Cafes & Wineries

Heritage plays out in many ways in the Napa Valley. There are only a few remaining families that have been farming in the valley since Prohibition, and even those that have tenures lasting more than three decades are increasingly being supplanted by new blood or corporate interests.

Some of those families that have left the valley after decades often move on to other enterprises after cashing out on their vineyard investments. However, it’s tough to abandon Napa Valley once you’ve lived and loved there for so long.

Winemaker Justin Meyer moved his family to the Anderson Valley in 1999 after more than 35 years of making wine in Napa Valley with a vision of producing world-class Port-style wine and establishing a family estate that could be carried on by future generations. Despite this move, the family never truly left Napa, as it continued (and still continues) to farm the same vineyard that in some ways is responsible for the fate of the entire Meyer clan.

Justin Meyer was one of the great icons of the modern California wine industry and one of its greatest success stories. Meyer thought he was destined for a life of prayer and service when he joined the Christian Brothers religious order in the late 1950’s, but a twist of fate led to him being sent to work at the order’s winery in Napa in 1964. That fateful move was the beginning of a forty-year career in the wine industry. After working for several years at Christian Brothers with the famous Brother Timothy, he left the order to marry a woman named Bonny that he had fallen in love with, and with literally a dollar to his name, he co-founded a little winery that he and partner Ray Duncan decided to call Silver Oak. The rest, as they say, is history. Justin spent 28 years at Silver Oak and built it into one of the world’s most sought-after wine brands.

During that time, Meyer, who was a lover of Port, purchased some bulk tawny port on the market and started to make small batches of the stuff under a new label: Meyer Family Cellars. The port was for friends and family, and was also sold in small quantities at the Silver Oak winery to those in the know.

During this time, Meyer raised a family with Bonny, whose name was also applied to a piece of vineyard land adjacent to Conn Creek that Meyer purchased for his wife in 1974.

From an early age, this couple’s son Matt Meyer knew that he wanted to be a winemaker and winegrower like his father. Unlike in his father’s day, the way to do that was pretty straightforward for Matt, who went to U.C. Davis for a degree in Viticulture, and then began working immediately with his father on turning the family winery into something more than just a little port hobby.

The family purchased vineyards in the Yorkville Highlands in 1999 and planted Syrah. Justin Meyer passed away in 2002, leaving the winery under the direction of Matt and his new wife, Karen, a winemaker whom he met while working a harvest in New Zealand in 2004. While their primary focus was growing a business and a brand in the Yorkville highlands, the family took special care to maintain the vineyard from which Meyer had made some of the most famous single vineyard wines for Silver Oak (and for Napa Valley) for more than a decade (1979-1991).

As Meyer Family Cellars gradually settled into a working rhythm and predictable operations, the family decided that the time had come to produce a wine that would honor in equal parts Justin and his wife Bonny — him with a world-class Cabernet, her with the honor of being its namesake. Bonny’s Vineyard last produced a wine in 1991. Since then the family continued to farm it, and completely replanted the vineyard in 1999, making the first harvest of new fruit and inaugurating this project in 2003, the first time that the vineyard has produced a wine in 12 years.

Harvested in mid-September (notably early for Oakville) the grapes for this wine were selected from small bunches of even smaller berries, and destemmed before being crushed. After a day of soaking at cold temperatures to extract color and flavors from the skins, the grapes and juice began fermentation which lasted 10 days before the wine was pressed. It completed its primary and then secondary fermentations in stainless steel before being moved to 100% new American Oak barrels where it aged for a lengthy 34 months before bottling. During that time it was racked once a year (the process where the wine is carefully poured off the sediments that have accumulated in the barrel). The wine was not fined, but was filtered before bottling.

If the pedigree of this wine is not enough to pique a wine lovers interest, two salient facts about its winemaking should gain the attention of those serious about California Cabernet. The first is the daring choice to age the wine in only American Oak, a practice which is increasingly rare in California, and even more so in Napa Valley. The second is the fact that this wine weighs in at only 13.19% alcohol, which, like the choice of oak, is neither good nor bad in itself, but is certainly even more uncommon for Napa Cabernet.

