Saturday afternoon, Traci and I met with our friends Jeff and Pam to head over to Jack London Square to check out the Urban Wine Experience. The Urban Wine Experience is an event focusing on “East Bay” wine producers (mostly Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville wineries). It is an interesting mix of wineries sourcing fruit from many different places from Santa Barbara Cty to Lodi to SLH to Napa and Sonoma and Mendocino.
At any rate, this is my first time heading out to this particular event. The event itself is a lot of fun with each winery being paired with an East Bay restaurant or caterer who prepares a couple of dishes to pair with the wines being poured by their partner winery. I have to say, the food was much better than the wines.
My favorite wines were the usuals from ENO Wine (Pinot, Syrah, Grenache and Zin), Dashe (07 Zin and 07 or 08 Potter Valley Riesling), and JC Cellars (only tasted the 07 Preston Marsanne).
One fairly new notable was Prospect 772 who was pouring a Rose, “the Brat” (mostly Grenache w a little Syrah) and “The Brawler” (Syrah with 4% Viognier). The Rose was crisp but fruity and lovely in the warm bay side heat. The Brat was rich, round CA Grenache with chocolate, ripe raspberry fruit and a little spice while The Brawler was good too but I expected a little more brightness and floral characteristics with the Viognier. Both $36 and borderline worth that price. I considering buying but ultimately passed.
The rest of the wines…well some work needs to be done. I’ll leave it at that.
One funny note…Dashe Cellars had these big poster boards with some recent ratings of the wines they were pouring…a 90 or 91 pt score with notes on their 07 Zin by Greg Dal Piaz of SNOOTH.