Beringer Comes to Burlington
a shameless self-promotion . . .
One of our photos from Italy has been entered in a photo contest.
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It was about two years ago that Paul and I spent a wonderful two weeks in northern California. We rented a spectacular house in the redwood forest of the Russian River Valley and spent our days touring wineries. Horrible!
Generally when we are in that area we avoid Napa; to us it is too busy, too snobby, two glitzy, and too commercial. On this trip we thought that perhaps we would check out the northern Napa valley to see if it was different than the southern part of the valley. It was, but not by much.
We stopped into Beringer, drawn by the allure of the oldest winery in California. I'll admit that our tasting spoiled us - it was the day after Robert Parker had been tasting at the winery and they had some high end wines left that they had opened for him. I am sure that we ended up tasting things that we never would have had otherwise. It was an incredible visit!
When I read that our local liquor store was hosting a tasting of Beringer wines we quickly signed up; if the guys couldn't get to Napa for the crush than Napa could come to us! Today when I was at work I mentioned that we had the tasting this evening to my friend Jane and she laughed and said that she and Ruth were signed up as well - clearly it would be a good night!
This was the sight that greeted us when we arrived. My kind of tasting. The ad for the session indicated that there would be six wines to taste but we were provided with 8. Actually, we received 9 because there was confusion about when the class was to start. We arrived at the advertised time of 6:30 but others showed up at 7. While we waited we had an extra taste of a reserve white wine.
The eight wines we tasted were:
- 2005 Stone Cellars Chardonnay
- 2005 Beringer Founders' Estate Chardonnay
- 2005 Kinghts Valley Alluvium Blanc
- 2004 North Coast Third Century Merlot
- 2005 Napa Valley Merlot
- 2004 Beringer Founders' Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
- 2004 Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
- 2004 Kinghts Valley Alluvium
Look at the differences in the colour . . .
My favourites were the 2004 Beringer Founders' Estate Cabernet Sauvignon with its deep red colour and aromas of cassis, green tea, and vanilla and the 2004 Kinghts Valley Alluvium with its intense cherry, blackberry core. I can't say as if I cared greatly for the white wines but then again I may only drink a bottle or two of white wine a year.
Now for the silly pics:
Ruth cheating and reading the tasting notes so she can talk intelligently about the wine!
Jane demonstrating the two-fisted approach to wine tasting!
Jerry,
It sounds like a great tasting! I agree about Napa Valley - much too commercial. I much prefer visiting Sonoma County, especially around the Healdsburg area.
Actually, I like San Luis Obispo County (Paso Robles) and Santa Barbara County wines just as well as Napa/Sonoma.
Posted by:nancyhol | October 30, 2007 at 01:32 PM
Nancy - I agree about the Paso area. We haven't explored it to the same extent as we have Sonoma but we plan on it. That is one of the reasons why we are looking forward to our trip there in February.
Posted by:Jerry | October 30, 2007 at 02:05 PM