Wine News

Napa Valley Bits & Pieces of Wine News – June 15th

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Amazon Closer to Selling Wine When New Vine Logistics closed its doors a couple of weeks back many were predicting that Amazon would either drop or have a long delay in launching their plan to sell wine online. Amazon had contracted New Vine Logistics to handle the sales. New Vine Logistics is back and word … Read more

Napa Valley Wineries Who Tweet – Not Many

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As a frequent traveler to wine country, a hunter of wine values and bargains, a wine blogger, and a member of Twitter, I recommend to all Napa Valley wineries, you should Tweet. Don’t just take my advice, read the cover story in this week’s Time Magazine on Twitter and read in the current issue of Business Week, Jack and Suzy Welch’s article on “Why We Tweet.” I joined Twitter in March and my only regret is that I did not start sooner. The payoff is big in many ways.

I checked to see how many Napa Valley Wineries are currently on Twitter. In the “Find People” link on Twitter, I put in the keyword “Winery” and sorted through about 200 wineries and found exactly 20 Napa Valley wineries and 2 in Carneros registered on Twitter. Amazingly, only a handful of these wineries are using Twitter frequently and one small Napa Valley winery, Casa Nuestra, is on the cutting edge. Casa Nuestra at the moment has 560 “Followers” and the winery has made over three hundred Tweets. A Follower is one who decides to follow someone on Twitter and receive any Tweets they send out. A tweet is 140 characters of information.

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Napa Valley Bits and Pieces of Wine News

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Can you Negotiate Wine Prices These Days?
A friend of mine returned from a recent trip to the wine country and told me that he had bargained for a case of wine. He started out by saying He’d take six bottles of a wine when he knew he really wanted a case. Then he added quickly “will you give me a case for whatever…?” The person agreed and all were happy. Next time you hit a Napa Valley Winery or any winery for that matter, think about giving bargaining a try. It just might work. These are hard times out there for the wine industry and inventories are stacking up. Did you see the story on the CBS Evening News about Fetzer’s Inventory?

More hardships to Come? — Smoke Taint 2008 Harvest
I recently heard from one Napa Valley Vintner that the 2008 Pinot Noir grapes he had purchased from an Anderson Valley grower all contain smoke taint. He was adamant that no matter how much filtering he did, it would not completely remove the smoke taint. Forest fires plagued Northern California last summer and for many days smoke permeated the air in various portions of California vineyards. Will this so-called smoke taint add to the woes of the 2008 harvest already victimized by frost?

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Comments on The Wine Spectator’s Napa Valley Getaway

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The Wine Spectator’s June 15th issue has a feature article entitled “Napa Valley Getaways, a Wine Lover’s Guide to Fit Every Budget.” Well, not every budget as you might imagine. The Wine Spectator’s subscribers assuredly are in income brackets that span from the super rich to the high middle class. I would surmise, there are few wine lovers below this economic bracket that read Wine Spectator on a regular basis.

At the top end, for “those sparing no expense” subscribers, the article makes recommendations of where to stay and dine in the Napa Valley. They mention Auberge du Soleil, Brandesonno, and Meadowood where room rates run from $450 to as much as $8750 a night at Meadowood.

I would imagine that many Wine Spectator readers immediately did as I did and skipped to the budget portion of the Napa guide. I consider myself an expert in this area since we travel often to the Napa Valley and always travel in the budget mode. I think the article missed some important tips that I would like to add.

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Napa Valley – Wine News for May

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On the Economy
I’m hearing on the business news that some economists feel we may have hit the bottom of the recession and will now experience a slow road back to recovery. We are also hearing about more people taking “day vacations.” On a recent trip to the Napa Valley, it was hard to tell if business was getting better. On a Tuesday night, at the Bottega Restaurant we found no signs of a recession. The restaurant has been booked solid nightly since its opening in December. But the next day at Redd it was a different story. The restaurant was much less busy from what we had experienced in the past. By the time we had finished dinner at 9 pm, there were plenty of empty tables and the bar was deserted.

