This review was written by Jon Brodsky, Wine Aficionado (an informal, detailed –yet entertaining summary of the wineries we visited)

Some notes on our trip to Napa / Sonoma this past week.  This is heavily wine oriented and going out to a few friends who I thought might appreciate it and possibly benefit by it on future visits themselves.  It is somewhat detailed.

SUNDAY – We took an early flight out of Newark after running a 50 mile race near Boston on Saturday and driving back most of the way to Newark on Saturday night.  Despite getting in at noon to San Francisco, it took us 2 hours to get out of the airport mostly due to long lines at the car rental counter and only 2 agents there.  I was hoping to go to Sonoma as we were staying at Sonoma Mission Inn but we didn’t get to the southern end of the valley until 3.  Nonetheless we did get to some wineries.

ARTESA – nice views, southern Napa, 93pt pinot was only average.  Somehow Laura took a bigger hit than I did during the race and she could barely manage the stairs, especially down.  In fairness, having just broken her hand she had hardly worked out for almost 3 months, logging a long run of only 12 miles yet she still managed to run 50 on Saturday.  Still, it felt nice to have the tables turned on the post race stair walking ability.  Wine – unimpressive, didn’t buy any.  Go for views only on a clear day and you can see San Francisco maybe 30 – 40 miles away.

CHATEAU ST. JEAN – Missed the reserve tasting at 4:30. The regular wines were ok.  Pinot was good mass produced for the price, no reason to buy it and deal with shipping.  Nice tasting room.  Cinc cepage was discounted from $75 to $40 due to they say slumping economy.  Bought 6 bottles without tasting as I figured we needed wine for the hotel and remembering 10 years ago before WS rating #1 wine was $30 and shot up double or more overnight when the issue came out.  Have a few verticals at home and its always great.

MAYO FAMILY – Casual tasting, good wines, big zins.  They will do a food pairing very inexpensively.  Liked all the wines but didn’t get any as I am overloaded with Turley at home.
Dinner – Girl and the Fig – Sonoma square, really nice informal, great food.  Reminded me of a nice college town.

MONDAY
CALDWELL – Private tasting with John Caldwell, his wife (who personally bought food for us from Oxbow market) and the winemaker.  Amazing wine. Rocket science is fantastic for less than $50.  Doubt anything will stand up to this for the price.  Silver (meritage) discount to $80 from $100 was unbelievable.  Gold is 100% cab and great, though at $150 I thought pricey.  Platinum is very limited meritage at $200.  John said he had less than a case left.  Though I didn’t have a glass for comparison, I thought it would stand up to or beat Insignia or Opus.  I would like to try it against something like Harlan.  Bought 3 silver, passed on gold bought 1 platinum.  Would’ve bought rocket science but had just ordered some from wine library at a lower price than offered at the winery.  Thank you Irv for John’s contact info.  I would recommend visiting John to anybody going to Napa.  In retrospect it was probably the highlight of the trip.

CASTELLO DI AMAROSO – Nice tour, cool castle for $38 mil, bought a case of wine mainly for nice bottles.  Sangiovese was good for the price.  Tour guide was great.  Overall very commercialized.  Bought sea salt chocolate which I didn’t think I would like but did.  Tour was $25 per person and we added reserve wines and chocolate for $12 (we shared).   You don’t come here for the wine.

PRIDE – Really fun drive up the mountain.  Informal tour. Merlot for $50 was unbelievable.  Does this wine equal Caldwell??  I had only had the cab and the cab reserve in the past (thanks again Irv), but the merlot blew me away.  Tasted from the barrel and bottle. Bought 2 mags of merlot, perfect for upcoming magnum madness dinner in December.  Another one not to be missed.

Dinner – tra vigne – amazing truffle rissoto and rabbit pasta (2 dishes, ½ portion each). Laura loved her tuna and salad with steamed kale, spinach, which made me happy as its now 2 nights in a row that Laura liked dinner and that’s a tough feat.  We had eaten here a few years ago and remember loving it then.  We had eaten outside as it was October and warmer then, but the inside dining room was really nice too.

