I’ve previously blogged about the intimate and friendly Route 128 tasting room and the wines from the Opatz Family Winery.  Their tasting room is in the Alexander Valley, the vineyards just north of there in the Yorkville Highlands AVA, and the winery is near Hopeland in Mendocino County.

We wandered into the tasting room recently and noticed cases of wine in a corner and labeled “Fire Sale – $50 / case”.  Our kind of price.  Lorna poured their 2008 Pelu Rouge red which is a hearty blend of Viognier, Zinfandel and Syrah.  Except this time there was an additional dimension – smoke.

On June 24th 2008 a lighting storm ignited over 1,700 wildfires in California.  This overwhelmed even international wildfire fighting capacity and the fires burned for up to two months.  The smoke blanked vineyards in over a dozen California wine regions.  Many vintners tried to salvage the vintage in various ways but many ended up dumping the wine.  Pete Opatz didn’t.

We enjoyed the smoke with an excellent wine and bought two cases.  We like it even better now and have paired the wine with a variety of meals but mostly red meats and sausages.  It is a bit of an acquired taste but if you like smoked cheese, salmon, ham, etc. then try a 2008 wildfire smoked wine wherever you can find them.  While Route 128 will probably be sold out by the time you read this Heller in Carmel Valley, Monterey wine region, may have some left.

We also brought home a bottle of Route 128 2009 High Five Bordeaux blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec, 3% Petit Verdot.  It is a big and interesting wine with not much of a tannin bite.  No nearby wildfires in 2009

- Jim

Roth Estate doesn’t have a tasting room of their own and such wineries are usually outside of our scope.  However, this family owned winery is related to Lancaster Estate on Chalk Hill Road so when wine distributor Wilson Daniels offered to let us try some of their wines we agreed.

I’ll start with their 2009 Sonoma Coast (basically west Russian River Valley) Pinot Noir.  It opened for us with a BIG raspberry nose and a medium body with gentle fruit and a mild finish.  We prefer the more intense, well, intense for Pinot, Santa Cruz Mountains Pinots but a big raspberry nose is a hit with us.  Unfortunately the nose died down quite a bit on the second and third days but the flavors stayed fresh.  We pumped the air out and used argon to remove the oxygen to store it overnight.

The wine was aged in French oak for 18 months but the oak is in the background.  It is 100% Pinot as most Pinots are although we tasted a Lake County Pinot last night that seemed to be blended with Syrah of all things.  The price point is $27 which is probably about right but we would prefer bigger flavors for that price.  A LOT of people prefer the mellow Pinots and this wine should appeal to them.

The Roth 2010 Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc is a medium body wine with a very light color, big nose full of flowers and citrus, and that New Zealand type of grassiness that we enjoy.  Recall that the 2010 harvest was late due to cool weather but had that grape killer hot spell in August.  In spite of the challenges this batch of Sauv Blanc did very well with the longer hang time.  There is no oak here, just the fruit, and the acidity is comfortable for the varietal.  Suggested retail is $16 which is reasonable but a bit on the high side.  We sampled this wine with friends over a chicken dinner and the reaction was favorable.  The finish was decent but longer would be nice.

We tried the Roth 2008 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon for desert with friends after dinner.  It is a medium body Cab with plum aroma and soft tannins and a light oak backdrop. The finish lasts a while which for us is critical in all wines but especially for the big reds.  I expected a bit more oak since the wine is aged in French and American Oak for 18 months.  Maybe there is more there than met my palate after dinner.

I love big oaky Alexander Valley Cabs.  This wine is not that robust and should appeal to a much larger market.  It is softened with 17% Cab Franc and Merlot.  The suggested retail price of $28 is spot on. It doesn’t have the complexity of other AV Cabs but it is drinkable right now and smooth enough to pair with most dishes such as red meats and pastas and good conversation.   Good wine and I consider it a buy.

