Napa Tasting Trip

Rutherford Hill
Silver Oak
Sinskey
Cliff Lede
Domaine Chandon

Shane’s Notes

We invited a group of people to the Silver Oak release party but no one was interested. Must be the wine…Anyway, besides the Silver Oak party, we decided to visit some old favorites on this trip. Rutherford Hill is one of the first wineries I tasted at in Napa so we made them our first stop. Would my ever changing palate still favor their wines? We also wanted to hit Sinskey again. We love just about everything they make. On a whim, we added Cliff Lede, and of course, we finished at Domaine Chandon. We didn’t take any notes so here are some general impressions.

At Rutherford Hill, I was only interested in the reds. As they will readily tell you, it is the reds that make them “famous.” I was a little disappointed. We both thought the Cab and the Merlot were slightly overoaked. There was some varietal flavor underneath but it was just too hard to find it.

The Silver Oak party was too crowded. We have never seen so many people at one of their release parties. We had our tasting and left. This $100 a bottle offering (Napa 2002) is one of the worst Silver Oaks we have tasted. It had the usually massive vanilla flavor with a tang on the finish that we found offensive. I’d take my $5.00 Aveleda Charamba over the 2002 Napa Silver Oak.

Sinskey is simply an amazing winery. They produce wines that are varietally pure and we’ve never had an overoaked wine from them. The Pinot Blanc was complex and flavorful – it is the best Pinot Blanc I’ve tasted. The Pinot Gris was also very flavorful albeit much more simple. We bought a bottle of the Four Vineyards Pinot and will be reviewing it later.

We have heard a lot of hype about Cliff Lede, so we dropped buy and paid our $50 for two tastings. Their cabs proudly display their region of origin but overoaking stamped out any regional differences. The Stag’s Leap cab seemed less oaked and did show some interesting flavors, but it still wasn’t worth the asking price.

Once again, we finished the day at Domaine Chandon. It was early afternoon so it wasn’t crowded. We ordered our glasses of sparkling wine and relaxed on a couch. We sipped our sparklers and discussed our next Napa trip. For Jen’s birthday in early March, we are tasting at Keenan and Schweiger on Spring Mountain and then having dinner at Cole’s Chophouse. We can’t wait!