At the Oxbow Public Market on a Wednesday afternoon, the place was absolute dead. Honestly, there were more workers in the market than customers. I wonder whether this place is going to make it. Maybe the weekends are different, but these merchants need a hefty dose of daily customers to make a go of it. We purchased some meats at the Fatted Calf and the merchant told us that things are very slow during the week.

Just outside the entrance to Domain Chandon in Yountville is where one balloon company launches its early morning rides. We were on a morning walk when we spied six balloon rides getting ready to take off. That surely looks like a positive.

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Women Winemakers Shine at Acme Tasting

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On Saturday I had the good fortune of being invited to an amazing wine tasting of boutique wines made by a group of elite winemakers. Acme Fine Wines, one of the premier wine shops in the Napa Valley, arranged the tasting. Owners Karen Williams and David Stevens brought together 12 winemakers who make wines for some 60 small wineries. The tasting was divided into two sessions. The first session was for media only and the second session began at 1 pm for consumers. Acme Fine Wines is a small wine shop located on a side street in St. Helena and it was jammed to the gills for both sessions as wine afficionados leaped at this opportunity to taste wines made by these artisan winemakers.

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Whatever Happened to the Picnic Law in the Napa Valley?

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In July of 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill calling for a special picnic license for wineries. This picnic law would grant a picnic license allowing wineries to designate a picnic area and sell visitors a full glass of wine or bottles of wine to be consumed on the premise. I was excited about this news because I was hoping that it would increase the number of picnic wineries in the Napa Valley. As it is, the Napa Valley compared to all other wine regions in California has the lowest percentage of wineries with picnic facilities. By my count, I only find 20 Napa wineries conveniently located that have a picnic area. Secondly, I thought the new law would bring about some innovative tasting ideas. Why not be able to order one single glass of one wine, instead of sampling an array of one-ounce portions of wines? Or, purchase two glasses of 3 oz each and do a side-by-side comparison. The law went into effect on January 1 and now, well into the year, I have yet to see any effects of this so-called picnic license.

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Where Napa Valley Shops for Wine Values

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The mood of many a wine drinker these days is not to drink less wine but to search out bargains wines, ones that give the “biggest bang for the buck.” If you visit any of Napa Valley’s finest wineries you are unlikely to find anything in the way of a sale but we did find a couple of wine shops in the Valley where one can certainly find many wine values. If you are a bargain wine hunter, don’t pass up the chance to find some very interesting and not so expensive wines at either JV Wines & Spirits in the town of Napa or the Wine Garage in Calistoga.

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Mendoza Wine Country – A Challenge to the Napa Valley

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We are in Mendoza wine country for one week and then crossing the Andes to visit wineries in Chile for another week. We have visited several wineries both big and small in Mendoza. It is interesting to note how proud the Argentine wine industry is of their wine and how confident they are that their wines measure up to the best from Napa Valley and the rest of the wine world.

The three most important wine regions of Mendoza are the Lujan de Cuyo, the Maipu Valley, and Valle de Uco. The length of these three regions is about the same distance as from Napa to Calistoga. There are some 1000 wineries in Mendoza but only ten percent are open to the public. The Mendoza wine country is east of the Andes Mountains, making the area very much a desert climate. Elevations range from about 1000 feet to as high as 4500 feet in some of the vineyards of the Valle de Uco.

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Napa Valley – Bits & Pieces of Wine News

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Wappo Restaurant is Closed

One of our favorite long-time restaurants, Wappo Bar & Bistro, has closed its doors in Calistoga. For years this restaurant with its eclectic menu has been a favorite of locals and visitors alike. So far, we have been unable to find out why the restaurant closed. Was it the economy, the competition, or just the time to end a good long stretch of serving up fine dining? We hope it was the latter. We will surely miss Wappo.

Hurray for Michael Chiarello and the Bottega Restaurante in Yountville

San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer gave the newly-opened Bottega Restaurant in Yountville a Three-Star rating (Excellent). In his review, Michael Bauer praises the outstanding cuisine as well as the star power of owner and chef Michael Chiarello. Michael Bauer also cited the wine list as extensive and well priced. He also noted that, despite the economy, the restaurant was packed with diners. Congratulations to Michael Chiarello and his staff. The review is at sfgate.com.

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