that Hall Winery may have to develop a “By Appointment Only” policy, Reynolds quickly countered, “That would be a nice problem to have.” Indeed.

Winery president Mike Reynolds, who has the last word in the story, and, by the way, the last photo, too!

There are Luxury Hotels in Napa Valley… and Then There is …. Sheer Poetry!

It’s tough to open a new luxury hotel in Napa Valley. You have to upstage the old dowagers like Auberge du Soleil and Meadowood, and you have to blow past other newbies like Calistoga Ranch and The Carneros Inn.

“…where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry.” Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883

But construction king, inveterate jogger, winery owner and art supporter, 51-year-old Cliff Lede (pronounced Lay-dee) likes a challenge, so he decided to build Napa Valley’s newest, ultra-premium hotel.

And in so doing he hasz-o-o-o-o-m-e-d past all the rest.

In fact, Poetry Inn is the ONLY accommodation in the Stags Leap District wine appellation, according to innkeeper Monica Collins.

The main lodge at Poety Inn

Equally unique is the visual statement that Lede chose to make, opting to build his inn 500-feet off the valley floor, half-way up the side of the Vaca Mountains, on the eastern flank of Napa Valley. The views from the property are breathtaking. You can see a dozen hot air balloons lift-off from nearby Yountville most summer mornings and the air is so rich it seems to have texture, as you deeply inhale.

View from Poetry’s terrace, overlooking Stags Leap District and Cliff Lede’s’ Winery

To design Poetry, Lede chose Napa Valley’s reigning top architect, Howard Backen, who has designed Harlan and Bond wineries, as well as Cliff Lede’s own winery, as well as… oh… the list goes on.

Poetry Inn is located at the intersection of Yountville Crossroad and the Silverado Trail. Couldn’t be easier to find; couldn’t be harder to book space.

Open since March, 2005, Poetry Inn is fully booked every night for the next three months, says innkeeper Collins.

Poetry Inn's innkeeper, Monica Collins

Now, you could argue this isn’t hard to do, considering there are only three bedrooms (each named after a famous American poet -- ee cummings, Robert Frost, R. L, Stevenson,). And you would think that with room rates running $650 to $1320 per night in high season there would be vacancies. But Poetry Inn is a one-of-a-kind attraction in a valley that supports architectural originality. Think “Opus One,” or “Carl Doumani’s new “Quixote Winery,” both nearby, which are tourist destinations as much for their building design as for their wine.

Poetry Inn is a luxury sanctuary that is literally far (and high) away from the bustle of everyday life. In many ways, the location is more suited to mountain goats than visitors. The road up (and down) is steep. Did I say steep? What I meant is: while the hotel policy is that pets are not permitted, you wouldn’t want to bring your dog anyway. The driveway down to the flat lands, where you would walk your dog, is so steep that you and Fido would BOTH have shin splints if you attempted the journey on foot!.

Room amenities at Poetry are rich, and numerous, as I found out visiting a just-vacated room.

Every room has a king bed, a wood-burning fireplace, a flat panel Sony WEGA TV, a JBL iPod docking station and complimentary wireless internet access.

Every room also has dual bathroom vanities, in-floor heating, a large indoor soaking tub, an indoor shower, a private balcony and an outdoor shower with rain shower head.

“We have the cleanest guests in Napa Valley,” says innkeeper Collins, who says some guests pride themselves on taking numerous outdoor showers throughout the day because it is so much fun. “It’s something they can’t do back home,” she explains.

Rooms range in size from 850- to 1,450-square feet.

And talk about amenities! In a typical hotel, you check into your room and find a bottle of ubiquitously branded bottled spring water with a note that says, “For your drinking pleasure. $5.”

At Poetry Inn, when you check into your room you are confronted with a first-growth Bordeaux wine, which is available for your drinking pleasure. The note from Cliff Lede, whose passion is Bordeaux wines, invites guests to enjoy the wine; a fee of $250 will be added to their bill if they choose to enjoy the wine with complimentary cheeses sent to the room. This week, guests will find the 1994 Chateau La Tour, or the 1994 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, in their room upon arrival.

