Through these portals pass some of the finest wines… and today, some of the finest winemakers… in Oakville.
One of the valley’s highly sought, hard-to-get trade tickets is for the annual spring Taste of Oakville event, which brings together growers, winemakers, vineyard owners and the folks they’re all trying to reach – restaurant wine buyers, sommeliers, and retail wine merchants.
Napaman snagged a ticket and has the following commentary to share.
If the 2006 and 2007 mostly Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines poured today are any indication of things to come, the general wine-drinking public is in store for some mighty pleasurable drinking.
There wasn’t a dud among the 71 wines, poured by the 41 Oakville wineries on hand.
As I exited the event, held this year at the Robert Mondavi Winery, several colleagues approached, asking which were the standout wines, a typical reaction at this kind of tasting.
In truth, I no longer try to compare wines at this type of event; after tasting a few dozen wines, the only ones that stick out from the pack are aberrant wines, where the alcohol, or extraction, or oak, is so pronounced that the wine sticks out from the genuinely pretty, balanced, elegant wines.
Panelists who lead the morning MasterClass on “the
commitment of ownership; From left to right, Paul Roberts, Estate Director, Bond,
Ren Harris, owner Paradigm, Michael Weis, wine director, Groth, and Tom
Garrett, winemaker, Detert Family Vineyards. The bowls in the foreground,
filled with each winery’s respective soil, showed how soil composition changes
across the appellation.
Oakville, at the epicenter of Napa Valley, is one of 15 valley sub-appellations. Oakville is a small-ish subsection but it carries a large and important historical mantle – it is where Robert Mondavi built his winery, shared his vision and created Napa Valley’s earliest and best wines, and on which the reputation of the entire valley was predicated.
Robert Mondavi Winery, site of this year’s Taste of
Oakville event. Bob Mondavi would have been happy and proud of the number – and
quality – of wines poured.
At the morning MasterClass, led by four of the appellation’s highly recognized wine producers (see photo with caption, above), we learned that global warming is here, it is hot and it has been scientifically recorded.
“Between 1960 and 2010 – that’s only 50 years – the average night time temperature in Oakville in the month of April, which used to be considered a cool month, has been documented by university scientists to have jumped 5.3 degrees Fahrenheit,” Ren Harris, of Paradigm, told the assembled group.
Them’s a lot of degrees over such a short period of time, in
case you needed someone to interpret what Ren said.
Some 120 people were invited to the MasterClass session,
which culminated in a tasting of four 2006 Oakville-made wines.
Several participants expressed concern about the higher degree of alcohol, which we’re seeing in many California wines today, due to higher levels of ripeness.
Paul Roberts, of Bond, answered this one: “I don’t want to appear as an ‘alcohol apologist’ but drinkers want freshness, brightness and minerality in their wine and when you make a wine with these characteristics in Napa Valley, you inherently get higher levels of alcohol.”
“Listen,” he continued, “when you look at some of the great old-world wines from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, there is so much complexity and minerality that the higher levels of alcohol – sometimes in the 16.6 range – are hidden. We don’t hear wine drinkers or wine writers railing against these wines; why do they single out California, or new world, wines for their sometimes elevated levels?”
“Our job is to make the best wine we can from the grapes we nurture and source; it is not to make a lower alcohol wine at the expense of diminished flavor, freshness, or minerality.”
Amen. I’m not gonna argue with this guy.
After the MasterClass, guests were joined by about 450
members of the wine trade in the Robert Mondavi barrel room. Way too many
people for such a confined, narrow, angular space. That’s Bill Harlan, of
Harlan Estate, in the foreground, and a multitude of glass-carrying,
wine-seeking, pushing and shoving industry revelers in the background.
After the morning MasterClass, and after a sensational luncheon in Mondavi’s Vintage Room, guests re-assembled in the winery’s barrel room to taste through the wines poured by 41 wineries.
Brothers John and Tom Garrett, respectively responsible
for marketing/sales and for winemaking at their family’s Detert Family
Vineyards. I’m surprised the brothers fit into this small space – these guys
define TALL… in fact, when their feet are planted on the ground in Oakville,
their cropped heads belong in another appellation with the hillside attributes
of a cooler climate.
Estate Director, Paul Roberts, pours two of his 2006 Bond
wines for the swelling crowd of professional tasters.
Upper tier of the Modavi barrel room, where the Taste of
Oakville was held.
If you’re interested in learning more about the wines of Oakville, log onto www.oakvillewnegrowers.com
Hi Quinn. No, he did not name any one specific CDP, but I think he was generalizing, for example, about the gushy fruit 2007 Chateauneufs-du-Pape whose disarming, attractive, even alluring, fruit-forward features somewhat hide a reasonably high alcohol load. Yes?
- napaman
Posted by: jim white | April 29, 2010 at 08:00 AM
Did Paul Roberts offer any specific examples of wines from Chateauneuf du Pape with alcohol levels in the 16.6 range that have been praised for their freshness, brightness, and minerality?
Posted by: Quinn | April 28, 2010 at 11:57 AM