We purloin benches and gather under the palm trees at O’Cairns and drink great wine and decompress from our various journeys. Tomorrow is the Bacchanalia. Tonight was two 1997 Bonnes Mares, 1999 Malconsorts, 1998 Hanisch, Rhones Northern (a great Cote Rotie) and Southern (CdP), under the palm trees, many lies were told. We are all Canadian apparently.
My favorite wines were the '07 Arcadian Sleepy Hollow Chardonnay, the '96 Phelps Napa Valley Cab, and the Paul Bara Rose, though I didn’t come even close to trying 1/10th of the wines that were there. The pics on Facebook are awesome - hopefully we can share some more here as well.
Early on, a shot of the three buckets used to hold white wines (2 were completely full, one half full)
George holding his own wine pouring, rather than sharing on the reds table:
A shot of the reds table very early on - this is about 1/4 of what was on the table, but it’s a nice clear shot. I hope someone grabbed one when it was full!
I like this shot - our setup from afar (from the vineyards, thanks to Bruce who went on the tour)
Francine Haight and Bruce Leiser_owitz posted 20-30 photos each on Facebook, and George Chadwick posted a bunch as well. I’ve put a few on here, and a link to Bruce’s photos because he put them in one album.
I love this shot of the pig smoker - amazingly simple and ridiculously effective. Bone and I had to dig the ‘pit’ to spec at 7:30 am the morning of the event
Here is Bone using the proper footwear one would use for such a task (I think he has a photo of me as well)
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I have pix and a ton of tasting notes which il get up soon.
The vineyard tour of Domaine de la Côte with Sasha was amazing. The top vineyard looks like it’s planted on Mt Whitney with the wind howling. Too bad it can’t produce fruit, you don’t know unless you try. The vineyard right next to it has 7,000 vines to the acre, wild.
Interesting too that Dave Phinney and Wagner from Meiomi took some of their money and each bought 185 acres in SRH. Wagner’s is on the valley floor below DdlC planted to PN but Phiney is planting in a place that is the most extreme in SRH. Not sure that’ll work… It’s a hash environment.
Yep, lots of $$$$ being invested in the area at this time - with more to follow for sure.
And lots of grape purchases by these guys throughout the valley - our area continues to produce top notch fruit and more ‘reasonable’ prices than areas north of us. Of course, this situation is leading to increased pricing for the rest of us
You can see Wagner’s vineyard at the bottom with very young vines. A monster. That’s looking straight across the valley south east at Sanford from the far west end up Sweeney road.