What’s more, to share the pleasure of wines, Cliff Lede stocks a 500-bottle cellar on the premises; guests are encouraged to visit the cellar and pull from it any of the Bordeaux first growths or any of the Cliff Lade wines and take them to the lounge, to their room, or to dinner in the valley. A wine list with all selections and prices is provided in each guest room.

Poetry Inn’s 500-bottle cellar is stocked with
first-growth Bordeaux and Cliff Lede wines.

Wine-loving guests at Poetry Inn may also enjoy a complimentary 90-minute tour of Cliff Lede Vineyards, at the foot of the inn; this includes a tasting of all current releases. Guests who do not have the time for a formal tour of the winery may partake in their own "in room" tasting, as each room is stocked (for sale) with no fewer than two white and three red Cliff Lede wines. Not like your every-other luxury hotel at all.

As many visitors to our valley are lured by our many first-class restaurants, Cliff Lede realized it would be folly to offer dinner; instead, he cleverly decided to offer the one meal of the day that ALL guests will take as they sit on their private hillside balcony, dressed, if at all, in the hotel’s 8-million-count Egyptian cotton spa robe, which is actually so thick that it is guaranteed to muffle the sounds of your happy, gurgling stomach as you chow down breakfast.

Each morning, guests are treated to a sublime 3-course gourmet breakfast, served to their room or on the terraced balcony on the level of the inn’s lounge.

The lounge at Poetry Inn

“We grow all the herbs and in summer, grow the tomatoes and cucumbers, which we serve at breakfast,” says innkeeper Collins. We are forced to change our menu regularly, even for breakfast as many of our guests return numerous times.

How often, I ask?

“We have one couple from Canada who have visited 10 times in the two years we have been open. They book their next visit before they check out!”

One of the mentionable things that guests may consider doing horizontally in their room – have a massage. Call the innkeeper and ask the masseuse to stop by your room.

But back to breakfast. The real idea behind hitting the stack of waffles at 8 am is that guests need to carbo-load if they’re going to hit the trails and visit wineries all day. The idea is that, with any luck, you might soak up some of the wine BEFORE it even stains your brain.

As a local Napa Valley resident, I don’t need to sleep at Poetry Inn to recognize the beauty – and joy -- of the valley at 7 am, when hot air balloons start to w-h-o-o-o-s-h overhead. As it is, I start each day by giving it a moniker. Today, for example was an “eight-balloon day.” I saw that many in the sky from my kitchen window. Yesterday was a “six-balloon day.”

While the Yountville-based, early morning hot air balloon lift-off is a thrill for first-time visitors to Napa Valley to see, but for those lucky few staying at Poetry Inn, they get to see the balloons at eye-level as the flotilla floats past! Now, that’s a thrill.

I couldn’t sleep at Poetry Inn this week, as all rooms are booked. I think the innkeeper said until 2050, but that could just be selective hearing. But I did manage to get invited to breakfast, to sample the sumptuous 3-course meal.

First course: A selection of croissants, or pains aux chocolates with fruit juice of your choice. And lots of Illy café.

2nd Course: Fresh fruit

3rd course: Your choice, golden blueberry, or cherry waffles or a perfectly cooked poached egg, served with a slice of organic tomato, garden arugula, and homemade rosti potatoes.

If the food, location, design and amenities of Poetry Inn don’t grab your interest, perhaps M’ssieur would be interested in “The Ultimate Birthday Bash,” offered by Poetry?

For a mere $60,000, five couples can take over the entire inn for a long weekend (book early, book far out, there is already a waiting list!). Thomas Keller, of French Laundry fame, will cook a meal for your group and serve it in the hotel’s lounge/dining room. Another night you will dine at Bouchon, in Yountville, and on your last night, you will dine at Ad Hoc, also in Yountville. All food, all wine, all gratuities are included.

