Dyer Vineyard is a small estate vineyard and winery in the Diamond Mountain District of the Napa Valley. The estate produces a limited bottling of Cabernet Sauvignon. The vineyard is owned and operated by wine industry veterans, Bill and Dawnine Dyer.
Tobacco Road Cellars is a boutique winery, located in Napa Valley, California. From the very beginning, Tobacco Road Cellars focus has been to consistently deliver ultra premium knock your socks off wine! Cult Cabs!!!
MENDELSON WINES are hand-crafted gems, produced in small lots in Napa, California, from the finest California vineyards.
Charnu Winery is a boutique winery in St. Helena, CA, owned by Bob and Louise Dye. The goal was to create a site that would allow them to market their wine and interact with their customers. The owners' produce Cabernet Sauvignon that is in the rich Napa Valley style yet that is still elegant.
The Hoopes Family Winery and Vineyard has been a labor of love. They were fortunate when selecting land for their new estate in Oakville by purchasing 14 acres that happen to be some of the greatest grape growing territory in Napa Valley.
They first planted the land back in 1991 with the expectation of selling the crop to local wineries. The first mature harvest in 1994 was quite good and the people they sold the grapes to said these were the best grapes they had purchased. Hoopes continued to sell the grapes with the same input each year until 1999 when they decided to produce their own wine, with their own label. The results were better than they could have hoped.
We stopped by Stonehedge at the end of our day. Lois (aka "Red") was AWESOME. We walked in, asking her if it would be OK if our dog came in. We had a great conversation with her and another couple who brought cheese to pair with the wine, while our dog sniffed around, living it up as each person he approached gave him praised and lots of love.
Frank Altamura’s passion for detail is clearly defined by his richly textured, highly collectable wine. Founded in 1985 by Napa Valley natives Frank and Karen Altamura, Altamura Vineyards and Winery is located on a sprawling natural ranch on Wooden Valley Road in Napa Valley where estate grown Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese are meticulously produced. Gorgeous drive up to Wooden Valley but it's really not that far from Napa...10 minutes? Soooo worth it!
Jacalyn and Allen Spence of Spence Vineyards didn’t originally set out to make wine. They were a South Bay couple that often came up to Napa Valley for weekends to relax, eventually buying a beautiful property high atop Howell Mountain in 1996. One day in 1998, at a charity auction for the Howell Mountain Elementary School, they won a winemaking kit that contained everything they needed to make 25 cases of wine. That might be enough for any couple to get hooked on winemaking but it just so happened that their neighbor on Howell Mountain was Randy Dunn – an iconic winemaker in the Napa Valley – who helped them make their first wines.
Fantastic wines, a great and knowledgable tasting team and one of my most favorite settings make Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyards a wonderful and special place. We toured the vineyard in it's total seclusion, silence and peace; tasted in the caves (a must see); and lounged in their upper terrace while finishing off our tasting.
Location:
A delightful tasting facility perched on the hillside that feels spacious and has a great view.
Service:
Knowledgeable and friendly staff, although this is hit and miss. The first gentleman who poured for us was very helpful, but then a brusque lady came along and stole our spit bucket that we were using and gave it to the couple she was attending.
Wines:
We had a $25 flight of 5 wines that came with the flexibility to pick any combination of the wines they were pouring. Miner does not produce estate wines and their grapes are sourced from third party vineyards.
It was fun to compare the difference between the two styles of Chardonnay, one of which (2008 Chardonnay, "Wild Yeast") received more oak aging & malolactic fermentation % than the other (2010 Chardonnay, "Napa Valley").