- Jim

Lancaster Estate winery is rather newly open to the public and is located at the southern end of Alexander Valley on Chalk Hill Road.  Normally I only blog about wineries that we’ve visited but in this case we’ve only visited the driveway entrance.  The winery is by appointment only and we often don’t have time for appointments.  The entrance is impressive though and the rare photos of the winery on their Website are intriguing.  We intend to visit sometime this winter.

Lancaster’s wine distributor, Wilson Daniels, sent me their 2010 Sauvignon Blanc to try.  We paired it with a Trader Joes chicken salad nested in grilled endives for an appetizer and for dinner Katya grilled turkey and ham kabobs.  The setting was our patio on a warm summer evening with hummingbirds watching us carefully as they drank their “estate bottled” sugar water from our feeder. 

Recall that 2010 was a tough year in the vineyards.  Although mostly an unusually cool summer there were a few surprise days of high heat that burned a lot of grapes all over California.  Lancaster’s grapes survived because the canopy wasn’t trimmed back to expose them to more sun, a common strategy at the time with the prevailing weather so cool.

This is a big fruity full nose wine, pleasant oak in the background that reflects being aged in new and used French oak for only 20% of the 7 month aging process.  Yes, it is bright and crisp without the grassiness of some Sauv Blancs.  Alexander Valley wines are almost always on the upper end of a scale from soft to robust and this one is no exception.  As a full fruit wine there is a complex assortment of citrus, pear, and our favorite, fresh flower aromas.  The supplied tasting notes mentioned peaches and lemons.  They may be there but we didn’t notice.  We taste with food and conversation, like most people drink wine, and unless a flavor is outstanding we don’t bother to hunt for it.  This blog is for regular wine travelers, not the small niche who has to discern every nuance.

At a suggested retail price of $28 this Sauv Blanc is a buy.  Not a steal at the price but worth trying. We loved it!

- Jim

The Opatz family harvests their grapes from their vineyard in the Yorkville Highlands on Route 128 north of the Alexander Valley.  As we have seen a lot of recently they are growers who turned to wine making and eventually opened their own tasting room.  Their tiny Route 128 Winery tasting room is located off the main street through Geyserville, Route 128 also, and is always a delight to visit.  This is a vintner-pours tasting experience and a mom and pop operation.  The tasting room has seating and the hospitality begs you to hang around a while.

We love all their wines.  They are typical of that area – big flavors, medium acidity, and a lot for the taster to explore.  In this post I want to point out their Viognier.  The grapes come from their Yorkville Highlands vineyard which is at a much higher elevation than nearby Alexander and Dry Creek Valleys.  It has the bigger Viognier flavors with little grassiness.  We served it on our patio with shrimp on a warm summer afternoon and tasted the wine blossom during and after the snack.  We tend to drink whites a bit warm for the bouquet.

We believe that terroir matters and the Yorkville area wines are a real treat.  The combination of the soils plus the shifting cool and hot weather gives the wines a different experience than their lowland cousins.

- Jim

Alexander Valley is a quiet and laid back part of Sonoma County.  For decades there have been only a few wineries in this famous Cabernet growing valley but lately we are seeing new wineries.  Trione built a beautiful winery next to US 101 just south of Geyserville a few years ago.  They have very nice landscaping, landscape art, and are gracious tasting room hosts.

Jessie, the tasting room manager, really wanted us to try their 2007 Russian River Pinot Noir and 2008 RRV Sauvignon Blanc.  The Sauv Blanc was excellent as expected. Full bodied, full flavor, but not as much as a big New Zealand Sauv Blanc.  Same with the Pinot.  For those who like light delicate Pinots there are other wineries in RRV for that.  In the Alexander Valley they make wine you can taste and explore.  Trione’s Pinot changes nicely as it gets air and never flattens out in the glass.  This is a medium bodied Pinot which of course is still light compared to Cab or Zin.

Wonder how a new winery can have great wines?  The Trione family have been growers for decades and wine making for many years.  When they opened this winery they were already on a roll with great local wines.