Because of the hotel’s small size, there is a somewhat restrictive, but understandable, cancellation policy.
The hotel requires a deposit for the first and last night at the time of booking (or total pre-payment for a two-night stay), with the balance due 14 days prior to arrival.

For reservations contact the hotel at [email protected], or call 707-944-0646. The actual location is 6380 Silverado Trail, in "greater Yountville," if you'll pardon the expression.

O Chamé – Worth a 100-Mile, Round-Trip Drive to Berkeley!

O Chamé is a gem of a restaurant, a pearl, a treasure. In the pantheon of restaurants serving great tasting, original, delicate, perfectly balanced dishes, this tiny 45-seat-ery serves some of the best.

Many times, we have driven from Napa Valley to Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, for dinner. We also love Eccolo, on 4th Street, in Berkeley. But THE place to have lunch, is O Chamé and THE dish to have is the original, awesome, unforgettable green onion pancake, which is so popular that it has never come off the menu in 17 years since chef-owner David Vardy opened.

“It’s our bread-and-butter (money-making) appetizer,” says the bearded, camera-shy chef, who was trained as a medical anthropologist, spent time in Guatemala and then in Japan, cooking, where he met his wife to be, Hiromi.

“O Chamé ” is the phonetic spelling of the Japanese symbol which means “precocious little girl,” explains Vardy. “Our daughter was 1-year-old at the time we opened, and we named the restaurant after her.” Of a fashion.

Today, Vardy’s daughter, now 18, occasionally buses tables at the restaurant.

The menu at O Chamé is “Japanese-inspired,” says Vardy, who prefers not to call his fare “Fusion cooking.” “My techniques are largely Japanese, with the exception of the wood-burning oven, which I love to use but which is unknown in the Japanese kitchen.”

Best Dish in The House

The dish that drives me crazy – and for which I have driven 100 miles round-trip – is the seasonally changing Green Onion Pancake. At times, it is made with brown crimini mushrooms, at other times it is made with fresh corn kernels (my all-time favorite) or pumpkin puree.

What comes to the table is a mound of three, pre-cut sheets of an omelet-like “cake,” though “cake” suggests something sweet, and this is anything but. The rectangular morsels resemble domino tiles and they are as much fun to eat as that game is to play.

Today, this season, the crimini-green onion pancake sheets are golden on the top and bottom surfaces, and tiny threads of brown mushroom and green flecks of onion poke their tasty threads out the sides.

There are only four ingredients in the concoction – it is minimalist, like the restaurant space itself. The four ingredients are: egg, flour, salt, beer. Then you flavor it with green onion, mushrooms, etc.

Since day one, Vardy has served this savory egg confection with a dipping sauce made with homemade mayo, soy sauce and rice vinegar. It tastes a bit like a Thousand Island dressing – if you have to put a name to this salmon-colored, dipping sauce – but, in truth, it doesn’t taste like anything else you’ve ever had. It is perky, tweaky, silky; I can’t be more specific, or append the name of a fruit, or vegetable, I think it smells like, or of which it reminds me.

The ingredients at O Chamé are not all organic, nor are they always all-natural, but they are always as locally produced as possible. Vardy makes his fish broth daily, using bonito flakes; his spinach, which is blanched in fish stock, and tossed with a tongue-clacking sesame, soy sauce, and rice vinegar dressing, is another reason to drive 100 round-trip miles. There’s nothing like it – or as simple and tasty – in all the high-falutin’ tourist-y San Francisco restaurants where entrees start at $40. On reflection, $6 will not buy you as much original pleasure at another restaurant in the Bay-area.

Other dishes to consider at lunch

At lunch, we usually split one of the over-sized bowls of udon noodle soups; the roasted pork tenderloin, spinach and takuan soup is sensational but so, too, is the aburage (tofu skins), shiitake mushroom and spinach soup. You can substitute soba (buckwheat) noodles for the udon (wheat) noodles, if you’re on a health kick.

