We just wrapped up a 5 day trip into Sonoma and Napa with 3+ days across Napa Valley. I will write a separate trip report for our Sonoma winery stops.
Day 1 - This was a special tasting with a winery that is not currently open to the public as of yet. Cathiard Vineyard is opening some time in March with their first release after purchasing the old Flora Springs Estate. They had no wine in barrel that came with the purchase so 2020 was their first vintage, is in bottle and will be for sale soon. They have 21 and 22 in barrel for future releases. I posted a separate trip report just for this visit as our time with the Cathiard’s was quite extensive and really felt that it needed its own post.
Here is that link: Cathiard Vineyard visit February 2023
Stop 2 - Sodaro Estate Winery - Leo Tellez is the winemaker at Sodaro and is friends with one in our group. Leo joined us for the tasting at Cathiard and we followed him back to Coombsville for a tasting at the estate.
Leo poured us a Bydand white wine, I don’t have this in my notes but possibly Bydand bought Sodaro since he was pouring us two different wines. We had the 19’ Bydand Sonoma Coast Chardonnay which was actually quite nice.
19’ Bydand Napa Valley Estate red wine which is a bordeaux blend and the 19 Bydand Napa Valley Cab.
We had the 18’ Sodaro Felicity Cab and 18’ Estate cab. I really like these two wines and grabbed a bottle of each.
We bought 3 of the Sodaro cabs and took them to dinner with Leo at the Chop House. These were rather enjoyable with steaks. I am going to need to do some more tastings in Coombsville on future Napa visits.
Day 2 - We started the day at the Vineyardist with Julie who is an exceptionally good host. Julie drove us up to the top of the property with panoramic views of the valley where we tasted a sauvignon blanc and had some great photo ops.
I also want to note that Vineyardist shares an entry gate with Theorem who is next door off the same street.
We were then driven back down to the winery facility where they have an impeccable barrel room with a staircase that goes upstairs, a bridge or catwalk above the barrels back into a masterfully setup tasting room with bar, round table and balcony overlooking the valley. This truly is an exceptional setup for any tasting.
We were poured 3 reds in the tasting room. 2019 Lazy Susan Ranch Diamond Mountain Cab, 2019 Calarcadia Vineyard and 2019 Vineyardist Heritage Ridge.
These are fairly low production wines with 8, 8 and 2 barrels produced. The wines are made by Tony Biagi and unfiltered. I point the unfiltered part out because the glass of Heritage Ridge was full of sediment.
These wines may need a metal screen when poured to help keep sediment out of the glass. While I enjoyed the tasting, I had a cubano the night before and the tasting for me in the AM was off until our next winery visit. 3 out of 4 in our group enjoyed these wines. As I didn’t purchase, I didn’t get into the pricing but I believe the wines are $250-$275 or more each and typically sold in 3 packs but Julie said she would break a 3 pack if she needed to make a sale that way. 2 in our group purchased these, the LSR and Calarcadia were the favorites of the group.
Next up, Beta-Jasud Diamond Mountain.
That visit is detailed here in finer detail as Ketan deserves his own thread.
https://www.wineberserkers.com/t/beta-jasud-napa-visit-february-2023
Final stop of Day 2 in Napa - Cardinale Estate.
Stunning views off the back deck across Oakville, Rutherford and the Vaca Range.
We tasted through the 19 Caladan Cab Franc. $250 a bottle, dark fruit, tight, needs a lot of time. 19 Cardinale Cab Sauv, coming around but such a baby. Needs 10+ years. 2015 Cardinale Cab Sauv - great vintage and the wine while still too young for me is in a much better place than the super tight 19s.
2019 Proprietary Blend was also poured during the tasting, think this is also $250 a bottle, big wine, a baby.
They opened a 2013 Cardinale that was decanted, quite impressive with close to 10 years of age. We had a nice spread of cheeses and crackers, duck confit, mushrooms and a raviloli that was like a fig newton.
My own notes on Cardinale, these are big Napa wines that need a lot of time. The 19s were too tannic to my palate and I did not purchase anything. 2 others in our group did buy some of the wines.
Day 3 - Howell Mountain - Robert Craig
Up to the top of that windy ass rock, well at least that’s what Randy Dunn tells Elton Slone. Finally got to meet and taste with Elton Slone, CEO of Robert Craig at the estate.
We had a doozy of a tasting talking all kinds of shop about wine industry info, etc (I am not ITB). Elton is such a great host and he had Scott Johnson pouring the wines from Robert Craig.
I took a picture when we were done and I’m not sure even the photo shows everything we drank.
We cycled through at least 13 wines. I’ve been a Robert Craig member for maybe 6 years now and find this to be a steal at the value and even better quality.
19’ Mount Veeder and Howell Mountain cabs are insanely good and got very high scores from Galloni. We went through some 15s, 17s, 18s and a 16’ Robert’s Block. They also opened a 15’ Merlot, a 15 or 16 Cote du Craig, Cheers to Elton, Scott and the Robert Craig team for always being great hosts. I forget the number Elton told us was the tasting room sales average for visits to Howell Mountain but if I had to guess we probably shattered it.
Stop 2 - Neal Family Vineyards.
We had an excellent tasting here last year, however things have changed at the winery as they are very much more wine club focused. We were poured only 3 small pours of reds + the Vermentino which is quite nice and when we asked our host Ryan if he could open anything else for us to taste; we were told the winery will not open any other wines for us to taste. Last year we bought around $3500 worth of wine during the Neal tasting. We had 1 in our party who really loved the wine and had 5 cases filled in his order form before being told no, he then dropped it down to 18 bottles after and later that night canceled what he did order because he felt we weren’t treated properly after we discussed in more detail.