Which brings me to the bottom line on this wine. Those looking for a wine that defies the stereotypes of Napa Cabernet while at the same time upholding its reputation for being some of the tastiest wine on the planet shouldn’t miss their chance to experience the first example of what will likely be a highly sought after wine.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of luxurious chocolate and cherry aromas. In the mouth it is nothing short of gorgeous. Beautifully smooth and lithe on the tongue, the wine swirls with great acidity that carries flavors of cherry, mint, chocolate, cedar and tobacco across the palate in several waves of pleasurable, layered flavors. The finish soars off the back of the palate effortlessly and endlessly. An incredibly impressive first release that Justin Meyer could not help but be proud of.

Food Pairing:
This wine epitomizes the concept of delicate strength, which means it’s rich enough for grilled lamb on rosemary skewers, but not likely to overwhelm more subtle dishes either. A very nice food wine.

Overall Score: Between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $135

This wine is being released on August 31st in limited quantities, and I believe it will likely only be available to members of the winery’s mailing list. You can sign up on their web site to purchase up to three bottles.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Good wine is rarely made by accident. So much can go wrong in the winemaking process that to get something that isn’t complete dreck is a triumph, and those who are capable of creating fantastic wines are, despite their modesty and common protestations of “just letting nature take her course,” truly talented artisans.

While wines, and great wines in particular, are made with incredible forethought and planning, sometimes wine labels can spring up overnight as the result of an opportune conversation or new friendship.

Such is the case with this wine, which may be the first an only vintage under its label, though after tasting it, and knowing the folks behind it, I’d be surprised if this one didn’t take on a life of its own.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

One of the more interesting and enterprising folks in the wine industry that I’ve met in the last few years is a guy named Cameron Hughes. In just a short period of time, Cameron has made his own name synonymous with a category of wines that he, and his rabidly enthusiastic customers, calls “extreme value” wines.

Cameron has a long background in wine sales, and has lots of connections to wineries as a result. Over the years he’s heard many times from winemakers who had multiple barrels of finished wine that they couldn’t sell for some reason — either there was no demand in the marketplace for it, or for some reason the winery ended up with more wine than they wanted after making their final blends. At a certain point the message sank in — there was lots of wine out there, and some of it was really good wine, sometimes made by top winemakers, and it was available dirt cheap, as long as someone was willing to promise never to reveal just exactly where, or more importantly, who, the wine came from.

So what was an enterprising guy to do? Cameron decided to become what you might call a modern California negociant (a French term for a type of wine producer who buys grapes or finished wine on the market and bottles it under his own label). He started buying wine from very reputable producers, blending it with other batches, and bottling it for sale under his own name.

Cameron Hughes wine has consisted of small lots of wine, each of which is marketed under simply a lot number and the appellation of the specific wine, and most often for prices between $10 and $20 a bottle. The wines have been sold almost completely through his mailing list and web site, as well as in Costco stores around the country. Due to the cult following he has developed, he has gotten access to more and more interesting lots of wine, which are increasingly not only from California but from elsewhere around the world.

But this is not one of those wines. In fact, it isn’t a Cameron Hughes wine at all. It’s his dad’s wine.

The story goes like this. Cameron’s friend Sam Spencer, winemaker and proprietor of Spencer Roloson winery where he makes excellent Syrah (among other things), was given a chance to buy some Cabernet fruit from one of the vineyards where he was already sourcing Syrah. A Cabernet Sauvignon didn’t fit into the Spencer Roloson portfolio so he offered to make one for Cameron. But Cameron Hughes wines are all about bargain basement finished wine that can be blended and then sold immediately, not brand new wines made with pricey fruit that require expensive barrels and three years of aging before they get sold.

Coincidentally, Cameron’s dad was retiring that year from his job of 33 years, and apparently had an interest in having his own wine. A few phone calls later and a new wine label was born. With the help his best friend, Sandy Wellman, the elder Hughes pulled together the capital to buy the fruit and hire Roloson as the winemaker for their project.