There’s a short but well-thought-out beer list. If you don’t know Red Tail from Mendocino, make this your beer of choice. There are also green teas, fermented teas and cold iced teas from which to choose a beverage.

Much like The House (see my review elsewhere on this site) in San Francisco, this tiny oriental-inspired restaurant delivers pleasure way beyond the scale of its size, or the price of its fare. If one were to ascribe points, the way we do for wines, this restaurant is easily a 98-point eatery, like The House, and I can’t really tell you why it shouldn’t receive a 100-point Perfect Score, because in all the years I have been dining here, the food has been consistently good, the service pleasant and efficient. And the smile on my face, each time that I leave O Chamé, could have been the model for designing the Wal-Mart Happy Face – because a person just can’t have a bigger grin.

O Chamé, 1830 4th Street, Berkeley. 510-841-8783

Oh Dear, 2004 Is Yet Another "Vintage of the Decade" for Rutherford Cabs -- the 3rd in a Row!

Okay, pardon the hyperbole, but that's how a majority of 2004 Rutherford Cabernets, poured for the press this morning at Rubicon Estate (formerly Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery), in Rutherford, will likely be labeled by wine lovers.

Hot on the heels of stunningly good 2002 and 2003 Cabernet-based wines from Rutherford comes yet another vintage of truly iconic wines, some which will take your breath away as you gasp for adjectives to describe them in all their glory.

Rubicon Estate, where the tasting was held

"Rutherford is the historic center of Cabernet in America," we were reminded by Andy Beckstoffer, one of the appellation's best-known growers and president of the Rutherford Dust Society, a self-promoting organization.

Andy Beckstoffer, President, Rutherford Dust Society

Rutherford, which lies at the epicenter of Napa Valley, has a reputation that far exceeds its geographic footprint. While only six square miles in size, and planted with barely 3,300 acres of vines, Rutherford is home to some of the nation's top wineries whose labels grab international headlines. Yet Rutherford produces less than one-quarter-of-one-percent (.25 percent!) of all the wine produced in America. Forget microclimate; they should call Rutherford a femtoclimate (a femtometer is one quadrillionth of a meter, way smaller than the period at the end of this sentence).

Rutherford has been a recognized AVA (American Viticultural Area) since 1993, one of 14 sub-appellations within Napa Valley. Cabernet is King here, as today's tasting proved yet again.

"There are 30 wineries and 75 growers in Rutherford," says Paul Wagner, executive director of the Rutherford Dust Society. "We have a sense of community and there is something common to the wines grown and produced here."

That "something" has been called 'Rutherford Dust.'

Andre Tchelistcheff, the first winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyards, and a legend of Napa Valley winemaking in his own right, started all the talk about 'Rutherford Dust' decades ago. Andre said that if you were going to grow great grapes that reflected the terroir, or soil, then you needed to plant them in Rutherford Dust (as opposed to other sites within Napa Valley).

Now, as a side note, I have been reviewing wine for 30 years and in a blind tasting of wines from many different Napa Valley AVAs, I cannot readily pick out Rutherford wines from, let's say, those of neighboring Oakville. Which is not to say that these differences don't exist. Let's just say that the story about the way that Rutherford Dust supposedly affects wines is apocryphal. And a damn good marketing story to amplify what is an already given -- great Cabernets with abundant ripe fruit.

Richard Betts, Master Sommelier at The Little Nell, Aspen, CO,
and Larry Stone, General Manager of Rubicon Estate and also a Master Sommelier

"What makes Rutherford Cabs so special?" asked Richard Betts, Master Sommelier at the award-winning dining room of The Little Nell, in Aspen, CO. I don't think it's a particular flavor profile instead, I think it's balance. It's like, 'I don't care what you wear - it's how you wear it!' It's all about 'balance.'"