- Jim

1978 was the last year of a drought in California.  The vines were stressed as were just about everything living in California then.  A massive fast-track water pipe project that took up lanes of the Richmond Bridge saved Marin from drying up.  Times were tough but when that vintage’s bottles were opened starting about 1980 we realized that the Cabs were real treasures.

Jordan's palacial estate winery above the beautiful Alexander Valley.

I especially like the Cabs from the Alexander Valley and around Gilroy and bought cases of them. Yes, in them thar days you could afford a case of Jordan or Silver Oak Cab and still have money left over.  There were no tasting fees even at Silver Oak.  It all existed in a galaxy far, far away.

I think the last time I had Jordan’s 1978 Cab was in a hot tub high above Napa Valley in the mid-1980′s.  David (David’s Jewelers in St. Helena) and I crawled under his house and found a broken case of Jordan 1978 Cab. The bottles were lying in the dirt and scattered about.  It was more of an archeological scene.  We headed to the hot tub to share it with our naked wives.

I noticed Jordan on Twitter last fall (@jordanwinery) and asked if they had an old bottle of their fabulous 1978 Alexander Cabernet laying around.  They still have a small stash of magnums in their library collection and had one left available for 2009.  $400.  Ugh, but I wanted to share it with my wife.  She has heard me bragging about Jordan 78 Cab for 15 years and she needed to try it.  I drove up to Jordan and bought it.

Our engagement anniversary is more special to us than our two weddings (Vladivostok, Russia and Anchorage, Alaska).  I proposed to Katya in front of the Parthenon in Athens then taught her how to sail through the Greek Islands on a charted boat for a week.  That’s another wine story but back to Jordan.

Our bottle of 78 Jordan Cab in Katya's table setting design with our Greek dinner.

For our 15th engagement anniversary on April 15 this year (special date, I was a CPA) we decided to open our precious bottle of 78 Cab.  Katya brought home a Greek dinner from a local restaurant and we sipped the Jordan Cab with it. The old spicy Cab was still there, beautifully preserved, but the tannins were softer.

We tasted the wine for the next three days and it was wonderful each time.  I injected argon inert gas into the bottle each day and that worked very well.  There was no sign of oxidation.

I’m telling this story because it is a decent story.  DO NOT BUY ALL OF JORDAN’S 1978 Cab and leave none for me!  Try some other years or just dream but don’t act.  Get it?

- jim

Winter Wineland is a Russian River Wineroad event for the Alexander, Dry Creek, and Russian River regions in Sonoma County, California.  There are well over 100 winery tasting rooms in these regions and the ambiance, and wine, is some of the best in the world.

Katya and I moved right along during the 5 hours a day open for event tasting and hit 16 wineries on January 17 – 18, 2009!  This was only a week after tasting at 7 San Francisco urban wineries.  What wonderful adventures to start the year.  We LOVE 2009 already!

There were about a hundred wineries participating. It was impossible to try them all of course so we narrowed it down to 16 over two days. That is a lot of wineries but we sipped and poured out the wines.  Most of the wineries were serving food with their wines so we were able to stay full the whole day.

The weather was sunny and in the low 70′s!  We were in short sleeve shirts before noon, in January!

This was the first trip for using our new breath analyzer, AlcoHawk from Amazon.com.  My highest blood alcohol level was .05 before a long dinner, well below drunk driving, but for driving I was at .03 or less. I’ve always suspected I was careful and it is comforting to have some proof.

Follow me on Twitter.com/winequester for live tasting room reports during our road trips.

We can not possible buy everything we like so we hit a few highlights.  Also, I rarely tell you what you will taste, just the wines that I think are unusual and interesting.  Everything about your context and physiology will be different than mine and affect the taste.