I’m constantly surprised at how quickly, with the right relationships, a wine label can be forged. Gone are the days when in order to make wine you needed to own some land and make huge investments in equipment and more.

The one thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the need to have good winegrowing and winemaking talent behind the scenes, which means that it’s no surprise this wine is excellent. Sam Spencer’s label debuted a number of years ago with great wines, and they’ve only been getting better with time. His La Herradura Syrah is now one of my favorites of all time, so it’s great to see what he does with Cabernet Sauvignon.

In this case, what he does is get excellent mountain fruit from Nell-MacVeagh Vineyard, which sits on the lower slopes of Howell Mountain just to the east of the town of St. Helena. This vineyard, tended to Spencer’s specifications, yields few, but very lush bunches of fruit, which are destemmed and fermented in blocks after four days of cold soaking. After fermentation the wine is transferred to 70% new French oak barrels where it ages for 22 months before bottling. Only 199 cases of the wine were made.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Inky garnet in color, this wine has what I might call a “classic” Cabernet nose of bright cherry fruit with aromas of green wood, green bell pepper, and wet dirt. In the mouth it offers smooth, very pretty texture with excellent balance and acidity that allow a complex melange of rich cherry, green wood, and earth flavors to swirl and spike their way along the palate to a nice finish. This wine has a lot going on with it and a nice taut quality thanks to the slightly vegetal qualities that hover well below the threshold of objectionable and add a bit of “old world” character to the mix.

Food Pairing:
This is a classic red meat wine, and I’d love to drink it with a perfectly cooked prime rib.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $50

This wine is only available for sale through the Cameron Hughes web site.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

There are those in the wine world who seek out (and often pay for) the best possible advice they can get. Winemaking and winegrowing are sciences as much as they are arts, and these days, there are plenty of experts to be had in both arenas. And then there are those in the wine world that no matter what the scientists, experts, and even their friends say, choose to follow their instincts. Call them pig-headed, call them eccentric, call them iconoclasts, there are certain people that will always walk their own paths when it comes to wine.

Jim Dierberg seems to be one of those people. He’s a man that puts a lot of stock in his intuition. He proposed to his wife on their first date, and the first time he set eyes on a piece of property near Santa Ynez Valley he knew it was where he needed to live and to make wine. And not just any wine. Jim decided that this little plot of land was where he was going to make the Cabernet that he had dreamed of making for years.

Never mind that the idea of making Cabernet Sauvignon in the chilly, fog-influenced Santa Ynez Valley (known, for good reason, for it’s cooler climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) was pretty much the most insane idea anyone had heard of for some time. Jim spent nearly ten years fending off his friends and neighbors, all of whom confirmed the insanity oh his plans. In those ten years he methodically planted his vineyards and experimented with rootstocks, built a winery, and (perhaps just to prove that he wasn’t totally bonkers) bought some land in the neighboring Santa Rita Hills and started making excellent Pinot Noir and Chardonnay under the Dierberg Estate and Three Saints labels.

Jim’s faith in his own vision wasn’t easy to shake, perhaps because Jim lived on the property that came to be known as Star Lane Vineyards for those ten years. And he needed little more than a good set of eyes and a thermometer to prove to himself that the tiny little North-South valley where his vineyards climbed up the steep valley walls was a climatological anomaly. At the start of his driveway, several miles away, the mid-summer fog would be thick and the air a chilly sixty degrees Fahrenheit, but out his front door it would be sunny and between 80 and 100 degrees.

Indeed, the Happy Valley, as this little crease in the San Rafael Mountains is named, happens to be both the highest and the hottest place in the entire appellation. Daytime temperatures routinely climb above 100 degrees and nighttime temperatures often fall well below fifty degrees. This wide range of temperature, known as the diurnal shift, is coveted by winemakers for its ability to coax complexity and richness out of grapes of many varieties.

