The California leg of the trip began with a dinner celebrating my
mother's 80th birthday (because of logistics, we celebrated a day early
and then left Andrew with her on the B-day proper -- thanks, Mom!) at La
Folie in SF. My mother had eaten there 20 years earlier when they were
introducing architectural food presentations to SF (according to her).
On this night, the chef was featuring black truffle on the menu and our
waiter dutifully passed around a sample Tuber (probably 50 g) to entice
us. It worked.

As an aperitif, we had glasses of the 2004 Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc as
the bottles of Champagne on the wine list were outrageously overpriced
mediocrity. This bubbly was OK, if a bit simple in the apple/toast vein.

With this wine, we consumed our two amuse bouches, the second of which
was a softboiled egg with shaved truffle, a truly sublime experience
whose taste lingered on my palate for 15 min or so.

Moving on to the first courses, we ordered a half bottle of the 2005 V.
Girardin Rully blanc Vieilles Vignes, which initially showed a lot of
sulfur on the nose. The sommelier agreed to decant it, and 20 minutes
later it was ready for prime time, with a strong mineral streak, lemons
and no signs of new oak. Everyone at the table loved it, and it went
very well with my goat cheese terrine on salad greens as well as Jean's
trio of fish egg dishes that she proclaimed superb.

We lingered over the Rully as our second courses arrived, in my case a
Dungeness crab "napoleon" on slivers of baked pineapple (great dish) and
in Jean's case an outstanding smoked duck consommé with foie gras ravioli.

With our main courses, almost all of which consisted of a quail and
squab rotí with various savory additives in a truffle sauce (with shaved
truffle on top), we got a bottle of the 2005 Cristom 'Mt. Jefferson
Cuvée' Pinot Noir, which had plenty of acidity, rounded red cherry fruit
and smoke in a very balanced package. It went fabulously with our dishes
and with my mother's venison. I don't expect that this wine will age
much beyond 5 years, but it's very appealing now with a 30 minute
decant. My goal in ordering the wines was to come as close as I could to
$150, which is what my mother had proposed to spend on the wine (the
only way we could get her assent to allowing us to buy her dinner), and
we ended up spending $163 ($16/glass for the Schramsberg; $42 for the
Rully and $57 for the Cristom). The wine list was only so interesting
and quite highly priced, with the Cristom being one of the few decently
priced choices I had. The cooking, on the other hand, was memorable.

The next day we set out for 24 hours in Napa. Our first stop was on Mt.
Veeder at Lagier Meredith. Fortunately for us, the rains of the previous
few days had stopped, permitting us to navigate the drive up their steep
driveway. We were greeted by Steve and Carole and spent the next hour
and a half chatting with them and tasting their one offering, the Lagier
Meredith 2004 Syrah Mt. Veeder, while tasting her home-cured olives and
some almonds. The wine was phenomenal, a lean, minerally, stylish,
restrained Syrah with plenty of depth and focus and a long life ahead of
it. They told us of the recent anointment by Monkton of their '05
(which, interestingly, they weren't pouring), which came as a surprise
and an incentive to get on their mailing list NOW. Both proved to be
very fun and interesting people, too, and Steve managed to figure out
that we knew several people in common -- the guy who had the adjoining
dorm room my freshman year of college is now the head winemaker at
Gallo! Steve mentioned that they will soon be producing several new
wines in the upcoming vintage, including a rosé of Syrah and a Mondeuse
(!!) We also lucked out with the weather, as we had a sparkling clear
day that permitted us to see all the way to the oil refineries of
Hercules to the S and most of the Napa Valley to the NE. Their setting
is gorgeous, with the vineyards directly outside their house on rolling
ridgetop locations. It reminded of nothing so much as some of the Tuscan
wine country that I've seen.