The wines are well made, very well priced for Napa but if this is how they are going to treat customers who buy their wines and ask to try other wines they make, we will have to pass on visiting here in the future and that is a shame because we have always had great interactions with Mark Neal and enjoy opening Neal at home. I do know Mark reached out to try and discuss as he was not present during our tasting but don’t know what’s transpired since. I received an email from the tasting room today thanking me for being a customer of Neal’s over the years.
I still bought 3 750s and 2 magnums during the visit. I hope someone who has been to the winery recently can share their experience to see if this is a one off or if they had the same issue not being able to taste additional wines. I don’t like posting negative reviews but we found this to be a really rough visit and maybe it was just an employee following the rules set by his boss.
Final stop of Day 3 - Piazza Del Dotto.
I have never been to Del Dotto before and when we told other wineries where we were going everyone called it Del Blotto. A very gaudy winery inside the tasting room and even more so in the caves.
We barrel sampled around 10 wines, possibly more as I did not take notes on them all. They have wine cards like baseball cards with the wine name and price on the outside of each barrel so you can pre-order those wines. I really liked the 21’ Del Dotto Vineyard 887 out of French oak, the Beast was also pretty good.
We finished back in the tasting room and drank a couple of bottles, of note the 19 Lot ST which is one of their low end cabs, which I ended up buying a couple of. They had pizzas and a charcuterie board waiting on us when we sat down. I only made one additional note while tasting at Del Dotto. They opened a 2020 Villa del Lago in the tasting room, I dumped this wine after two sips. I definitely feel like there was smoke on the finish. This was the only glass of wine I dumped the entire trip.
Final Day and for me the main reason I made this trip - Spottswoode
I’ve been buying Spottswoode going back 8 vintages now + had backfilled a fairly extensive library and I said this both here on the board and in person with all the wineries we visited. I am not buying Napa 2020 reds unless I can taste them in advance and make up my own mind about whether I feel there is smoke taint or tinkering of the wine to try and hide any smoke.
That said, we were greeting by assistant wine maker Molly Burroughs, which was a surprise to me because we usually have Yanni host us in the tasting room and he was out sick. Molly has poured for us a couple of times though, including once at Hi-Time for a Spottswoode tasting in Costa Mesa, CA so we have a history together talking about the wines and other goings on.
We walked across the street and through the estate vineyards talking about Spottswoode’s organic certifications which they are extremely proud of, their approach in the vineyard, why they prune where they prune, crop cover, their own flock of sheep and why they don’t want to bring in sheep from other fields, custom bee boxes on the property, their B corp certification, etc.
Back inside the tasting room, Molly poured 2021 Sauv Blanc; basically sold out but the 22’ hasn’t been bottled yet. 19’ Lyndenhurst, shaking my head that I didn’t buy any of this last year, I had bought all Estate Cab. Lyndenhurst is drinking really well, I need to order a few of these for the cellar. 19’ Spottswoode Estate Cab, a string of 4 out of 5 years with 100 point cabs as our third glass. Still a baby but insanely good and has what I like to call classic Spottswoode in the glass. I slow sipped this while the others chugged and got a second pour. I probably should have got the second pour anyways as that second glass is usually so much better.
I asked Spottswoode last year if we could taste the 2020 during our visit and we weren’t able to as it wasn’t ready. This trip I asked in advance and Molly had a bottle of 2020 Spottswoode Estate cab for us, unfortunately since she’s not the normal host for tastings the bottle hadn’t been decanted fully.
Here are the 2020 notes I took while Molly went over their 2020 Estate Cab.
2020 SW hasn’t hit the mailing list yet, it should be released on March 1 or somewhere around that date. Still a baby, needs a 24 hour decant as of now to show its true self and even then its still young. They had a scheduled price increase, looks to be around $10 a bottle.
Per Molly, 2020 was a strong growing season with a lower fruit set and vigor based on drought conditions and a really good and even growing season. There were heat events around August and then of course the LNU fire. Smoke sat high above Spottswoode’s vineyard, no smoke in the vineyard and no power to the smell of smoke above the vineyard. The LNU fire affected mountain fruit more.
Spottswoode picks a little earlier stylistically than their neighbors. They haven’t surpassed 14% alcohol in the last 5 years. They don’t think lower alcohol is better, its where the balance sits for the vineyard. The balance point for their wines lays here. Without being pushed by fire or weather, they had harvested 90% of the vineyard before the Glass fire. They harvested on Saturday, the fire started on Sunday. Because they also harvest the vineyard at different times, the early picks were already fermented.
A LOT of lab samples were sent to labs in Australia and Canada and no smoke taint was found. In addition to being the assistant wine maker to Aron Weinkauf at Spottswoode, Molly also handles the internal lab work for the winery.
For me tasting the 2020 Spottswoode was why I wanted to do this trip in the first place because I wasn’t buying the wine without tasting it. Suffice to say they gave me the bottle to take home to SoCal. We drove home as Spottswoode was our final tasting, had a small taste late at night and poured 2 full glasses for lunch today. By this time the wine had been opened 26 hours, I drank it over 3 hours this afternoon and it started opening up and building in profile at hour 27 in the glass. The wine isn’t as big as the 2019, but it is very very good and I will be a buyer of 2020 Spottswoode. This wine is classic Spottswoode. Bravo to the Spottswoode team for making a wine this good given the circumstances a lot of Napa Valley experienced due to the LNU and Glass fires.
That is a wrap on what for us was a 5 day trip. We had some impeccable tastings with the Cathiard’s, Leo Tellez, Ketan Mody, the Craig Crew on Howell Mountain and another great stop at Spottswoode.