Now, after ten years of work, Jim and his winemaking crew, which includes winemaker Nick DeLuca and consultant David Ramey, are releasing the first vintage from Star Lane, including this wine, which is a special selection from three specific blocks of the vineyard. The vineyards are planted almost exclusively to Bordeaux varietals, with the exception of a little Syrah that is mixed in amongst the Cabernet Sauvignon, and are so steep in places that there is only one guy on Jim’s staff that is willing to drive the tractor between the rows (he apparently keeps asking for a raise on this account).

The vineyard management crew, all of whom are full-time employees rather than hired contractors, pick the grapes in the dead of night to escape the day-time heat, and load them in small batches into the winery (which has been built with two distinct sections, one dedicated to the Dierberg Estate Burgundy-style wines, and the other dedicated to the Star Lane project). The grapes ferment slowly with native yeasts, and are then aged in 100% new French oak barrels for 20 months before bottle aging another 14 months before release. The wines are never filtered and are fined lightly with egg whites before bottling.

Star Lane makes about 1900 cases of this special Cabernet Sauvignon, and about 9000 cases of their estate Cabernet (which is also fantastic).

Santa Ynez Valley, barring some serious effects of Global Warming, will never be known as a place that’s ideal for growing Cabernet Sauvignon, but if Star Lane Vineyards continues to produce blockbuster wines like this one, Santa Ynez Valley may well become known for at least one Cabernet.

Tasting Notes:
Inky garnet in color, this wine bursts out of the glass with a rich nose of earth, tobacco, and dark fruit aromas that had me salivating immediately. In the mouth it is rich, heavy, and pure liquid silk on the tongue, with powerful flavors of black cherry, vanilla, and chocolate mixed with an undertone of dirt. The wine has just the slightest touch of sweetness to it that I eventually decided was a hint of residual sugar, but couldn’t possibly hold against this wine in all its lusciousness. Perhaps it’s best to think of this wine as a monster Napa Cab, that isn’t from Napa. A wine for those times when you’d prefer that your wine not show a little restraint.

Food Pairing:
This is a wine that while perfect for grilled meat, I would simply prefer to drink on its own. It’s big enough to demand all of your attention.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $100

This wine is available for purchase on the internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Barry Schuler may know a thing or two about running multi-billion dollar technology companies, but what he really wants to talk about, given the chance, is food and wine. The former CEO of AOL, Schuler often gets credited along with Steve Case (who preceded Schuler as CEO) for the company’s success in the late Nineties. But while his colleagues and most of America’s top technology executives were returning home at the end of their long days to comfortable suburbs near major metropolitan areas, at the end of the week Schuler was making his way back to Napa, California. Schuler may have been one of the country’s top technology executives, but now he spends as much time thinking about wine as he does anything else.

Schuler says that he can remember wanting to live in Napa as early as the age of 18. In addition to dabbling in photography and filmmaking as a teenager, he says, “I was really into cooking. And drinking.” His obsession with food and wine, led him to the altar of Alice Waters’ restaurant Chez Panisse, which he visited for the first time in 1974 on the pretense of considering a graduate degree at UC Berkeley. Instead of attending his interviews and exploring the campus, however, Schuler dined at Chez Panisse, and drove to Napa, where he spent days wandering around in a daze. “It was like mecca,” he says, “like I was hit by a lighting bolt. It truly was amazing. I decided then and there that I had to figure out how to live [in Napa] someday.”

By his own account, Schuler spent the next 15 years “chasing French wine” and working out the math that would get him back to the Napa valley. While he wasn’t in his own kitchen dreaming of his future Napa estate, Schuler was busy making a name for himself in the emerging world of digital interactive media. He founded an early advertising agency to serve the emerging home and business computing market, then ran one of the first successful Macintosh software companies, and finally ended up founding an interactive design agency called Medior, with several colleagues, including Tracy Goldman, who is now his wife.

Schuler finally moved to Napa in 1989, settling closer to the town of Napa than to the centers of culinary and wine activity farther up the valley, because he was attracted to the change he saw underway in and around the city of Napa. “It was a train wreck in those days,” says Schuler, but he saw something of a diamond in the rough in the scrabbly area to the east and north of town known as Coombsville. When he finally decided he wanted a bit of land on which he might one day plant some grapes, “mostly just to sell, I was thinking,” he says, “I started looking in Coombsville.” Good lots were not immediately forthcoming, so Schuler would spend several years poking around the area until in 1998, when someone told him that a 35 acre parcel was due to be sold in the area, and that he might want to take a look at it.

