If you’re trying to decide which wine club to join, pick one that offers a cave tour. Caves are the perfect places to store and age barrels of wine. Well out of the sun, they maintain an even temperature year round, which is nice and low but not freezing. As air from the outside enters the cave and cools, its relative humidity increases. This reduces the loss of wine through evaporation that would otherwise happen when storing a non-airtight barrel for years at a time. The humidity of a wine cave should be at least 75 percent — more than that if there are white wines being stored.
Winemakers have used natural caves and limestone quarries for centuries. With the rise of the wine industry in California in the nineteenth century, winemakers couldn’t always find caves in the mountains of Napa Valley. So they made their own, hiring the same workers and explosives experts that worked at the silver mines in Nevada and built tunnels through the mountains to create convenient places for wine storage.
Surprisingly good-looking caves
The nice thing about building your own cave is that it can look however you like. Wine caves are often carved, decorated and artistically lit to suit their owners’ imaginations and have their own water features that draw from underground rivers. Some of them are set up to be good places to have dinner.
During cave tours, you can taste the latest wines and the library wines from previous years stored in the cave. Bring a coat — it’ll be cool in there.
Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn how they make and store the wine. One of the wines in its library is the dark ruby red 2009 Éloge. A fine blend from an excellent growing year, the ’09 Éloge has an aroma with a core of concentrated dark fruits, with crème de cassis, cedar, cigar box, violets, spice, toast and streaks of red currants. Its flavor is similar — deep and full-bodied with concentrated dark fruits, spice and mocha.
Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. Join their wine club today.
St. Helena, “Napa Valley’s main street,” has been known for its St. Helena wineries since its founding, and today is one of the centers of the world wine industry. Whole winery tours are devoted to this town, and a number of wine clubs are centered here that are well worth trying.
Sixteen different American Viticulture Areas are recognized within Napa Valley. The St. Helena AVA is at the northern end of the valley floor, where it gets less cool air and ocean fog than the southern parts of the valley. Its soil includes gravel-clay soils in the southwest and rich volcanic soils in the northeast. Deep, ripe Cabernet Sauvignons, Cabernet Francs and Merlots with jammy flavors and blackcurrant aromas all come from St. Helena wineries.
If you’re planning to visit St. Helena, you don’t need to confine yourself to the town limits — get out into the countryside and explore the little rises and dips in the terrain that create the multitude of microclimates for which this part of California is famous. You can find a lot within a five to ten mile radius of St. Helena.
A winery near St. Helena
Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. Just a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. The microclimate of Conn Valley is cooler than many other parts of the valley, but warmer than Howell Mountain itself, so the grapes they grow are closer to mountain grapes than the grapes in the St. Helena AVA proper. At the vineyard, you have the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave.
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces an Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2012 Estate Reserve might be their best ever. The growing season of this dark purple and red blend was perfect for both yield and quality, producing the perfect balance of flavor and sugar in the grapes. The aroma has many notes, including cloves, mocha, licorice and the ripest red raspberries. The palate is deeply layered with dark red fruit, spices, new leather and licorice, and a smooth, rich, silky mouthfeel. There are hints of white pepper and orange peel in the finish.
The winery has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club. This will get you a discount on many of their finest wines, including a $10 discount on the ’13 Estate Reserve. Join their wine club and try a bottle today.
Many wine clubs hold barrel tastings, which are an opportunity for wine connoisseurs to try the most recent vintages and guess how good the wine will be in years to come. At these tastings, you can also meet connoisseurs and learn from them. You may also be able to buy wine futures at a discount, if you find something that’s likely to be particularly good in a few years.
How wine is born and grows older
It may help to understand the process of wine fermentation and aging. The fermentation itself takes place during the first two to three weeks, and happens in two stages. First, while the vessel is open to the air, the yeast multiplies as it converts sugar to alcohol. This takes three to five days. In the second stage, which takes one to two weeks, the vessel is closed and the yeast devotes itself to turning sugar into alcohol. All this should take place at a temperature of between 70 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, to allow the yeast to thrive while preventing unpleasant byproducts. The perfect temperature is 72 degrees.
Once it’s inside the barrel, the aging begins. 90 percent of wine is made to be drunk within a year, but those left in the barrel for a few years include many of the best wines. In the case of red wine, the wine turns a browner, more brick-like color with age. The aroma becomes less fresh and fruity. It loses its acidity, and the bitterness of phenols is replaced by a more mellow flavor. The oak of the barrels secretes tannins and vanillin into the wine, adding to its complexity.
