I made it back over to Artisan Wine Lounge and Café last Saturday with a big group of friends in tow. We were attending the latest event that Lena Chu had lined up at her superb destination venue in downtown Walnut Creek, CA.
The event was a showcase of two artists, Katey Shockey, the artist currently showing at the lounge and Sones Cellars, a family boutique winery from Santa Cruz. Katey has had her work featured in the lounge since Beth and I first visited the relatively new wine spot, which I wrote about here. Since that first visit, Beth, myself and our friends have grown quite attached to the lounge and have been regularly visiting the wine joint. It’s conveniently located near BART, as well as one of the stops on the CC Free Ride bus that runs it way through the downtown shopping districts, starting at Walnut Creek BART.
Last Saturday figured to be a great way to spend an evening trying wine and discovering new art…and indeed it was. For $10 you were allotted tastings of the three wines that Sones Cellars was pouring that night, including a currently unreleased white blend (although when pressed, you were allowed a few more!) and some wonderful hors d’oeuvres created by Lena and her resident chef, Jenny.
A large and stylish crowd turned out for the event, with many that were obviously friends of the featured artist. A wide mix of ages and styles were seen among the patrons, proving that Lean is definitely drawing a great mix of people to hers still young loung. Katey had her art displayed on all four walls in the lounge. Along with multiple painting styles and themes, Katey is also responsible for the innovative logo for Artisan, a red wine glass stain surrounding a lower-case “a.”
Sones was represented by the couple that owns and runs the winery, Michael and Lois Sones. Michael and Lois specialize in two grapes that are rather grand at producing great wines in California, Petite Sirah and Zinfandel. Lena has carried the 2004 Sones Pet ever since I first swung by the place and has been harping on me to try the wine, so I was excited to actually have the chance to not only taste a variety that is a personal favorite, but also to meet and speak with the winemakers!
While I didn’t get much of a chance to speak with Michael or Lois (the event was incredibly well-attended), I did find out that their Pet is a phenomenal intepretation of the varietal, filled with gaminess, deep depths of black and blue fruit and big but round tannins. It was a hit with the natives, along with their quixotic white blend known as La Sirena. The ’07 we tasted has yet to be bottled, but the wine is a tremendous effort that mysteriously acts like two equally complex whites depending on its temperature. Early in the evening I tasted it cold, a few degrees cooler than cellar temperature. I immediately noticed the aromas and flavors of crisp citrus and grass, coming from the Sauv Blanc in the blend. Later in the night, however, the wine had warmed to a few degrees above room temperature and it was completely different, now dominated by the Viognier and Pinot Gris, exhibiting strong aromas of white fruit and flowers followed by a bigger mouthfeel and more of that tropical white fruit on the palate. Fascinating! Lena later informed us that the wine is 43% Viognier, 43% Pinot Gris and only 14% Sauvignon Blanc. At any temperature however, the wine is glorious blend of the three white varieties and is a can’t miss in my book. I ended up buying a bottle of all three wines that Sones brought that night.
Please see my tasting notes on the Sones’ wines below and if you’d like to list them all in your own WineLog or Wish List, they are tagged with “ArtisanWL” and “ArtisanSonesShockey.” Enjoy!
2007 Sones Cellars Monterey County La Sirena
Now…when I say “castle,” I don’t mean some overgrown McMansion built by the latest tech wiz from San Jose, I mean a real and 
At 121,000 square feet, 8 stories and 109 rooms, this painstakingly-designed replica of a Tuscan medieval-era castle, while ostentatious, is so well executed that one cannot come away from visiting the grounds without a sense of awe and inspiration. Most of the stone, artifacts and other materials were imported from Italy, as were many of the artisans that worked on the building. The building is replete with a dungeon and even a torture chamber!
I would have just shrugged it off as one of those things that you encounter at any big “destination winery,” but then I saw the size of the pours. Most pours were barely 2 small swallows, some even smaller. It is very difficult to actually evaluate a wine with such a small volume, particularly when the pourer (nicely, actually) suggested we share and that way can try more wines at once, something Beth and I do fairly often. But we’ll share…what? A taste that’s about a third or a quarter of an ounce?
After tasting some of the wines, I did come away with some good first impressions of their 
We then walked around the grounds some more, at least of the two floors that were accessible without a tour and really enjoyed the facility. The tour prices that we’ve seen ranged from $25-50, so we didn’t tour that day, but I don’t think that I’d take one if it was, indeed, $50, regardless of whether the tasting was included. I did enjoy myself at the Castello and I think it is quite an experience, but I think they need to work on the money-centric ambiance and iron out some of the tasting service kinks before I’d head back over to taste any time soon. While I did find a few wines that I really liked as you can see below, I thought that some of the wines might have been a bit over-priced, especially when compared to those at 
After touring medieval Tuscany, we decided that a picnic lunch was next on the agenda and debated where we might go and eat. We finally decided on heading up to an old favorite up the road, 
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Beth and I had a free Wednesday evening the other week so we decided to head over to one of the newer local wine destinations in the East Bay, 
The ambience of lounge is very kick back, yet with a nice air of a modern, upscale establishment. The converted wine barrel tables give a nice rustic Wine Country feel to the seating area, but the modern metal and marble other surfaces, as well as the slate flooring still add a contemporary feel. You walk in feeling as if you could go home and dress up after work, but you don’t really need to in order to fit in.
The real star of the lounge is the method of tasting…Lena has installed three of my favorite machines on this very Earth…the 