After rounding the shoulder of the hill and seeing the view of a green cow pasture roll out from underneath the mossy shade of oaks all the way to the San Francisco Bay in the distance, Schuler purchased the property on the spot, thinking he’d figure out whether it could grow grapes later.

What Schuler ended up with is an interesting geologic and climatologic anomaly in the region. The hilltop of ash and clay soil is layered thinly on a deep base of round river stones, and sits up higher than most surrounding points in the traditionally cooler region of Napa. This makes the property a little island of heat that misses much of the fog influence that creeps up from neighboring Carneros and the wind patterns that sweep through the rest of the region, which is a pending AVA (American Viticultural Area) under the name Tulocay.

With the help of vineyard consultant Michael Wolf, close friends Bill and Dawnine Dyer, (of Dyer Vineyards) and friend Tony Soter (of Etude Wines) set about carefully establishing their 22 acre vineyard, still with the idea that they’d sell the grapes, and perhaps make just a tiny bit of wine for themselves. After some struggles, the vineyard began yielding grapes in 2003, and by the time the 2004 grapes were going into bottle, it was clear that the fruit was on track to being exceptional. The folks who had purchased the initial lots of grapes were clamoring for more, and new requests were constantly being made.

“At that point,” says Schuler, “we couldn’t resist.” Barry and Tracy enlisted the Dyers to make them 40 cases of wine from the 2004 harvest, and asked them to become the official winemaking team for their first commercial release in 2005. For the name of their project they selected a rephrasing of Medior, the company that had brought them together, and arguably made possible the fulfillment of Barry’s teenage dreams. For their label they chose the silhouette of the solitary, ancient oak tree that anchors the center of their vineyards.

Most of Meteor Vineyard’s grapes are still sold to select wineries around the valley, but the family holds back enough fruit to make about 700 cases of their estate Cabernet, and about 90 cases of their Special Family Reserve, which represents the best barrels from each vintage.

TASTING NOTES:
2004 Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine has a perky nose of nutty, cherry aromas that are tinged with hints of tobacco and anise. In the mouth its initial impression is of brightness and good acidity, with earthier flavors of tobacco, leather, cherry, and a hint of “stemmy” green wood that doesn’t keep the wine from being tasty. Score: around 9. This wine is not commercially available.

2005 Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine bursts from the glass with bright cherry and chocolate aromas that are followed rapidly with sweet tobacco and vanilla scents. In the mouth it is silky, even sexy, on the tongue, with a nice weight to it. The wine is juicy, with acidity that might even be slightly too sharp in comparison to the rest of the beautiful lush cherry and cedar fruits that mingle with pipe tobacco to finish with great length and satisfaction. I would expect this wine to smooth out in the next year or so in the bottle, and continue to improve for several more. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $225.

2005 Meteor Vineyard “Special Family Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of tobacco, earth, and cocoa powder. In the mouth it displays a deeper earthy quality than the label’s primary release. Nicely balanced flavors of cherry and wet earth, with hints of blue fruit, sit poised on the tongue, nicely balanced for a finish that feels like a leisurely backstroke in a placid pool, as the wine slinks and slips down the palate. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $300.

The 2005 vintage will be available for purchase starting at some point in the next couple of months. Interested parties can sign up for the winery’s mailing list on their web site.

I also had the opportunity to taste several clonal selections from different blocks of the vineyard, vintage 2007, that will soon be blended. These samples displayed a broad range of deep, complex fruit that are showing their first incarnations in the wines above. The clone 7 cabernet fruit was classically Cabernet Sauvignon — cherry with hints of stem tannins. The Clone 4 fruit was deep and earthy, with notes of slate and graphite aromas and spicy flavors of espresso and orange rind. Finally the clone 337 was an impressive, powerful luge-run of cherry fruit that nearly knocked my socks off. There are clearly many good things to come from Meteor.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

One of the greatest joys in my life remains the feeling I get when stumbling upon a small winery whose name rings no bells, but who produces excellent wines. I don’t know why this is, exactly, but it has replaced the childish joy I used to experience as a young boy when finding a small crystal on a hike, or setting a new personal record for stone skipping on a pond.