Our next stop was at Corison on Hwy 29 in St. Helena. I usually do my
damnedest to avoid 29, and this visit confirmed why that is: 5-10
minutes waiting to make a left out of the winery back onto 29. Anyway,
the visit started with a pour of the 2004 Corison Gewurztraminer
Anderson Valley, which is sourced from the same fruit that Navarro uses.
The wine showed a bit of varietal character on the nose, along with some
alcohol, but the wine was strangely muted on the palate, showing very
little character of any sort. The man pouring the wines said that they
were trying for a richer version of the grape compared to what Navarro
does, but this wine didn't do much for us. The next wine was the 2004
"Helios" Syrah, also made from purchased grapes. It was a juicy, grapey
Syrah with good acidity and some mineral character. It had the
unenviable position of following the stunning Lagier Meredith Syrah, but
was a decent wine in its own right, if certainly fleshier and less
ageworthy. The stars of the show, however, were the Cabernets here. The
2004 Napa Cabernet was a nostalgic wine, showing classic pencil lead,
cocoa and cassis in a restrained, structured package. The old
observation that smell is closely linked to memory held true he I was
transported back to the early '80s, when I first started tasting top
flight California Cabnernets. This wine reminded me of those
late-'70s/early-'80s Caymus Napa cabs, back when old Charlie Wagner
still made the wine. That was followed by the 2003 Kronos Vineyard
Cabernet, an entirely different bit of memory, with an herbal nose of
dark fruits, rich mouthfeel, good structure and balance. This wine could
have been a young Phelps Insignia. Both wines were outstanding examples
of California Cabernet, and I eat everything I said to FL Jim about them
(thankfully now vanished with the archive).

Our last stop was at Schweiger on Spring Mountain. This was the least
impressive of our visits, but still very enjoyable. Our tasting started
outside, with the 2006 Schweiger Sauvignon Blanc, a Kiwi lookalike with
grapefruit, tropical fruit and acidity -- but why buy a NZ SB in Napa at
150% of the price? The 2006 Chardonnay was more interesting, with good
minerality, only a hint of oak, no ML, but a round, citrussy character.
Then, we moved inside for the 2003 Merlot, with a nose of plums and
pencil lead, good acidity and some chocolate character. I haven't drunk
many CA Merlots in a few decades, so I can't really say much about how
it stacks up vis-a-vis the local competition, but it's a very credible
wine. Their Bordelaise blend is the 2004 Dedication (48% CS/44%
Merlot/3% PV/5% Malbec) The guy pouring the wine, who'd only been on the
job for 4 weeks, couldn't tell me what the winemaker felt that the Petit
Verdot and Malbec added to the blend, so we were left guessing. On the
nose, it was a bit lactic with some chocolate and plums, and was creamy
and soft on the palate, with decent structure. However, we both
preferred the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, which showed pencil lead and
herbs in the nose, with good structure and berry fruit. The tasting
concluded with the Port VI, a "Port" that consisted of fortified late
harvest Cabernet and was marred by a good whack of ethyl acetate in the
nose and proved to be sweet and simple with a bizarre honeyed note
thrown in.

That night, we dined at the Martini House in St. Helena, where we were
graced with one of the most over-the-top waiters I've had in a long time
in California. Nonethless, we had a very good meal starting with their
excellent cream of mushroom soup and continuing (for me) with a
marvelous roasted loin of venison from some chi-chi farm in NY state.
With our meal, got a bottle of the 2004 Luddite Sonoma Coast Syrah , a
friendly puppy of a wine that didn't try to do too much, but still had
plenty of Syrah character and a good deal of N. Rhone funk/Brett. Jean's
duck was a bit overwhelmed by it, but my bambi went fabulously with it.
A whopping 720 cases of it were produced, according to the label.

Back in the Bay Area, I concluded my trip with a visit to Steve Edmunds
in Berkeley. He had graciously invited me to his house to taste his
current releases. Steve proved to be just as nice and as interesting as
I expected and I had a great time chatting with him and tasting his
wines, even though I had to leave quickly to (futilely, as it happened)
pick up some Dungeness crabs for dinner. He first opened his 2006
Edmunds St. John Bone-Jolly Rosé, which proved to every bit of fresh,
fruity and dry as prior reports have indicated. He then opened a
just-bottled blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre from several
different vineyards including the Fenaughty Vineyard in the Sierra
foothills. It's name is the "Old <Something>" but I've forgotten it.
Steve proclaimed it shut down since bottling, but it was still an
impressive wine, showing mostly the Syrah berry character with some
surprisingly soft tannins. I expect that it will change a lot by the
time of its release, but I was ready to buy some on the spot if he'd
been selling.

Mark Lipton

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