616 glasses, 572 filled with Cabernet, 44 filled with water

At the center of the fermenting room at Rubicon Estate this morning was a magnificently l-o-n-g table, set with 616 Riedel glasses. Thirteen glasses for each taster plus a Riedel water glass per person.

Cab is King at this tasting

Many of my colleagues and two sommeliers present chose to record their tasting notes on a printed sheet of the wines being poured. I chose, instead, to taste through 25 wines blind; I did not want to be influenced by friends' wines. I live in Rutherford, I have many winemaker friends and it would be unwieldy, if not journalistically improper, to rate these wines knowing what I was tasting.

In year's past, I have discovered inexpensive $40 wines in this fashion that tasted like $100 wines. This year, my top-scoring wines are a bit more dear, in the $85-$125 range. Though I was giddily impressed by the $56, 2004 Tres Sabores Rutherford Perspective Cabernet Sauvignon from Julie Johnson, which I rated 93 points, a femto-point behind my top-rated wines of the day, yet half their price!

My top-scoring wines

2004 Quintessa. How does the Huneeus family do it year after year, make wines of such elegance, such velveteen texture? This stuff goes down like velour. The wine exhibits dark, ripe red and black fruits on the nose, suggesting perfect equilibrium on the palate, and the wine delivers on the palate, in spades.
This is a classic Rutherford Cab, gorgeous fruit; a stunning attack, a beautifully long bridge in the middle palate and a lustrous finish of notable length. I rated this wine 94 points but might have said 95 in hindsight. $125.

2004 Frank Family Vineyards Rutherford Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Rich, ripe, red fruit on the nose with a whiff of fresh Virginia tobacco; on the palate, the first thing that strikes you is the elegance, the balance, the finesse, the harmony of fruit, alcohol and tannins. A "wow!" wine that right from the get-go, I wanted to swallow and not spit. I rated this a tie with the Quintessa, at 94 points. $85.

2004 Rubicon Estate Cabernet. This was a surprise for me in the tasting, very likely the single best young Rubicon that I've ever tasted. The 2002 Rubicon was stunning, but for the most part, I have always felt that this was an underperforming brand. But Scott McLeod, winemaker, and his talented assistant, Tondi Bolkan, have started to seriously turn up the heat and they are now producing exceptional wines. The 2004 Rubicon Estate Cab has a just-brewed coffee aroma on the nose, but it also has richness, a luxuriousness, even an elegance that you can smell. And then it delivers all this again on the taste and eventual swallow (also not a candidate for spitting). I rated this wine 94 points, tied with the others above. $125.

2004 Tres Sabores Rutherford Perspective Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine jumps out of the glass, tweaking your nose with ripe fruit and elegant, dark cherries; the flavors suggested appear in the swallow and the wine exhibits magnificent balance. My hand-scribbled tasting note concludes: "Shows impeccable growing and winemaking skills. A stunning effort!" I rated this wine 93 points as it just falls out of the range of luster of the three wines above.
But when I found out that Tres Sabores is half the price of Quintessa, I have to speak of this wine on the same page, because PRICE DOES MATTER.
Sadly, you're going to have to race to get this wine, because Julie Johnson only made 200 cases. Hurry, hurry. $56.

More wines...

The other really good wines from the 2004 vintage

In the next tier of wines tasted, I would include the following:

2004 Raymond Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon. Rich, elegant, with a very tight core, lots of tannins suggesting a very long life ahead. Very well made. Great effort. 92 points. $55.

2004 Galleron Family Vineyards, Generation Series, Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon. Rich, ripe, elegant aromas waft from the glass. A classic Cab nose. Lots of ripe red fruits on the palate and the degree of ripeness of the fruit could be used as a textbook example of what to do/what to look for. Layers of integrated richness of wood and fruit and the alcohol is nicely balanced. 92 points -- and catch the price, only $40!!