Little wineries with high quality wines are like buried treasure, I guess, but these days my goal is not to hoard but to share as widely as possible.

Which brings me to my latest find: Cooper-Garrod Vineyards, a 3,000 case production winery nestled in the hills above Saratoga, CA. I discovered this winery as I have several others — at a trade tasting, moving from one table to the next. I make a point to taste wineries that I have never heard of at such events, especially when the tasting is a manageable size.

So there I was at a Santa Cruz Mountains Wineries Association tasting, standing in front of a table with a lineup of bottles with rather non-descript labels, holding out my glass for a pour. About halfway through the lineup of bottles I started to realize that these wines were all well above average in quality, some were truly excellent, and all of them had a personality that spoke of meticulous winemaking with very little fancy technique. By the time I finished all the wines, I was pretty excited.

Cooper-Garrod Vineyards represents the agricultural legacy of the Garrod Family, who purchased a modest 120 acres of land in 1893 that looked down on the spreading orchards that covered much of what is today known as Silicon Valley. The land they purchased was itself orchard land, and the family settled down to making a living growing apricots and prunes like many of the other farmers in the area.

Exactly 100 years later, the granddaughter of those early farmers, Louise Garrod, along with her husband, George Cooper, established a commercial winery on the property. The farm had been planted with grapevines since 1973 when George, a WWII fighter pilot and NASA test pilot retired and decided to keep himself busy making a little wine for the family. Cooper was lucky enough to befriend legendary winemaker Martin Ray, who was one of the pioneers of single varietal winemaking in California, and helped establish the Santa Cruz Mountains as a serious winemaking region in the 1930’s and 40’s. With Ray’s help, Cooper became more than competent as a winemaker over the next twenty years, and in 1993, with the help of his eldest son, Bill Cooper, and his nephew Jan Garrod, the family established the small winery that they still run today.

The family estate is planted with 28 hillside acres of completely dry-farmed grapes, a little less than half of which are planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, with the rest split somewhat evenly between Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, and Syrah with a tiny bit of Viognier and Merlot thrown in. As with many such family operations, the grapes are all picked by hand before being meticulously sorted, destemmed and crushed. They are fermented in small lots, often with “native” yeasts and the red wines are laboriously punched down by hand (a process in which the floating fruit and skins are pushed down into the fermenting juice to circulate air and extract color from the skins) at least four times daily. I also believe most are bottled unfined and unfiltered.

The winery produces several wines, including a Chardonnay, a Syrah, and four Cabernet and Cabernet Blends, which they release “when they’re ready.” Perhaps influenced by Martin Ray, who was a proponent of extended aging, George and Bill Cooper tend to let their wines sit a bit longer both in Oak and in bottle before release.

Cooper-Garrod’s wines are generally made in what most would consider an Old World style. They are restrained rather than brash, and some might even be mistaken for French Bordeaux if tasted blind. Anyone interested in honest wines that are good values and testaments to the quality of modern winemaking in the Santa Cruz Mountains should most certainly seek them out.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:
Click the wine name for purchase sources

2005 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Randall Grahm Clone” Viognier, Santa Cruz Mountains
Light yellow-gold in the glass, this wine is a glass full of aromas of peaches and cream drizzled with honey. The wine sits weighty and oily on the tongue as is typical for this grape, but escapes the common pitfall of flabbiness with excellent acidity to balance the rich flavors of apricots, dried peaches, and buttercream that dominate the wine. Score: around 9. Cost: $20

