WINE LIVES!
Temperatures, Big Prices Can’t Keep Wine Lovers Away
(THIS NEWSLETTER HAS BEEN 100% WRITTEN BY A HUMAN -- ME)
A scene from the barrel auction at the New Robert Mondavi Winery, ‘26 Auction Napa Valley.
To see the multitudes at two events recently — which included some GenZers — you’d be left to believe that all the sturm and drang that has been swirling around wine for the last two years has been nothing but a bunch of li’l chickens believing the sky has fallen.
Teeming with folks amidst scorching temperatures in Livermore and Oakville attending the Cab Franc-A-Palooza and the barrel tasting at Auction Napa Valley, one couldn’t help but conclude that wine lives!
On the outskirts of Livermore some 35 miles east of San Francisco, the good burghers of the Livermore Valley – in their fourth iteration of all things Cabernet Franc – poured their wines amidst the trying circumstances of drinking red wine in the heat. I’m sorry to report that some of the Livermore Francs edged not too far from boiling but thank goodness they weren’t grilled.
I’ve tasted some of the region’s officially designated red wine in optimal conditions and can write that the appellation seems good to go as its winemakers, in the nascent stages of being able to stake their claim to Cab Franc, are on the right path. About 550 wine lovers got a chance to experience what Livermore Valley has to offer.
As for the decibel-challenging, packed and very warm barrel tasting held this year at the brand new re-imagined and designed Robert Mondavi Winery, you’d think some 1,700 souls had wine in their blood. If not there, then in their happy place and on their radar.
The Napa reds were being poured on the second floor of the three-story barrel room, which has been converted from an actual barrel room to a stainless-steel tank farm. The white-hot blue & silvery gleaming space, about the size of a football field, is where once I had experienced one of the most bizarre and interesting episodes of my wine writing career.
What was once the barrel room, is now the white-hot blue & silvery gleaming tank room at the New Robert Mondavi Winery. Photo by Sandoval
It was here in 1981, right off the floor crowded with oak vessels and in Robert Mondavi’s office where I interviewed the Napa Valley ambassador for the first of many times.
It was at the beginning of my wine journalism career writing a column for a newspaper near Livermore. I had gotten a call from a reader who asked me if I wanted to meet Bob Mondavi. Of course I did.
A jovial but decidedly idiosyncratic fellow picked me up one morning in the parking lot of some big box store in a beat-up car that had papers strewn all over the back. To my astonishment, he drove me to Mondavi’s office where he introduced me to the man himself. I have no idea what was his connection.
After the interview, my reader-driver-liaison was waiting outside the barrel room. He hurried me into his wreck of a car and sped south on Highway 29 past the big “Welcome to Napa Valley” sign.
After a while, he pulled the huffing car to the side of the road, and pulled out a half-bottle filled with red wine. He offered me a swig, pulled on one himself and said, “This is the first wine from Opus One.”
What the hell? I yelped. How and why did you do that?
“While you were in talking to Mr. Mondavi, I found a thief, climbed to the top of a barrel, and got this,” he said with triumphant glee.
It might have been the first wine tasted outside of the Mondavi winery or Opus One, a collaboration between Bob Mondavi and Baron de Rothschild.
But I very much digress. Back to Auction Napa Valley:
While many of the throngs last Friday were inside the Stainless Steel Palace, I spent much of my time tasting some of the cool white wines outside on the labyrinthian grounds.
The hot temps, well up into the 80s, got the best of me. So, I walked into a room for Very Important People, who were sipping some very high-end Napa Valley wines from magnum. Inside the sanctified space, I saw a woman, back to me, who’s apparently expensive dress still carried store tags. Returns anyone?
More interestingly, I went over to talk to Tim Mondavi, who was holding court. Tim, the youngest son of Robert, shook my hand and with a smile, didn’t recognize me at first, because he said, of my white hair and beard. I retorted in kind to the still 75-year-old boyish-looking Mondavi, whose beard is close-cropped, as opposed to mine.
After a while, I asked, What do think of this joint? After all, the do-over of his family’s winery, had opened only a few weeks or so before. When the Robert Mondavi Winery opened in 1966 – the first major winery facility in Napa Valley since the end of Prohibition – Tim was only 15 years old!
“I appreciate the energy they (present owner Constellation) put into it. But they took away the berms, and now you can’t see the vineyard,” he began. “I wish they’d kept them.”
Mondavi was referring to a number of berms or semicircular sloping banks of earth which featured draught tolerant plants. The hillocks were connected by walkways, which had been installed over the cellar. Now they’re gone.
What would Tim’s father have thought of this place that I can’t help but think, he’d hardly recognize?
“He’d be on the positive side,” conjectured Tim. “(But) he would have had the same reaction.”
And a negative reaction?
“He would say you no longer can see the vineyard.”
Tim Mondavi & daughter Carissa being interviewed at a podcast.
With that, Carissa Mondavi, Tim’s daughter joined us. I asked her what she thought of the new winery?
“It’s very pretty … the flowers, but something’s missing,” she told me.
Too corporate? I responded.
To which her father replied, “Yeah. (But) I have nothing against corporations. I like capitalism.”
***
SOME REALLY GOOD WHITE WINES AT AUCTION NAPA VALLEY ‘26
2025 BOYD BIG RANCH SAUVIGNON BLANC $48
This Napa Valley (Oak Knoll District) SB is one of the best of its type I’ve had from the Valley in a long while, in that it’s thoroughly balanced. It’s achieved this state because of the wonderful acidity, which makes it what a Sauvignon Blanc should be.
2021 PAULA KORNELL BLANC de BLANC $75
Apparently just or about to be released, this sparkler is another indication that California has progressed tremendously in this category. No surprise though, because the ever-scrupulous Paula Kornell herself must have learned plenty from her dad Hans when he made California bubbles in the 1950s. The mousse here is vibrant and lasting. The wine tastes and smells of pear and kiwi, backed by excellent acidity and finishes bone dry.
2024 LANG & REED CHENIN BLANC $75
The house that put Cabernet Franc on the California map may be in the forefront of promulgating Chenin in Cali, although this is the eighth vintage for L&R with this varietal; whose time I think is finally here. There are only 20 acres of the variety planted in the Valley; this one is from the aforementioned Oak Knoll District. The wine is lovely with a bit of new oak and with good acidity which makes it great with food. Prediction: There will be or should be more Chenin planted in Napa as the AVA looks to diversify in light of recent downturn developments. And L&R once again, will lead the way.