Doing Napa the Right Way

Hello enophiles. After a prolonged break in blogging, I'm finally back to do some wine reviews. Tonight I wanted to talk a little about the trip we took to Napa back in July and highlight one of our favorite wineries from the visit. First off, I have to say, if you're going to Napa you have to do a bed and breakfast and you really should stay in the northernmost town - Calistoga. And if you're choosing a bed and breakfast in Calistoga you have to choose Chateau De Vie. The place is simply serene and the hosts are incredible, not to mention the fabulous breakfasts. Another benefit of the B&B - they can recommend some great small wineries! When we go to Napa we really feel the way to have the best experience is to seek out the smaller guys and just skip the crowded big labels. With this in mind, we were able to find several again this year. One of our new favorites (although the winery is certainly not new) is Vincent Arroyo. Vincent has been making wine in the Napa Valley for over 20 years and he's done a great job of keeping quantity small and quality high. We stopped by, tried several and left with about 6 different bottles. Tonight I wanted to review his 2006 Petite Sirah.

The winerey primarily sells on a "futures" basis meaning you can sign up to have wines delivered to you when they are released and most "sell out" via this method so are never really available for sale through the tasting room. Fortunately we were able to get a bottle of this Petite Sirah while we were there. It's certainly a bold, full bodied wine. With lots of color and great texture, it has an intense nose that to me displays herbal spices and pepper - think almost clove like. Taste wise, I think this wine would probably be even better a few years from now. There is a lot of wonderful P. Sirah flavor here, but also still heavy on tannins. This wine will age nicely. At $32 a bottle it's actually a very good buy for a big Napa red like this, but given the wonderful size of the winery (only 8000 cases total) you won't find it in a store near you. Check out his website linked above and treat yourself to one of these and some of his other great wines. Enjoy.