2004 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Gravel Ridge Vineyard” Chardonnay, Santa Cruz Mountains
Medium gold in color, this wine smells of dried tropical fruits and sultanas, with a slightly oxidized quality that made me wonder if this might be a slightly off bottle. In the mouth it tasted pleasantly of old parchment, spiced baked apples, and wheat. After a few sips I decided that this was probably just the style of the wine, which was somewhat appealing to me, but might not appeal to everyone. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $14

2002 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Finley Vineyard” Merlot, Santa Cruz Mountains
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of red licorice and anise. In the mouth it is spry, with excellent acidity that counterpoints a rich earthiness of dirt and leather flavors wrapped in a cloak of plum, cassis, and a hint of blackberry. The wine finishes long and beautifully on the palate. Score: around 9. Cost: $24

2002 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Finley Vineyard” Syrah, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dark garnet in color, this wine has a nose of cassis and black pepper aromas. In the mouth it is juicy with rich, but slightly tart blackberry, mulberry, and plum flavors which mix with a hint of sawdust. Zingy acidity contributes to the impression of tartness, and very light tannins sneak through the wine and linger. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $24

2002 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Valley Vineyard” Cabernet, Santa Cruz Mountains
A bright, medium ruby color in the glass, this wine has a very expressive nose of candied fruit, bacon, and saddle leather. In the mouth it is incredibly smooth, with a tautness to the core of cherry fruit dusted in fine, powdery tannins. Made in a medium-bodied, claret style, the wine gives an impression of clarity, like an impeccably dressed gentleman who always says the most interesting things at parties. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $28

2000 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “George’s Vineyard” Cabernet, Santa Cruz Mountains
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine has an amazing nose of intense cedar , cherry and leather aromas that leapt out of the glass before my nose even got near it. This leaping sensation continues on the palate, as the wine dances with perfect balance and gorgeous acidity through flavors of cherry, espresso, and tobacco. Beautiful, lace-like tannins lift this medium-bodied wine into a lingering finish that has notes of tart plum and cedar forest. Yum. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $35

2002 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “RV’s Fine Claret” Bordeaux Blend, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dark ruby in color, this wine smells of cherry, plum, and tobacco. On the tongue, light tannins and excellent acids buoy flavors of cherry and tobacco which float with light steps into a pleasant finish. This wine resembles the Cabernet Sauvignons produced in California the 1970s more than it does most modern wines, and is all the better for it. Score: around 9. Cost: $32

2004 Cooper-Garrod Vineyards “Francville Vineyard” Cabernet Franc, Santa Cruz Mountains
Medium ruby in color, this wine has a typically floral nose of geranium flowers and candied cherry. In the mouth it is light on its feet, with pleasant, uncomplicated flavors of cherry that make it quite easy to drink, though lacking some of the complexity of its brethren. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $23

Original post by Italian Wine Guy®

There are some California appellations that need no introduction, others that will ring a bell for experienced wine lovers, and only a select few that nine out of ten people will likely never have heard of. Up until a few years ago, the Yorkville Highlands was one such appellation. These days, it’s hard to tell whether it still languishes in obscurity or is gradually making its name known to lovers of California wine. Every time I meet a winemaker or winery marketing person from the area, however, after telling me where their grapes are grown, they always briefly pause, and then politely ask, “do you know where that is?”

Anyone who’s ever driven to Mendocino or the Anderson Valley the inland way (not on Highway One) has at least viscerally experienced the Yorkville Highlands, even if they had no idea where they were. Turning off from Highway 101 onto Highway 128 in the town of Cloverdale, the road quickly becomes a sick-inducing series of switchbacks and hairpin turns that climb swiftly away from the idyllic flats of the upper Alexander Valley into a much rockier and more extreme country.

The Yorkville Highlands is an elevated section of benchland that divides the Anderson Valley and Alexander Valley winegrowing areas. A complex product of uplift and fault action, it is a chunk of fractured rock and thin, poorly nourished soils that sits 1200 to 2000 feet above the surrounding areas, making for a relatively unique growing area compared to the surrounding appellations. The Yorkville Highlands tend to receive more sun than parts of the foggy Anderson Valley, but stay cooler because of their elevation and the inland sea breezes that sometimes seem to leap right over the heart of Anderson Valley as it simmers in 100+ degree summer heat. Consequently, The Yorkville Highlands seems to be able to grow a lot of different grape varieties quite well, from Cabernet Sauvignon (it’s most commonly planted variety) to Pinot Noir. Up until only a few years ago, no one had thought of growing Syrah in the area, but now, it is the second most planted grape variety after Cabernet.

