The Mount Veeder AVA.

I had intended to leave my exploration of the Napa Valley's mountain AVAs until Thud arrives this summer, but last Saturday I found myself up in the Mount Veeder American Viticultural Area (MVAVA).
Nestled high in the Mayacamas Mountains (which were once a seabed), the MVAVA is a relatively small AVA of around 25 square miles with approximately 1,000 acres planted to grapevines.  Some of the steepest vineyards in California, certainly in the Napa Valley, are to be found here: farming on a  30° slope is, to me, the very definition of hillside viticulture. Difficult to farm, the shallow volcanic soils mean that crop yields can be a full 50% less than what a grower could expect to harvest from a valley floor vineyard (for Cabernet sauvignon that could mean a mere 2 - 2½ tons per acre).  The Mayacamas range can receive nearly twice the amount of rainfall than the valley floor, a rather soggy 35 - 40 inches a year. Abundant with firm tannins, brambly is a word quite often used when describing the red wines of the MVAVA. And apparently the wines age very well.  I have had a few MVAVA wines, but not a lot.
Notable wineries (to me) are; The Hess Collection (in part for being on the site of the former Christian Brothers winery, Mont La Salle), Rubissow (I had a wonderful hillside-viticulture field trip up there once) and Mayacamas Vineyards and Winery (where my NVC viticulture professor Dr. Krebs was once employed as the vineyard manager.  And also where A Walk in the Clouds, starring Keanu I-couldn't-act-my-way-out-of-a-paper-bag Reeves, was filmed).
Ten down, six to go.

National Wine Day.

Happy National Wine Day!  Who knew?  Not me.  Well, not until Vinomaker mentioned to me when I was on my way out to work this morning that it was indeed National Wine Day.  Nor, apparently, did every other person I spoke to today (at TWWIAGE) know that it was an official wine day.  So, to appease the wine Gods, I found as much wine as I could (at TWWIAGE) and drank it all.  Calm down Bacchus, I'm just joking.
Wine marketing at its finest.  Or, perhaps, worst.

The Judgement of Paris.

I could not let the 40th anniversary of the Judgement of Paris pass by without saying something about it.  However, I don't have much to add to this forty year old tale about the wines of the Napa Valley beating the French at, what the French considered was, their own game.  
The only French prop I could find in the house was this mini Arc De Triomphe (have no idea where it came from), which is quite ironic really because the French lost.  Vive le vin!

Blue Nun.

I cannot recall going to a 'cheese and wine' evening in the 1980s and there not being at least one bottle of Blue Nun present (with the odd bottle of Black Tower thrown in for good measure, of course).  Yum, cubed-cheddar on cocktail sticks and Liebfraumilch, tasty.  Yes, the Blue Nun of my youth was labelled as Liebfraumilch (or beloved Lady's Milk), and was usually a blend of Riesling, Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau.
Blue Nun is no longer labelled as such, now the producers value their reputation.  These days, calling anything a Liebfraumilch is considered a negative when it comes to marketing.  (Think cubed-cheddar on cocktail sticks.)  The bottle of Blue Nun in the photograph is simply labelled "Authentic White" (as opposed to...?) and is now made from Rivaner (so says the back label), a.k.a. Müller-Thurgau.  At only 10% alcohol, this sweet white wine, in its oddly blue-hued hock bottle, actually tasted better than I remembered. The wine had a wonderful nose, truly deep snort-worthy, and although the palate was well balanced it was cloyingly sweet. And what possessed me to purchase a bottle of The Nun after all these years? (And may I add, this wine was not easy to find, it took some effort.)
I was inspired to once again taste Blue Nun because I have just finished reading The Secrets of My Life: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy by Peter M. F. Sichel.  Herr Sichel is the man credited with making Blue Nun a runaway international wine-brand success story.  What an interesting life this man has led; escaping Nazi Germany, schooling in England, spying for the Central Intelligence Agency and creating one of the most recognisable wine brands on the planet.  It was a great book, written in an easy conversational tone that almost felt like I was sitting with Peter Sichel in his living room. Sharing a bottle of Blue Nun, perhaps.

To bloom betimes.

I think 2016 is going to be an unusual vintage.  I say this because today, whilst I was out in the vineyard stuffing shoots, I noticed that Vinoland's Cabernet sauvignon (CS) is further along in bloom than the CS at TWWIAGE.
It is fun to live (and farm) in a relatively cool AVA e.g., Coombsville and work (and observe) in another, noticeably warmer AVA e.g., Oakville. And why do I consider this year's earlier bloom, in spite of a cooler-than-normal spring, unusual?  Because from my personal experience, CS, Clone 4, in Coombsville is normally a bit of a slowcoach in the flowering department.  This year my little mutants apparently want to get an early start.  Go little girls and boys!

