Two years ago I blogged about crashing a wine club event at the Heller Estate Vineyards winery high in the mountains above Carmel Valley.  That was one year after the huge Basin Complex fire burned into Big Sur and north almost to this winery.  The smoke blanked the region for a couple of months and of course the grapes were affected.   At the winery event I pleaded with the winemaker to bottle what we were tasting in the barrel, smoke flavor and all.

We recently visited their tasting room in the Village of Carmel Valley to taste the results.  WOW!  Sure, smoked wine is not as well known as say smoked salmon or cheese, but it is great!  You can still taste Cab but the smoke in their 2008 organic Cachagua Cabernet Sauvignon is up front and exciting.

We enjoyed drinking the whole bottle on our patio on a warm summer day and paired with only light munchies such as sausages.  We would like to buy more and pair it with roasts, salmon, etc. and see what happens.

I’ve heard that most of the other vintners in the area did their best to eliminate the smoke from their local 2008 wines but fortunately Heller decided to see if there is a market for a wine that needs to be explored beyond the frontier of wine tasting.  Last I heard there are only a few cases left.

- jim

Last Saturday we brought six bottles aboard a 32′ Catalina sailboat sitting in a marina south of San Francisco. Accompanying the all red wines was a huge focacia meat loaf sandwhich.

Eleven people came and went during the long afternoon. The bottles slowly emptied, the spicy meatloaf sandwhich slices seemed to evaporate, and the conversations in the cozy cabin became more interesting.

Every faster loved every wine. No rejects. All are robust enough so we could enjoy them with full flavor and aroma for each varietal. None were so soft to be boring.

The favorite was the Estates 04 Paso Robles Petite Sirah. This is a wine club only selection but we “stole” it. It was lost in oak for over a year, yes, ignored and abandoned. We voted for Hahn to loose all the wines from now on!!

Other wines we selected in the tasting room which we really enjoyed.

Hahn Estates 06 Cab Franc
Hahn Estates 05 Malbec
Hahn SLH 06 Syrah
Hahn SLH 06 Pino Noir

We left a bottle of Pino aboard as a gift to Gil and his new boat. Everyone ageed we need to do this again. Maybe even sail first!

- jim

As we drove south on Hwy 101 toward the Salinas Valley, and more importantly the Santa Lucia Highlands vineyards of Monterey County, Katya and I pledged to avoid tasting rooms.  We wanted to focus on the photography for our upcoming Discover California Wine Regions videos and the River Road Wine Trail was the last shoot needed.

We have the same problem every region we shoot.  We start off dedicated to photography only and somehow stray off into tasting at some point.  We were already running a bit late and didn’t expect to arrive in the region until around noon.  With short days now we only had a few hours to shoot with sunlight.

We started on the south end near Arroyo Seco Road and did a little shoot at Paraiso Springs Vineyards‘ tasting room on the Santa Lucia Highlands “bench”.  We were good kids and shot and ran away.

The best views of the area are from Hahn’s tasting room high up on the side of the Salinas Valley.    As we drove up the mile long scenic drive we planned our attack.  Katya would shoot from the vineyard and frame the tasting room against the steep mountain.  I would shoot video of the picnic area, deck, and the incredible view across the Salinas Valley.

The shoot went perfect.  We’re getting good at this.  Then I wandered into the tasting room to say “Hi”.  As always the staff was friendly and conversant.  Soon we were talked into trying a couple of special wines.  We couldn’t escape.  I decided to keep tasting and develop a blog about their wines and warm tasting environment (to come).

We left the Hahn tasting room with less than an hour of sun left and managed a few more shots here and there.  We have enough but had to push hard to get them.

As always we kick ourselves for a decadent lack of self-discipline and control in tasting rooms all over California.  We can’t seem to stop wine questing when we should be working on other aspects of Wine Questers.  Then again, when we discover adventures in wine country you probably want to know about them and also be tempted to linger.

- jim