Red Carpet Wine - Taste of Oakville 2009

RED CARPET WINE Since 1964 400 E Glenoaks Blvd Hours: Mon-Thur 10-8
wine & spirits merchants (800) 339-0609 ^{Glendale, CA 91207 Fri & Sat 10-9,
Sun 11}

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This past Monday, Dan and I made the trip up to Napa for the annual Taste of Oakville Trade event, in my opinion, one of the best and most enjoyable trade tasting events around. Obviously, a great portion of the wines are stellar and it gives us an opportunity to taste what we will be bringing into the store. Be it a newcomer on the scene or wines that have consistently produced, we are always excited to go to this event and experience the new vintages.

It’s a pretty great day when you can taste Bond, Detert, Far Niente, Flora Springs, Ghost Block, Harlan, Hoopes, Miner, Nickel & Nickel, Opus One, Robert Mondavi, Showket, Stanton, Swanson, Tamber Bey, Rudd, Paradigm and Vine Cliff in one day. It is very gratifying when we discuss what we felt were the best wines at the event and realize that we currently carry these wines in the store. The staff at Red Carpet knows how to pick good wine.

Another thing that I am consistently impressed by in the wine world is the quality of the people that own these wineries and make the wine. We get the unique opportunity to spend time with some of the legends of the wine world and most of them are genuinely nice people with a desire and passion to make great wine. They take great pride in what they do and they succeed without the accompanying arrogance you might find by top performers in other industries.

You would never know by spending time with him that David Phinney is one of Napa’s hottest winemakers with The Prisoner, Mercury Head, Saldo and Papillion. Andy Hoxsey has one of the great cult wines, on the market, in Ghost Block and was kind enough to invite Dan and I to join he and his family for dinner at his home last Sunday. I could go on and on about Fulton and Dink Mather, Doug Stanton, Dorothy Showket, Timm and Sharon Krull and Barry Waite to name a few.

We appreciate these great people, love their wine, and hope to have as many of them pour the fruits of their labor in the Wine Bar so you can meet them too.

H.K.

The Taste of Oakville is an annual event that brings many of the great Oakville producers together under one roof. The 14th annual Taste of Oakville showed more amazing wines than ever before. The Tasting was the main reason for going up to Napa, but H.K. and I were able to utilize our time well. The event was not until Monday, and we were in Napa by noon on Sunday, so the best thing to do was to go visit some old friends, and see how they are doing and what we should expect from up coming vintages.

Our first stop was the David Fulton Winery. Year after year Fulton produces some of the best Petit Syrah to come out of the Napa Valley; we had the pleasure of sitting with Fulton and Dink his lovely wife and partner to talk about what has changed over the years. Their current Vintage is the 2005, but we had the privilege of having an early taste of the 2006. Still young in the bottle it shows the potential of another great Petit Syrah, it is due for release this August.

From there, we headed over to Flora Springs Winery and Vineyards. One of the largest vineyards in Napa, Flora Springs sells much of their fruit to other producers; however our focus was to taste their single vineyard productions, and their estate wines. Once we tasted through the current vintages of Trilogy, Holy Smoke, Rennie Vineyard, Out Of Sight Vineyard and Wild Boar Vineyard, we took a walk through their wine cave and tasted barrel samples of the 2007 vintages. Much of the talk of the weekend, with many of the producers was that ’07 will be an amazing collection.

After Flora Springs, we had the honor of enjoying an evening with the owner of Ghost Block Vineyard, Andy Hoxsey, where he and his wife Nancy hosted us as their first guests of 2009. We enjoyed fantastic food and amazing wine. After dinner we sat on the veranda of their historic home and drank seventy year old Hennessy, smoked fine cigars and told lively stories.

Early Monday morning, we made our way to John Ruston's Vineyard. He showed us around, and left us with his new releases to enjoy over lunch. After a solid breakfast at Gilwoods we made our way to Rubicon Estates, then to Joseph Phelps Vineyards. Time flew by and before we knew it, it was time to go to the tasting at the Mondavi Winery; thirty eight Oakville producers and only two hours to venture through them. We ran into familiar faces, and made new friends as well.

Staying on top of what is coming out in the world of wine is a priority. Trips like this are well worth the time. In between hard work at the store, trips to Napa remind us all of how great the wine business is. Every year brings new challenges, and every year we find solutions and as always Great Wine!

Dan

H.K. and Fulton overlooking the vineyards at David Fulton Winery

Fulton cracking the '06 Petit for the first time

Dan and Richard Tiedemann from Flora Springs

Entrance to Rubicon Estate....Please proceed to Red Carpet Wine....not really but close enough

Rubicon Estate

The one and only Joseph Phelps Vineyards

Dan and Keith overlooking the vineyards at Phelps

Home Wine Shop Beers Spirits Gifts Beverage Catering Cigars Staff Picks Wine Bar/Events Map About RC