While there are several growers that have literally been farming in the Yorkville Highlands for more than two decades (it was only given its own AVA status about 10 years ago), plantings have really increased in the last six or seven years. Of course, it wouldn’t take many more plantings to increase an area that today only has about 22 vineyards covering about 400 acres. Only about 1% of the designated AVA area has grapevines on it, and currently there are only 41 wines produced using fruit from the area.

One of the longer residents in this area is a dynamic little outfit known as Meyer Family Cellars. While Meyer Family Cellars has only an eight-year history, and has recently released one of its first wines, it has a much longer legacy thanks to founder and patriarch Justin Meyer. Justin Meyer was one of the great icons of the modern California wine industry and one of its greatest success stories. Justin Meyer thought he was destined for a life of prayer and service when he joined the Christian Brothers religious order in the late 1950’s, but a twist of fate led to him being sent to work at the order’s winery in Napa in 1964. That fateful move was the beginning of a forty-year career in the wine industry. After working for several years at Christian Brothers with the famous Brother Timothy, he left the order to marry the woman he had fallen in love with, and with literally a dollar to his name, he co-founded a little winery that he and partner Ray Duncan decided to call Silver Oak. The rest, as they say, is history. Justin spent 28 years at Silver Oak and built it into one of the world’s most sought-after wine brands.

During that time, Meyer, who was a lover of Port, purchased some bulk tawny port on the market and started to make small batches of the stuff under a new label: Meyer Family Cellars. The port was for friends and family, and was also sold in small quantities at the Silver Oak winery to those in the know.

During this time, Meyer raised a family with his wife Bonny. From an early age, his son, Matt Meyer, knew that he wanted to be a winemaker and winegrower like his father. Unlike in his father’s day, the way to do that was pretty straightforward for Matt, who went to U.C. Davis for a degree in Viticulture, and then began working immediately with his father on turning the family winery into something more than just a little port hobby.

The family purchased vineyards in the Yorkville Highlands in 1999, and while waiting for the vines to mature, purchased Syrah on the bulk market to blend and bottle for the 2000 through 2002 vintages. Justin Meyer passed away in 2002, leaving the winery under the direction of Matt and his new wife, Karen, a winemaker whom he met while working a harvest in New Zealand in 2004.

It has been a long road to get to this point, but in 2006 the winery finally released the first wine that it can fully and truly call its own. This 2003 vintage Syrah is essentially Matt and Karen’s first true full effort, representing a stake in the ground for the future of what will be their house style.

By all indications, that style will be a bold, yet balanced, expression of cool-climate Syrah. Made from grapes grown in six different vineyards around Mendocino, the wine is aged for 24 months in 50% new American oak before bottling. 1400 cases are made. The winery will be producing only a single Syrah and a single Cabernet Sauvignon each year, as well as continuing the family tradition of producing a Zinfandel based Port.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Inky garnet purple in color, this wine has a beautifully perfumed nose of violets and luscious black cherry fruit. In the mouth it is smooth and silky with a lovely weight on the tongue. The primary flavors are a beautiful melange of tobacco, chocolate, and black cherry, and with more air and time, I also perceive blackberry and cassis. All the flavors resonate with depth and feeling, and coalesce into a substantial finish that in my enthusiasm I scribbled down as “epic” in my tasting notebook. This is certainly one of the best Syrahs being made in Mendocino county, and probably the best I have had from the Yorkville highlands.

Food Pairing:
I’m headed off to a grilling party this afternoon and I wish I had another bottle of this to serve with some grilled fennel sausages, as they’d be a perfect match.

Overall Score: Between9 and 9.5

How Much?: $30

This wine is available for purchase on the internet.

Original post by Arthur Krea