Restraint.

One word: Restraint.  Farella have always practiced the art of producing finessed wines that age well and pair beautifully with food.  (Indeed, the winery's motto is 'Farella with food'.)  Pioneers of the planting of Cabernet sauvignon grapes in, what is now, the Coombsville AVA (2011), Farella's winemaking philosophy hasn't changed since the winery was founded in 1985.
Not every wine has to be a big, bold Napa Valley red, sometimes a more sober approach to wine making is more appealing.  Farella wines are excellent because of their subtlety.  The 2019 'La Luce' Sauvignon Blanc is a fair representation of the restraint that Farella exercise in all their winemaking.  I've had this wine many times before.  Lovely hint of grass on the nose with pear, mango, pineapple and honeysuckle - clean.  A little green apple skin on the palate, gooseberry, a soupçon of minerality and a trace of bitter almond on the finish.  In my honest opinion, if I was going to age this wine I would have liked a tad more acid.  But who am I kidding?  The wine was gone with one meal.
Farella shows restraint.

Wine games.

With a particular bottle of wine in mind, I headed into Vinoland's wine cellar for a look-see.  Yikes!  I didn't realise that there is so much crappy, old wine in there.  There's a lot of good stuff, but there is a fair percentage of wine that needs to disappear - down the toilet if necessary.  Then, I had a thought.  I should select a bottle a week, taste the wine and post about it even if the wine is awful and undrinkable.
I remembered that I like doing series/themes of posts.  Amongst some in the past, there have been; Winery Christmas Lights (WCL), Napa Valley's American Viticultural Area Signs (AVA Sign), Wines of the World (WOTW) and, Thud's personal favourite, Week of Weeds (WOW).  Titter, Titter.  (To see all posts related to these series, click on respective labels below.)
As my search continued, dodging cobwebs (some with spiders in them), stubbing my toes on cases and almost triggering a small avalance of teetering bottles, I had fun trying to recall the provenance of individual bottles I espied.  Where did I buy this bottle?  Was it a gift?  Have I been to this winery?  Memories, mental images and single words popped into my head like a game of word association.  Or rather, in this instance, wine word association (WWA).  A ha!  A new idea for yet another (short) series formed in my mind.  One wine, one word.  I grabbed five random (local) wines with which to start.
Never did find the original bottle of wine that I was looking for.
Stay tuned.

Frost wars.

It was a gorgeous day today, finally.  Beautiful blue sky, a few white fluffy clouds, temperature reached 66° F.  I managed to get quite a bit of pruning done.  Yay!  When, at 5.10 pm, I finished pruning for the day it started to rain - just as Vinodog 2 and I were going on our afternoon walk, of course.  With just one gigantic, dark grey cloud over Vinoland the rain did not last for long, thankfully.  The weekend forecast is promising.
Of course with clear, cloud-free spring nights comes freezing overnight temperatures and frosty mornings.  A neighbouring vineyard, Farella Vineyards, is preparing for such an eventuality.  (As an aside, I love this portable fan.)  It can be a bit of a battle, as frosts may or may not occur this time of year.  However, commercial vineyards need to be armed with preventative measures to ensure that the vines are protected from injury.  It's always something with Mother Nature.

Far from finished.

This time of year, harvest time, The Napa Valley Register includes in its weekly 'On Wine' section an additional feature: a harvest report.  The harvest report details harvest goings-on in the entire Napa Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA); including all 16 sub-AVAs from Carneros to Calistoga.  Being a vine-geek I love to read it, especially since the Coombsville AVA has been in the mix since harvest of 2012. TWWIAGE's winemaker is a frequent contributor for the Oakville AVA. I had always assumed the reports were accurate, however there was a bit of an oversight in this week's dispatch.
Reporting on week 3, a local Coombsville vintner (who shall remain nameless) was quoted thus: "All the whites are off in our neighborhood..." Really?  Well, his white grapes might have already been harvested, as have Vinoland's, but just several hundred yards from his vineyard is another, rather sizable vineyard with a not insignificant crop of Chardonnay - that's still hanging.  Can't miss it. Titter, titter.
The past two days, the folks at Far Niente have been busy preparing to pick their Chardonnay. And tonight seems to be the night.  Well, it'll be overnight, Monday morning, actually.  I'll probably hear the picking crew and their tractors in the early hours.  And tomorrow, when I leave for work, I'll see that the fruit has been harvested.  Only then, perhaps, will the neighbourhood be devoid of white grapes.
I shouldn't believe everything I read.  I usually don't.  Ho Hum.

Solstice sunset.

The winter solstice's sunrise wasn't much to look at.  And up I was, looking at it, listening to Jethro Tull, brewing coffee and making cinnamon rolls: I wanted to get my money's worth of daylight on this the shortest day of the year. 
However, whilst walking the Vinodogs late this afternoon I got to enjoy a very impressive sunset which highlighted the neighbourhood vineyards with a deep, amber glow.
Happy winter solstice, enjoy, be happy...for tomorrow it starts to stay lighter, later.
Sing it, Ian!

Everybody's doing it.

Pruning that is. For what will be my last post on the subject of pruning for a while, I have decided to showcase a cordon-trained vineyard that is about a half mile north of Vinoland - Farella-Park.
Although Farella-Park produces wine under its own label it would indeed be very rare to ever see the wine for sale in a retail location. Instead, this vineyard chooses to sell the majority of its grapes to various wineries around the Napa Valley. Whilst Farella-Park farms many distinct grape varieties, they have chosen (from what I can see from passing by) to cordon-train and spur-prune the entire vineyard. Cordon-training is a relatively simple way to maintain a grapevine once the permanent structure, the cordon, has been established. Consequently, it is the most common style of training to be spotted around the valley.
Caught mid-prune, you can see that the vineyard manager has still quite a fair bit of work to be going on with, one snip at a time. Carry on!

Farella...with food.

Whether Vinomaker likes it or not, we have grilled salmon every Saturday night...gotta have those Omega 3's. We have found that some wines just don't work with this relatively fatty fish, like Chardonnay or Torrontes, for instance. Generally we fall back on a trusted compliment to the salmon, good old Sauvignon blanc.
This past Saturday night we had one of the best SBs that I have ever had. The Farella-Park 2007 is just plain delicious. It had, which I didn't believe was possible, the minerality that you get with a good Sancerre....from a Napa wine no less. If you are a fan of Sauvignon blanc as Vinomaker and I are, then this may be the quintessential, varietal expression.
Just fab, not Kiwi style, not full-on Sancerre, not over-bearingly Napa...just about as good as it gets...with or without food.