A Cabernet Day
Fifty four people piled into our little tasting room last Saturday (8/1) for Silver Oak & Friends, making it one of our most well attended tastings since opening Winex Uncorked. Quite a contrast to two weeks earlier when we had to scrap an Aussie tasting for lack of interest. (Huh?)
We kicked off the show with some strong efforts in the ‘Value’ category with Christian Lazo, a small family outfit out of Paso Robles run by WM Steve Christian and his wife Lupe Lazo. (I love it when I call a winery for tech specs and the winemaker picks up the phone!) And a new face (to us), Egret, the second label of Bonneau using sourced fruit from Napa. The upper label, Bonneau, sourced from the Stagecoach and Kane Vyds also showed very well, more structured than its younger sibling.
The blends, a normal feature in our Cabernet tastings, were led off by the CF driven Justin ‘Justification’ and the CS laden Justin ‘Iscosceles’, two allocated wines that we normally wouldn’t have a chance to pour. The history rich Lail ‘Blueprint’, made by ‘Rockstar/Wine Stylist’ WM Phillipe Melka was a juicy beast, the best of the blends.
Some of the standouts from the ‘Bigs’….. Efestē ‘Big Papa’ (pronounced F S T) from Ciel du Cheval, Kiona & Sagemoor Vyds, top sites in Washington State. Emblem, from an old vyd in Rutherford; the new project from Michael Mondavi & son, Rob. Parallel, another Phillipe Melka stunner from the Conn Valley. And the show stoppers….Hewitt, the elegant, black fruit packed Cabernet made by Tom Rinaldi (longtime WM at Duckhorn) & Caymus Napa Cabernet 2007, a big wallop of chocolate caramel coffee cake in your face, in a bottle. I’m not sure what the Wagner’s were smoking in ’07 but it worked, what a wine!