From vA to aZ.

It seems that I'm on a mini wine tour of the 50 United States, well, if a paltry pair of states, Virginia and Arizona, can be considered a tour. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is good to get out of Napa now and then, (wine-wise that is).  Except I didn't, Vinomaker did (a business trip to Arizona) and he brought back a bottle of Passion Cellars, 2013 Grenache, Cochise County. (My grandmother loved Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow, but I digress.)
I couldn't find out much about this wine as Passion Cellars don't provide much information on their website, but their description of the wine was spot on: "Strawberry aromas give way to subtle hints of vanilla and smoky herbal notes in this soft but complex Grenache."  For the most part I would agree with their tasting notes, except I would add that this wine (of very low colour extraction, really not much deeper hued than a rosé of Syrah perhaps), had a slightly medicinal quality that was a little off putting. And was possibly slightly oxidised.  And wasn't very complex. The wine fared a little better with food (a homemade sausage and pepperoni pizza), but, ultimately, this wine falls into the category of a one-glass-is-enough tipple.

Don't dump on Trump.

Don't dump on Trump Winery, that is.
It is no secret that Vinomaker loves Viognier, so I thought I'd try to find something a little out of the ordinary for him to drink.  The Trump Winery, 2015 Viognier (Monticello AVA) fit the bill perfectly.  (Yes, that's correct, I did indeed type T.R.U.M.P.)  Obviously, anything to do with the name Trump is very controversial at the moment, but, please, don't shoot the messenger.
Winemaker Jonathon Wheeler (who, according to his bio, has worked in wineries in Sonoma, CA) has crafted a really pretty Viognier from fruit grown on the Trump Winery estate which is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Planted to 200 acres of Vitis vinifera varieties, the Trump Winery's vineyard is Virginia's largest vineyard and the largest planting of V. vinifera on the East Coast.  (That's huge.  Huge.)
A fairly typical Viognier, this wine had oodles of orange blossom, honeysuckle and apricot on the nose, and a strange (but strange in a good way) caramel-apple lollipop richness on the palate. The wine was a tiny bit flabby, but was otherwise well-balanced.
I bought this wine on Amazon as it was slightly less expensive to buy the wine through Amazon than directly from the winery.  However, it was still shipped from the winery in Virginia. Vinomaker and I paired this wine with a chicken salad, not Hispanic food (titter, titter).

My favourite brunette.

My brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) are back!  Two male cowbirds made their appearance the other morning and availed themselves of the seedy-smorgasbord that Vinomaker spreads on the rail of our deck. Usually, just one male and one female will show up, but there have been no sightings of lady cowbirds as yet.  Personally, if I were them, I would have stayed down south, in warmer climes, a bit longer this spring as the weather up north has been cool and damp for the best part of a week now. They are extremely skittish birds and so it is very hard to get a decent photograph of them.
Cowbirds got their name from hanging around herds of grazing cattle and taking advantage of the myriad of insects that the cattle would flush from the vegetation.  Like cuckoos, cowbirds practice brood parasitism, so they are of dubious character when it comes to their reproductive habits.  Still, I love their quirky brown head-held-high strut and all the chitter-chatter they make.  Welcome back to Vinoland, cowbirds.

Afternoon in the Vineyards: 2016.

Of the six vineyards to choose from for the annual Napa Valley Vintners community event that is Afternoon in the Vineyards, Vinomaker and I opted to visit Chimney Rock Winery.  I had never been to Chimney Rock before - though I drive past this winery all the time on my way to TWWIAGE - so this seemed like a great opportunity to try somewhere new.  It was a grey, drizzly morning and I did have second thoughts about attending the event altogether. It would have been really easy to just stay home, but in the end I dragged myself, and Vinomaker, out into my trusty Vinovehicle and headed up north.
The event started well as upon arrival I was handed a taste of Chimney Rock's 2013 Sauvignon Gris (Napa Valley AVA).  Sauvignon Gris is an unusual grape variety for the Napa Valley.  The wine was a fairly pleasant quaff, but had a tad too high alcohol-burn thing on the finish. Viticulturalist Doug Fletcher, apparently a long time employee of Chimney Rock, (I think he even mentioned that he had been the winemaker at some point), was our vineyard tour guide for the event.  I say tour, but a quick stroll across 25 yards of tarmac to the first vine in sight, in my mind, does not constitute a tour. The talk started well as Doug seemed like he was going to address such viticultural specifics as soil composition, grape varieties and clones.  But he strayed off topic when someone asked him about the use of Roundup in the vineyard (the whole glycophosphate debate).  And that was it, in short shrift my group was hustled from the edge of the vineyard back onto the tarmac to make way for the next group.  I had a quick look at the tasting room and then departed.
All in all, this year's Afternoon in the Vineyards, and perhaps it was just this particular venue, Chimney Rock, was a bit of a disappointment.  Sigh.