TUESDAY
V SATTUI – Go for the deli, not the wines.  Bought 1 bottle of Madeira which had really nice chocolate and toffee nose.  The red dessert wine was good too, but I’m not sure if that was just because we tried it against the regular wines which were basically unremarkable.  Dean and Deluca is a walk across the street, which we did so Laura could get some less calorie dense vegetables and salad for lunch.

HEITZ – I had wanted to go here despite prejudice against them from having had their California wine in the past.  Turns out all wines were very good, even less expensive ones Napa one though they did not have the California, but on the other hand they also weren’t tasting the Martha’s Vineyard. Informal tasting which was nice and it was Free! like the old days when we came here years ago.  I would’ve bought pretty much every wine we tried but figured these are easily accessible.

SCHRAMSBERG – Sparkling wine.  Of course, being the wine geek I am, I asked the tour guide if this would more properly be called “sparkling wine” and he came back with a fairly unsatisfactory answer and continued to call it champagne.  Cool wine caves (they say they have over 2 miles). Mexican guy can turn 48000 btls in one day. They serve this wine at the white house.  I wonder how much the president will allow himself to drink?  It’s like he’s always on call.   Best thing about this place is the history.  There are pictures all over with Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush (why does he always have that dumb looking grin) etc drinking Schramsberg.  Me however – I can’t tell difference between $30 and $100 sparkling wine.  Kind of glad for that though as its saves me money to buy more reds.  Arch shaped caves allow stacking literally millions of bottles.  Overall, very interesting tour.

STERLING – Attraction is the tram to vineyard, basically a short gondola ride. Self guided tour. Wish I had remembered to print the $5 coupon (times 2 people) to offset the $20 fee.  Funny how I’m so cheap about certain things.  The wines were good, not great.  Actually liked the whites.  Tried to take the glass but they take it on the tram back down.  We got so many glasses the last time we were here but have unfortunately broken most of them.  All the wineries seem to keep better track of their glasses and in fact generally serve less in their logo glasses.  They must have been losing money on stolen glasses despite the fact that they now charge so much for these tours.

MONTELENA – Far north in the valley. Cool informal atmosphere. Wines were really good as expected.  Interesting – I had just bought the new release for $100 but they were selling it for $135, not to mention I would also have to ship it back if I bought it here.  Have to be careful and somewhat knowledgeable when you buy here to avoid paying too much.  Laura asked the server to recommend some lesser know wineries, a tactic we had used in the past to find Regusci.  He mentioned a couple but the one I noted was Trefethen.

Dinner – bistro jeanty (round one) – Laura couldn’t find anything to order. I had 1 doz oysters at $1 each and string beans. Yum.  But of course we had to go find another acceptable place for her to eat.  Too bad because it was a really cool French bistro.

Go Fish (round two) – Laura loved the name and liked her halibut, my clams were good.  Final verdict, I ate too much with 2 dinners.
Drove home over the mountain. What an awesome twisty mountain road.  Yountville Cross Road I think.

WEDNESDAY

Despite having a pretty detailed agenda, the first part of our day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was going to be active – hiking, running etc.  Unfortunately, Laura still couldn’t go downhill very well so we had free time in the morning.  I felt badly for having not made some pinot reservations as many of the best pinot wineries either didn’t do public tours (Sean Thackery – best new world pinot I’ve ever had) or required advanced reservation.   Since they are mostly Sonoma coast and Russian river, they were a little off the beaten path.  I would’ve liked to have gone to Rochiolli but it was only open with reservation on Tuesday and Wednesday (open the other days) and Williams Selyem was only open to mailing list people.