2004 Pine Ridge Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon. I loved the 2003 vintage of this wine, with its forward fruit, cheery cherry notes, rich finish. Tasted blind today, the 2004 is a different animal; lots of coffee and toffee on the nose, almost candy-like. I swear I smelled a melted Krackle bar. A very strange, but still alluring wine; tastes like a Starbucks entry in the tasting, filled as it is with so many coffee notes. Ends with a lush espresso roast finish. Reminds me of the coffee notes sometimes found in Plumpjack wines in the late 1990s. If you're in a Starbucks, or Peet's, mood, you'll love this wine. 91 points, $48.

2004 Elyse Tietjen Cabernet Sauvignon. In days gone by, I often ran past the Tietjen plot as I jogged through the vineyards of Rutherford. I often mused to myself that, one day, I would have to sit down and taste/rate this wine. And now I have. The 2004 effort has a royal Rutherford nose, rich with red fruits and dark cherry nuances. On the palate, my notes recorded: "A classic Rutherford Cab. There is nothing to not like about this wine. It shows ripe, black fruits, dark cherries, there is a judicious infusion of oak but not over the top. Bravo." 91 points, $80.

But what's the 2004 vintage most like?

So that napaman.com readers - and wine buyers - might get a sense of how this vintage stacks up against previous vintages, I asked a number of winemakers for comparative vintages. (My thinking goes like this: if you can relate to a vintage that you have previously tasted and liked, then you will understand how, or whether, the 2004 Rutherford reds may appeal to you.)

"2004 was a warm year," says Charles Thomas, winemaker at Quintessa. "The heat spiked early, reminding me of 1978."

"I think the 2004 Rutherford Cabs are most like the wines we made in the mid-to-late 90s," says Julie Johnson, winemaker and owner of Tres Sabores. "If I had to be more specific, I'd probably say the 2004 is most like 1996, or maybe 1997."

"2004 is a lot like 1994 or maybe even 1990," says John Williams, owner of Frog's Leap Winery. "There is an evenness of harvested fruit, there is a common intensity in the wines. But if you asked me how the 2004 stacks up in terms of ageing potential, I'd say it's more like the 1991 and 1996 efforts from Rutherford growers - superb ageing potential!"

"2004 is most like 1997 in my mind," says Chris Cooney, associate winemaker at Provenance Vineyards.

Napaman.com readers interested in learning more about Rutherford wines, or who wish to get on the appellation's mailing list should contact [email protected].

This map is available for purchase through the Rutherford Dust Society; contact [email protected]

That Valley Next to Napa - the One You Can’t Pronounce - is Starting to Make Noise. And Good Wine.

It’s odd that Napa Valley wine drinkers, who can name grape varieties popular in South Africa and name small wine appellations in France, haven’t a clue that right next store, there’s a bona fide wine-growing appellation that’s producing some mighty tasty red and white wines.

The adjacent appellation is Suisun Valley. And if you said “Sue-is-son” you are just following your instincts. But you are wrong.

Locals pronounce it the same as that hair guy – Sassoon - with a little bit more of a “Suh” on the front note. So it sounds like “Suh-soon Valley.”

For the record, it’s where we get the fruit to make our trendy Manifesto! Sauvignon Blanc (see the story elsewhere on this site); it’s where Clos du Bois gets Chardonnay for its North Coast program; it’s where Kendall-Jackson and Sebastiani have long sought inexpensive, ripe fruit.

Suisun Valley, which means “west wind” in an old Indian dialect, is probably the most difficult to pronounce wine appellation in America. It officially became an AVA (American Viticultural Area) 25 years ago, yet few consumers have ever heard of the 8-mile long by 3-mile wide valley that lies adjacent to Napa Valley, on its southeastern flank.

But that’s about to change if Roger King has anything to say about it. He’s president of the Suisun Valley Grape Growers Association and a long time grower of grapes in the valley. (He farms 21 acres and pulls off 80 tons of fruit annually, to be exact.)