Bloomin' lovely.

Getting a slightly later start than last year, the Pinot grigio vines are finally starting to bloom. (The Orange muscat vines are just starting to flower also.)  Spring, thus far, has been cool, windy (very windy) and the past two days have even been showery.  I'm not surprised that the grapevines seem somewhat reluctant to bloom, thereby subjecting their delicate little flowers to the less than perfect current climatic conditions. Sigh.  But bloom they must.
There is a lot of good, viticultural stuff going on in the above photograph: not the least of which is the brilliant mechanism that is the unfurling of the calyptra.  I love grapevines.
Oh, and happy Sauvignon blanc day!

Each to their clone.

Lately, (if almost two years to the day can be considered lately), I have become very interested in the different characteristics that can be attributed to specific clonal selections of Vitis vinifera.  But what exactly is a clone?
Hortus Third offers this definition of a clone: "A plant propagated by asexual or vegetative means, including divisions, buds, cuttings, layers etc...Clone is a horticultural rather than a taxonomic term."
In regards to the grape/wine industry, a clone is a variant of a grape variety that is unique in some detectable way, whether by changes in the way a grapevine expresses a particular gene, or minor mutations in the grape variety.  Each clone, in this case let's say a clone of Cabernet sauvignon (CS), will taste like the parent variety, but with slightly varying characteristics, e.g., higher acidity, more concentrated fruit, firmer tannins.  Nowadays, it is common practice for growers, and winemakers, to utilise a variety of different clones, much like a cook will select different herbs and spices, to achieve certain flavour profiles in a finished wine.
The fact that I am interested in geeky viticultural goings-on would not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.  But something that surprised me was the scarcity of information available about this particular subject matter.  I discovered this (yes, almost two years ago), when I attempted to do some research prior to purchasing some grafted grapevines to fill in the spaces where several vines had died in Vinoland's CS block.
There is a lot of anecdotal information to be had by talking to folks who are interested in viticulture, but a lot of it is useless.  Just recently, an acquaintance of Vinomaker mentioned to him that he thought CS clone 169 was a great clone to grow in the Tundra (aka Vinoland, Coombsville AVA).  I happen to be familiar with this clone, as Vinomaker used to make wine for a couple we know who used to grow this particular clone.  Clone 169 did indeed ripen in a timely fashion in Coombsville.  It is a pity we have clone 4 (a veritable retard, in the nicest possible sense of the word) planted here in Vinoland, (and oh, how I wish we didn't).  But it is what it is.  The little bit of information on clones that is available in written form comes from research conducted by John Caldwell and Anthony Bell of Bell Wine Cellars.  (Hmmm, perhaps someone should seriously consider compiling a reference work.) I eventually settled on clone 337 for my replants.
As for the wine in the photograph, this CS claiming to be made solely from clone 337 was an unremarkable, quotidian quaff.  To be fair, I did not do a comparison tasting of this wine with another made from a different clone.  However, I have comparison-tasted in the past; I have tasted clone 4 (Vinoland), clone 7 (St. Helena Sots) and clone 169 (North Avenue Negociants) side by side and they were quite distinct from one another.
Interesting stuff, I need to know more.

Caldwell Vineyard.

Today, an impromptu tasting at Caldwell Vineyard had me looking back, from an elevation of about 600 feet, to Vinoland.  I love the Coombsville AVA, I love the wines and I love living here.  Surveying the eastern hills, I noted to myself that Mt. George (slightly left of centre) was looking particularly splendid in the late afternoon sunshine.
The tasting, hosted by proprietor John Caldwell, was extensive and seemed to include a majority of Caldwell Vineyard's wines (they make 21 different wines, about 5,000 cases in total).  But, in reality, I probably only tasted ten wines in total.  Still, that's a  lot of wines to taste.  A standout for me was the 2013 Caldwell 'Silver' Proprietary Red - a palate pleasing blend of 75% Cabernet Sauvginon and 25% Cabernet Franc (all from Caldwell's Coombsville estate), delicious blackcurrant, plum and violets (with Vinogirl-pleasing acidity).  And a lovely, get-the-beef-wellington-on-my-plate, 2013 Merlot which was all subtle red plum, red cherry yumminess. Then, there was a bourbon, phew, long story.  All in all, a great tasting.