MERRY EDWARDS – Very happy to have gone here.  They had at least one pinot in wine spectator top 100 recently.  It took almost an hour to get there from the town of Sonoma and would be a full hour if you stay in Napa, but we had time before 1:30 Opus reservation.  Fantastic pinot.  Definitely a highlight of the trip and if you are into pinot it’s worth the extra drive.  Bought a case.  The tasting was so cool – it was in their business office.  Nobody else came, just us.  You obviously go here just for the wines.  Joined the mailing list.  They said they would ship 2 cases free.  I called Norm to ask if he wanted any and he said yes, texted Gene but got back to me late.  Ended up with 1 case but the mailing list is wide open and can reorder any time.  The regular pinot was noteworthy; the single vineyard wines were outstanding.  Bought 4 bottles regular at maybe $50, 6 single vineyard at $50-60 and 2 bottles of the extremely limited $100 bottle, one to go to norm.

OPUS – Speaks for itself. Great wine but pricey.  Up to $200/btl.  They were tasting the 2006 which was a little less Bordeaux like and more Cali, which actually disappointed me somewhat.  I love when Opus takes on that Bordeaux character.  The tour guide was very knowledgeable and the winery was so clean and nice.  A Taiwanese guy on our tour has 500btls of 2003 vintage. Obviously not a doctor. What would you do with so much of 1 wine?  Caldwell platinum was better. For that matter, silver may be better. But opus still rocks. Bought 2 btls of 2nd growth Overture for $60 only available at the winery.  Tour was $35.

TREFETHEN – Really good on crossover to Silverado hwy. Bought 3 btls cab discounted from $60 to $40. Very peppery. Good stuff.  I think they have the disadvantage of not being seen on the main road.  The reserve was great too, but pricey at $100.  Informal tasting.
DARIOUSH – Modern, great atmosphere, all wines were good including whites, even the chard which I rarely like.  Being the wine geek paid off as I could intelligently talk about the wines and the server poured extra that wasn’t on the tasting list. Didn’t buy but it was all really good.  I would happily drink Darioush any day.  Surprisingly crowded considering it’s on Silverado Trail.

REGUSCI – Couldn’t miss going to one of our favorites.  Happily brought a bottle of this to a blind tasting (only 3 other wines, but they were all good) and it won.  Reconfirmed that this wine rocks. For $50 or less the regular wines are fantastic. Bought a mag of the regular cab. Reserve wines were huge. One was almost port-like.  I usually feel the bigger and more new world the better, but this may have been too much.  Merlot was right up there with Pride.

Dinner – Returned to tra vigna.  I love this place.  $100 including wine (we shared a glass.  Just how much wine can you drink in a day anyway?).  The house wine was $9 / glass Markham cab.  Totally acceptable at a great price at a restaurant.  Recommended for moderate price fantastic food.

THURSDAY

Driving down to the Dipsea trail to run over the mountain to the pacific.  Hope Laura is recovered.  We love it here having even named one of our cats Dipsea (it sounded better than Caldwell Platinum).  Planning on Carmel this evening and dinner at Casanova which should be the best dinner yet.  Hoping that the hurricane on the east coast doesn’t affect our flight home Friday.

SUMMARY
Best wines
Caldwell – All, especially silver for the price.  I think Platinum was the single best wine we had this week.
Pride – Best merlot I’ve ever had.
Merry Edwards – Huge pinot.  Definitely my style.  Not for burgundy lovers.
Regusci – Class by itself for price.

Darioush

Wineries to skip (for the wine anyway)
Sterling
Artesa
V sattui

If I had one day in Napa and I was here for the wine, I would be sure to go to these wineries – Caldwell, Darioush, Regusci, Pride, Montelena –  in that order north to south and do-able in one day 10am – 5pm.  I would add Phelps having gone on a previous trip.

If I was here for the tours I would go to Schramsberg, Castello di Amorosa and Mondavi (had been on a previous trip).

Final notes – I would not stay in Sonoma again.  There’s just too much going on in Napa.  You could go to Sonoma for 1 day and get your Sonoma fix.  Also, shipping home is a pain.  I packed wine shipping boxes to bring in my luggage, but of course exceeded the capacity of 1 suitcase.  Going to have to stop at UPS on the way out for $80 per case to ship home or ship through the concierge which will be even more.

Hope this helps anybody thinking of a Napa trip.

Jon Brodsky