Roger King, president, SVGGA

The association recently decided to build Suisun Valley into a recognized brand, starting by offering free tastings of local wines in a Coop environment. Sunset Cellars, a local winery, took over the space of a defunct winery, turning it into a tasting room where about half the appellation’s 13 wine producers are pouring their wines.

The tasting room officially opened June 11, 2007 and throughout this first summer will be open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 pm. There is no intention, at this time, to charge for the tasting. Association members feel that if anyone makes the pilgrimage to Suisun, they deserve a free tasting!

The Suisun Valley Coop Tasting Room is about 30 minutes from downtown Napa.

Suisun Valley Tasting Coop Center

The five brands supporting the venture at this point are wines you’ve probably never seen: Sunset Cellars, Twilight Ridge, King Andrews Vineyards, Shale Peak Vineyards, and Winterhawk. Most of these wines retail in the $15-18 range and offer zippy flavors, integrated wood, and a pleasurable finish.

Grapes have been grown in the Suisun Valley for more than a century. Today, the appellation covers more than 15,000 arable acres, though only 2,000 are planted with vines, according to SVGGA president King.

Bud break in Suisun Valley, 2007

“About 45 percent of the grapes planted are white, mostly Chardonnay, though there are the odd lots of Pinot Gris and Albarino (aka Alvarinho),” says King. “The rest is red – mostly Cabernet, though some growers are tinkering with Rhone varieties and having early success with them.”

Ted Osborne and Doug Sparks, Suisun Valley winemakers

I tasted the efforts of one such producer, Ted Osborne, whose 2004 Olabisi Syrah was my favorite wine of the tasting arranged for me.

Tasting notes:
100 percent Syrah from a vineyard farmed by Roger King. Rich aromas of earth and dark ripe fruit lift from the glass. There is deep extraction here, lots of spice and dark cherry in the middle palate, and great depth of flavor on the finish. This is a serious Syrah but doesn’t cost like one - $30 retail. I scored the wine 91 points.

To give you an idea of how good this wine really is – it was chosen for the wine list at Gary Danko, one of San Francisco’s very top dining rooms.

“We sold through the case,” says Gary Danko sommelier Jason Alexander. “I thought the wine was really good and I was very excited by what they’re doing in Suisun Valley.”

Typical knoll vineyard in Suisun Valley

My other runner-up favorite wines of the tasting:

2003 King Andrews, Ledgewood Vineyards, Syrah. A very compelling $16 wine, though it’s pedigree is a bit quirky – 83 percent ripe Syrah fruit, 16 percent zippity-do-dah high alcohol Zinfandel and a smidgeon of Pinot Gris. I thought the wine had a decent attack, a rich dark cherry interior and a suitably rich finish. I scored this a 90 pointer.

2003 Twilight Ridge Petite Sirah. Spicy, racy, has a Zin-like quality, lots of blackberry notes and – thankfully – no new wood. I scored this pleasing $18 wine 89 points.

Doug Sparks, Tracy Ellison, and Ted Osborne taste through a selection of Suisun Valley reds

If you make the trek to Suisun Valley from anywhere in the Bay-area, don’t be shocked by what you find, or more likely by what you don’t find. This tiny appellation has none of the cache, hype or Louis Vuitton-age elements of Napa Valley. For that matter, it’s not even as built up as the most elemental back roads of Sonoma County where you will find $4 million wineries.

We’re talking basic, elementary, earthy, honest, sincere, REAL folks in a rural setting and the biggest urban center in the valley, Mankas Corner, is little more than three shops on the corner of intersecting country roads.

Mankas Corners, the busiest intersection in Suisun Valley

Think Napa Valley in 1966 and you will get the picture. But what a lovely picture. A veritable Kodak moment worth getting on digital. So bring your camera when you visit.

Suisun Valley Grape Grower’s Association Co-op Tasting Room, 4495 Suisun Valley Rd., Fairfield (for GPS purposes). Open Fri., Sat., Sun., noon to 5 pm. Tel. 707-864-3135.