And the winners are:

Trentadue was a hit because I won a 1.5 liter bottle of 06 Alex Valley Zin as I walked in. Their polenta was nice but rather small. We purchased 05 Old Patch Red, 05 Cote del Leone, a blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah, Zin, and a dash of Carignane, and Chocolate Amore.  I wanted a barrel of Chocolate Amore but …

Truett-Hurst in Dry Creek Valley are the new kids in that area but producing top wines.  They are remodeling the old Martin Family property with big and very exciting plans for a biodynamic farming exposition and a picnic area by the creek that will be one of  the top winery picnic areas in the state.  They served BBQ tri-tip, a hit with Katya.  Purchased: 06 Old Vine Rattler Rock Zin and Stonegate Napa Valley 02 Cab.  (They purchased the iconic old Stonegate name and inventory.)

Alexander Valley Vineyards had a diverse tapas bar with some of the best food we found.  Nice prices at AVV.  Purchased: 05 Alex Valley Syrah, 07 Dry Rose’ of Sangiovese.

White Oak offered to-die-for pork sliders to pair with their Napa Valley 04 Syrah. This is such a beautiful Tuscan style winery!  Purchased: 04 Napa Valley Cab Sauv, 07 Russian River Valley Sauv Blanc.

Forchini is a tiny Italian family winery with a wonderful picnic area and view on the east side of Dry Creek Valley.  Purchased: 06 Papa Nonno Tuscan red estate grapes, 05 estate Cab Sauv Reserve.

Route 128 is a new little tasting room in Geyserville and VERY FRIENDLY. Vintner’s pour for you.  Purchased: 05 Syrah.  Their vineyard is in the Yorkville Highlands north of Cloverdale in Mendocino County on Route 128.

Mill Creek is an ALWAYS FRIENDLY (get it, that’s important, and unusual) family winery and served a killer chili (recipe on their Web site).  They have a picnic site beside a pond and a water wheel and another up the hill with a fantastic view toward Healdsburg.  Purchased: 99 Cab Sauv, 06 Dry Creek Valley Zin.

Everett Ridge was baking various pizzas in an outside stone oven to taste with their reds. They also baked a flat bread to dip in Dry Creek Olive Oil Company’s olive oil. Great view from their elevated view bar and deck!  Purchased: 05 Diablita red wine and 05 Diablita Zin.

Hawkes is a newish tasting room next to the Jimtown store in Alexander Valley. They served a nice macaroni and cheese.  Purchased: 04 AV Cab Sauv, 06 AV Chard.

Preston (no relation) was serving homemade pizza from a stone oven.  Purchased 07 organic Barbera.  I thought we had two bottles but the other must be lost in action.  Happens.

Hanna has one of the best views in the Alexander Valley and served a tasty chicken apricot stew.  Purchased: 99 Bismark Ranch Noir, a red blend from mountain grapes.

Bella has one of the few cave tasting rooms in Sonoma County.  They served a stunning Paella.  Their wines are a bit soft for us but most tasters would love them.  Great place to visit and picnic!!  Purchased: 06 Syrah.

Trione is new to the Geyserville area of Alexander Valley.  We’ve watched the construction of the new winery and remodeling of an old stone building for well over a year.  They served oysters, not my thing, but Katya went crazy for them and now loves Trione.  Purchased: 06 Russian River Valley Sauv Blanc and their Syrah.

We also tasted in Meeker’s tasting room in little Geyserville but it was too choatic to purchase wine.  We love to hang out in Geyserville so we’ll be back soon anyway.  When Chuck Meeker is in his tasting room it is always lively, and sometimes more.  This is California’s premiere tasting room for frivolity.

We tasted the very old vine Zins at Sausal but they seemed too soft and mellow for our tastes.  We expected more robust aromas and flavors.  Maybe it was just us. 

We arrived at Amista late on Saturday and didn’t have a chance to taste about half their wines.  I know I want their Cab.  We expected to return on Sunday but never made it.

Such TREASURES!  I think I found all the wines we bought but Katya may have put some away that I didn’t spot.

What do I regret from the weekend?  That we couldn’t buy one of EVERYTHING we tasted.  I hate limits.  Try all or some of the above for a wonderful adventure!

- jim