Barrel tastings near St. Helena
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds barrel tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled. Tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase.
Try a recent Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, a complex wine grown from numerous clonal varieties of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape. An older Estate Reserve Cab, 2007, was formed by a cold and dry early and middle year, with a sudden burst of heat around Labor Day that helped the grapes produce more sugars. The result was a dark ruby red wine with an aroma of dark fruit, dark chocolate, Bing cherries, roses, licorice and cigar box. Its flavor is balanced between fruit, oak and acid, with sweet tannins and hints of cedar, coffee and chocolate cake.
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide.
About this time, a tradition well over a century old is being continued, as vineyard workers harvest the grapes that Napa Valley wines are made from. The first wine grapes in Napa Valley were Mission grapes, descended from Spanish grapes and brought to California by missionaries. They were tough grapes that could adapt to almost anywhere, but didn’t necessarily make the best wines. Better varieties of wine grape were brought to California in the nineteenth century, including the Cabernet Sauvignon grape which is as resilient as the Mission grape and has the quality of the finest French wine cultivars.
Napa Valley wines come in many sorts — red, white, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay — depending on where they were planted and from what stock. Every part of the valley has a subtly different terroir, a different combination of sunshine, rain, mist, soil moisture and soil composition. To make a great Napa Valley wine, the vineyard tries to find the right variety of grape for each terroir.
If you’re planning to visit a small winery in Napa Valley, you should find out if it has a wine club. Joining this club will get you savings on tasting fees and the wines you buy from the club. Many wine clubs offer different selections of wines, as well as collections of wine — the highest-rated wines, or all Napa Valley wines, or all one particular kind of wine.
Napa Valley wines from a winery near St. Helena
Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. Just a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, these vineyards produce world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. Instead of a busy tasting room, the vineyard offers you the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave. Wine Merchants Gourmet includes them in one of its Middle Valley tours.
An example of what this winery has to offer is the Éloge, an exclusive blend. The 2008 Éloge comes from a year notable for its extremes — storms followed by a prolonged frost in spring, a cool spring and early summer followed by sweltering heat later. All this led to a vintage of low yield but high quality — a dark ruby red wine with extraordinary aroms of black cherries, chocolate, cedar, cassis, leather, mocha and crushed rocks with a distant hint of smoked meats. It tastes of chocolate-dipped black cherries, currants and plums with toffee, mocha and spices.
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club, giving you discounts on many of their finest wines.
Soon, the harvests will be over in the best vineyards in Napa. Some of them harvest using machines, while others harvest the grapes by hand. Harvesting the grapes by hand means fewer of them are bruised or damaged in the process. The best vineyards of Napa Valley match different varieties of grape to their particular soil and microclimate to create wines of unique and exquisite aroma and flavor and rich, smooth mouthfeel. There are about 400 wineries in the valley.
In the coolest parts of the valley, the best vineyards of Napa grow Pinot Noir and Merlot grapes. The hardy Cabernet Sauvignon grapes can grow in any part of the valley, but they yield better wines in some areas than in others. The winemakers taste the grapes every now and then during the ripening process in order to make sure they harvest them at precisely the right time, when the grapes are ripe-tasting but don’t contain too much sugar.
The best vineyards in Napa have tasting rooms where the best of their wines can be tried for a fee, paired with the finest dishes. Bigger vineyards schedule tours, and you can usually tour the smaller ones by appointment. There you have a much better chance of talking to the owner, or at least someone who does some of the work there. The best time to visit is this time of year or in the spring.
One of the best vineyards in Napa is near St. Helena
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, is one of the best vineyards in the Napa Valley area. Their Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux blends are widely regarded as among the best wines in Napa. Their Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and non-malolactic Chardonnay of this vineyard also have a cult following. It holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the process of making and storing the wine. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase.
Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices, including the 2011 Èloge. 2011 was a wet and cool year, with a lower yield but particularly high quality. The Èloge shows this quality with its aroma and taste of dark fruit, licorice, spice, cigar box, coffee and hints of violet perfume. This will be a wine to cherish for thirty years or more. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. Join their wine club and order a bottle today.
