Category: Wine Review

Art Show & Wine Tasting at Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe

Artisan Events PosterI 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.

Na's Birthday in Napa

Beautiful Hallway Shot at the CastleI made my first visit to the latest "castle" in Napa this past weekend, in honor of my sister Shauna's birthday. Saturday morning Beth and I made the cruise up from the East Bay and into the Valley, meeting up with everyone at my parents' house in Browns Valley. 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 ginormous Italian castle! Daryl Sattui, family patriarch and proprietor of the enormously popular V. Sattui winery destination on 29 just before St. Helena proper, has spent the last 14 years and over US$30 million building an obsessively authentic Italian castle on Diamond Mountain. 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!

Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe

Artisan Wine Lounge and CafeBeth 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, Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe. The lounge sits just off the much busier Locust St in downtown Walnut Creek. The map says Stave Wine Lounge and Cafe, because the business partners that own Artisan, Lena Chu and Kevin Ng, also own Stave, situated in Napa. Lena chooses wines from small and cult California wine producers, as well as those that remind her of her years living in Spain. This is also shown in the great small plates menu that they offer. Beth and I weren't that hungry the night we were there, so we just chose a couple "Small Bites" to nibble on, the Marinated Olives and the Artisan Cheese Plate. We really liked the Manchego cheese, which went quite well with just about every wine we tried that night. The stronger blue cheese that was offered was also outstanding, but we had to leave it towards the end when we had some tastes of the dessert wine.

K&L Wines UGC Bordeaux (2005) Tasting

Union des Grand Crus de BordeauxOn Saturday 01/19/08, I had the outstanding opportunity to attend the latest K&L Wines Bordeaux tasting, fortuitously all from the very well-regarded 2005 vintage. I have to thank Jason & Kim for the chance to attend and big shout out to my friend Spesh (WL) who first notified me of the event. It was held in the hall of the old Federal Reserve Building in San Francisco. I hopped on BART at 2pm and headed out to the first major French tasting that I've ever had the chance to attend. Stepping back a little, I had a bit of confusion when I first heard about the event. I initially saw an email that said it would include all Classified Growths from Bordeaux, which was actually in error. There is an organization of Bordeaux Chateaux separate from the Bordeaux Official Classification of 1855 (Grand Crus Classes en 1855), somewhat misleadingly called Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux. It is made up of both classified and unclassified growths of Bordeaux vintners. Regardless of my misinterpretation of which Chateaux would be pouring, I had a brilliant time tasting all of these wines, particularly the ones that I will probably never be able to afford, ever again.

Pops & Son 3rd Annual Wine Trip – Napa

Ehler's Estate - St. HelenaMy father and I started a new annual tradition in 2005, the year that I started at Genentech. While not an obsessive like myself, Pops is a wine-guy (kind of hard not to be while living in Napa). We decided back in '05 that we should start taking a wine-tasting trip every year that I get the week off between Christmas and New Years. The first year we stayed in Glen Ellen and hit much of the Southern region of Sonoma Valley. Last year we stayed in Healdsburg and took care of the Northern regions. This year we decided to make it a little cheaper and just stay at the house and go to the many places in the Napa Valley that we hadn't hit yet. Indeed, we stayed very low-profile on Thursday, just taking a taxi downtown and hitting some of the many tasting rooms that have or are about to open up in the city of Napa. The Napa downtown has (finally) come into its own again over the last 3-4 years, somewhat coinciding with the completion of the Napa Valley Opera House restoration. There are almost no empty storefronts any longer and there is actually some building going on and further restoration work happening in various places. The other part of the resurgence has been the proliferation of tasting rooms. The Napa Valley Register published a list of 17 tasting rooms downtown (15 are currently open already) earlier this year in August (thanks Na!) and we used that list to plan out our day. We heard later that there are supposed to be up to 10 additional tasting rooms that are to open downtown in 2008!
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