Mead indeed.

Honestly, I cannot even think the word mead without my head being filled with visions of warty peasants in dimly lit, smokey taverns - full of wenches and wolfhounds - rambunctiously sloshing around mead-filled pewter tankards. Mead, sometimes referred to as 'nectar of the Gods', is made from fermented honey and is perhaps the oldest alcoholic drink known to man.  (I daresay Saint Bede drank mead.)
Traditional mead, simply honey, water and yeast, can be dry, sweet, still or sparkling.  With the addition of fruits, grains, herbs and spices mead is known by some other names.  For example; Braggot is made from honey and malt; Cyser is made from honey and apple juice; Pyment is made from honey and grapes and, germane to this post, Metheglin is made from honey, herbs and spices.  (Shakespeare refers to metheglin, along with malmsey, in Love's Labour's Lost.)
All the meads I have ever tried have been quite wine-like and have been packaged in wine-like bottles.  Nectar Creek, a mead produced in Corvallis, Oregon, is packaged in beer-like bottles which had me wondering if the contents would be more beer-like.  (Now, where did I put my pewter tankard?)  Chicory and Sting were two very different meads - the first a traditional mead, the second a metheglin, I suppose. They drank more wine-like, but with beer-like alcohol (ABVs of 5% and 6.2% respectively).  The Chicory was extremely honey-ish on the nose, with a little floral component mixed in, and felt like it had a bit more mouthfeel than the other. The decidedly-ginger-ale-reminiscent Sting had subtle, earthy undertones of honey.  Both meads were ever so slightly effervescent, and both were lacking in acid (for my taste).  I couldn't drink a lot of this stuff.  But, (not unlike the fad for the so-called, in the USA, hard ciders), mead is very trendy right now, so I reckon a fair amount of folks are drinking it: the creed of mead.

Oil on water.

I have recently noticed that there are a lot of Tesla electric cars in the Napa Valley.  A lot. There was a time when spotting a Tesla was a rare event, but now they are ten a penny. Yesterday, a dusty, brown Model S sneaked up on me outside the Oakville post office (those things are dangerously silent).  Then today, on my way to work, I was behind a Model S that had decided that I was going to drive up to TWWIAGE at no more than 35 mph.  God love 'em!
The shiny, navy blue Tesla of this morning was brand spanking new and, as yet, had no license plate.  In lieu of a license plate there was a card that read 'ZERO Emissions'.  Well, obviously there are zero emissions, it's an electric car. However, the power station responsible for generating the electricity to power my friend, the tortoise-like Tesla, is most definitely not pumping out zero emissions into the atmosphere: the generation of electricity is not without consequences.  That fact, unfortunately, just happens to be an inconvenient detail that most electric car owners seem to ignore. Generally, I have discovered that just ignoring, and denying, reality doesn't make it simply disappear. My musings reminded me of a story that I read in the Napa Valley Register last month.
A short road that dead-ends at the Napa River, and is soon to be developed with a 489 unit apartment village, is to be renamed.  The current name, Oil Company Road, has been deemed unsuitable for the new residential complex and so the road is to be renamed Sousa Lane West (the continuation of a small road on the other side of Soscol Avenue that heads east to the Silverado Trail).  And why is someone bothering to rename Oil Company Road?  A spokesman, when asked this question, said, "We chose to change it because of the confusion of 'oil company' with 'oil cans'; it carried a derogatory feeling to it." What? How fragile are the psyches of the folks who will eventually inhabit these new apartments? Apparently, history has to be forgotten, or worse rewritten, to save these apartment dwellers from the perceived horrors that are fossil fuels.
In the 1890s, this part of Napa - along the river, but on the opposite bank to downtown - was a dockyard area mainly occupied by gasoline wholesalers who when the demand for petroleum grew supplied that demand.  The flourishing industries that relied on the gasoline wholesalers were tanneries, mills, cream of tartar factories (there were a lot of grapes here, even then) and, of course, the power plants that supplied the electricity to these industries.  The same electricity that powers the myriad of Tesla motor cars that are tooting around the Napa Valley today.
I am glad that I got a photograph of the Oil Company Road sign before it is removed, and before the powers that be rewrite Napa history to the absolute detriment of future generations of Napa Valley residents.

Happy St. George's Day, 2016.

