Planning a May trip to Napa, and trying to round out our 2 days of tastings (getting in late on the first day and only able to make some downtown Napa spots, if anything, before a dinner at French Laundry (hopefully),
Without going into a long(er) diatribe, our 2 days of tastings are centered around an enhanced tasting at Joseph Phelps on Saturday for lunch, and a member’s visit to Chappellet just afternoon on Sunday. Because of the middle of the day work-arounds, I struck out on tastings at Colgin (multi-year customer) and Promontory due to time conflicts. Moreover, to appease the wife we’ve scheduled morning tastings at Frank Family and either Mumm/Chandon (leaning towards Mumm) to allow for sparkling options in a pre-noon timeslot. This has left me with the 3:00-4:00 time period open on both days, with a few options already explored and ruled out (either for lack of availability or the wineries not even being open those days).
The root of my question is an attempt to thread the needle between tastings at locations that are: a.) casual, but NOT overly commercial or without any legitimacy whatsoever, b.) have a nice, relaxed tasting enviroment and/or nice settings/views, c.) a spectrum of wines to taste, and d.) as close to full-blown Napa top producer status as possible (you’ll note that this is the last wish-list item, as it’s mine and means not much to my wife). Right now, I have tastings booked at Corison and Odette for the afternoons, but have primarily tried to lock in options that were available that generally seemed to fit my (my wife’s) requirements.
I’ve read/been told good things and/or have wines from William & Mary, Rivers-Maries, La Pelle, Mending Wall, O’Shaugnessy, and Mathiasson. We have already visited Joesph Phelps, Palmaz, Gamble (with a ton of these wines in the collection), Dakota Shy (also a ton of these wines in the collection), Trefethen, Venge, Schramsberg, Chimney Rock, and Alpha Omega on a previous trip. I’d love to hit another of the major players in the Pritchard Hill/Eastern Mountian area, though I’m not married to that idea, and it takes a back seat to my wife’s preferences.
I think I’m definitely in a good variety position at the moment, but I wanted to see if there were any thoughts on wineries that would be good enough to replae Corison and/or Odette. Are there recommendations to conisder for places that would largely tick the boxes on my requirements. Basically looking for reasons to dethrown the current owners of those Any insights are very much appreicated!