Charles Churchill (1731-1764), an English poet and satirist, (who, incidentally, was born on Vine Street, Westminster), wrote, "Be England what she will.  With all her faults, she is my country still."
Of course, I happen to be of the opinion that England doesn't have many faults.
Oh, and a happy 400th birthday to William Shakespeare!
Happy St. George's Day to my family, friends, and anyone who loves England as much as I do.
[Addendum: 23rd April 2016 was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.]

Earth Day, 2016.

Since getting back from England, I have been busy working in the vineyard, working my day job and generally catching up with stuff.  It has rained most of the day today (even had a bit of hailstone this morning), so I have had a rather mellow day mainly spent indoors.
I did venture out into the vineyard, a little while ago, to see how the vines had fared in the gusting winds.  Syrah shoots are so succulent this time of year that they are susceptible to snapping and breaking in breezy weather: especially when I haven't had time to stuff all the shoots up and under the trellis wires.  I am happy to report that everything looks splendid in my immediate, humble patch of the Blue Planet.
I have managed to stay dry, which is more than can be said for the ladybird I found ambling about on a Cabernet Sauvignon vine, apparently unconcerned with being slightly water-logged. Rather it than me.

Last night wine: 2016.

Goodbye Blighty, 2016.
Sigh, my English holiday is almost over.  For a last night tipple I decided to indulge in an English bubbly.  The Hambledon Vineyard NV Classic Cuvée, (an English Quality Sparkling Wine), was a delightful choice for toasting the conclusion of a wonderful trip.
The back label says, "Established in 1952, Hambledon Vineyard is England's oldest commercial vineyard.  Hambledon is also the cradle of cricket."  I did not know either of those little factoids.  I do now.
A blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier this was a very nice sparkling wine which paired quite well with my salmon dinner.  Later, England!
California here I come.

Welsh wine.

I had wanted to try this wine when I was home last year.  There is a bit of Welsh blood in my family and so I thought it would be fun to try a wine produced in Wales, however I ran out of time on my last visit.  So yesterday, whilst out shopping in Marks & Spencer, I purchased a bottle of Tintern Parva, 2014 Bacchus (WQW or Welsh Quality Wine) to go with dinner this evening.  I have never had a wine from Wales before, this was to be a first.  At £13.00 (about $20.00) this bottle of wine wasn't exactly value priced (as compared to an imported Soave, for example), but for me the price was worth it for the novelty value.
The Wye Valley has always been one of my very favourite places on the planet and I have visited there a butt load (technical term) of times.  Of course I haven't been there for many years, but the memories I have of roaming around Tintern Abbey, (trying) to fish in the River Wye and just generally enjoying the bucolic landscape are simply magical.  And now wine is grown there.  Perfect.

Tintern is a village in the Wye Valley famous for its 12th century Cistercian abbey. It is thought that the Romans may have practised viticulture at Tintern during the period that Blighty was under the governance of Rome.  Hmmm.  It seems more likely that the monks at Tintern Abbey farmed grapevines for the purpose of sacramental wine, but I suppose the Roman connection makes for a good tale.  Tintern Parva (parva, the opposite of magna, means small or little) is a small hamlet where Parva Farm's vineyard, a mix of several grape varieties, is planted on a south facing slope. 

And the wine?  I have had wines made from the Bacchus grape, a hybrid, before and usually find them to be a little lacking in the acid-department.  However, this wine was perfectly palatable, the acidity good enough for pairing with food and the bottle was soon emptied.  I probably wouldn't buy this wine again, I've tried it now, but it was rather nice.  Neis iawn.

Dry spell's over.

Wine, at last!  Thud picked the wine for this evenings meal - a nice Chianti Classico he had picked up at Marks & Spencer.  The 2012 Castello Della Paneretta, Chianti Classico Riserva (Firenze) came recommended by Thud, as he had had it several times before and had liked it considerably.
One of the reasons Thud likes this wine is in some part due to a tiny bit of secondary fermentation in the wine.  And this particular bottle did not disappoint Thud, or me for that matter, as there was indeed a little effervescence in the wine.  Quite appealing, and more than a little fun.
This deep ruby hued wine had a wonderful nose of cherries and herbs.  With a mixed red berry compote vibe on the palate and tannins that were softer than expected, the bottle didn't last long (between four people), as it paired well with the pasta dish Thud had prepared for dinner.  A very nice tipple with which to end my wine-drought.

Pretend wine.

I still have not had any wine.  So my 6 year old niece decided to draw me a glass of wine: she knows her Auntie Vinogirl well.  I pointed out to her that she had drawn me a glass of red wine when perhaps I would have preferred a glass of white wine, to which she responded, "I don't have a yellow pencil."  Fair enough, red pretend wine it is then.