Today is our last tasting day. This day was a bit wide open
when we started the trip, but it’s has filled out nicely along the way. Kris
decided that he wanted to revisit Stags’ Leap Winery (Not, as I always do, to be
confused with Stag’s Leap Cellars, which is right down the road and also does
tasty stuff.) On the strength of a reco from one of our hosts, I also booked us
into Acme Fine Wines for a tasting. And to round out the day? Malk (Situated
between the Stags Leaps.)
We were out a couple of years ago and visited Stags’ Leap
and ended up with an accidental tasting. Visa Concierge was supposed to be
making appointments for us, and by and large did pretty well. However, they
said we had a confirmed appointment at Stags’ Leap and…not so much. We roll up
at the grand old house only to learn that they do tours by appointment and the
last tour was just wrapping up. I’m not sure if it was my hang dog look or Kris’
glower, but the host offered that if we didn’t mind missing out on the tour, he’d
pull some bottles and we’d sit out on the veranda and taste. Turns out he
pulled a bunch of stuff that wasn’t normally ‘on the list’ and that he knew a
chef who had just left Cincinnati that Kris and I adored. So, we had a lovely
tasting/chat even though we were unwelcomed guests.
On the strength of that visit, Kris suggested that we go
again and perhaps join their club because their wines are tasty. Long story
short, we discovered a couple of things. 1) Learning about a property and the
wine maker is fine, but it’s much better coming from the property owner or
winemaker themselves. 2) having out with 10 of your new besties while listening
to said pearls of wisdom, not so great. 3) Stags’ Leap does a number of bottles
we’re less than fond of. In the end, we were saved from joining the club (They
can’t ship to Ohio) and were able to pick up more bottles of the wines we loved
on the last trip but weren’t able to taste on this visit.
Having left St. Helena for the Stags Leap district, we now
had to turn around and head back to St. Helena for the Acme Fine Wines. We’re
greeted in the parking lot by a very excited golden doodle (Side note, be
prepared for dogs in wine country. Lots and lots of dogs. Especially when you’re
visiting the smaller places.) We headed into a cute little wine shop to find a
lovely tasting with eight wines and a beautiful sausage and nibbles board set
up. The sausages were all from the business next door, PanoVino, and were a
lovely accompaniment to the wines we tried. Lauren explained that Acme was
started on a principle of finding winemakers who may or may not already be
known and getting first releases or special projects from them. We liked
everything we tasted here and we joined one of their wine clubs (which is
actually a rarity for us. We’re currently only a member of one, and Kris had
been looking to cancel before we came on this trip.)
Next we headed...all the way back to the Stags Leap district
to Malk. This cute little parcel is tucked away in a corner of the district on
a tiny little parcel of land. Conducted on the porch of the owner’s home, we
had a nice view of both their vines as well as their surrounding neighbors.
So, we’ve picked up a few bottles on this trip. In the past,
we’ve purchased case shippers from a local supply company to carry the wine
home with us. In Italy we couldn’t find the same type of boxes and we ended
buying a Wine Case. Well, we liked that set-up, we decided to get 2 more to
bring stuff back (Full disclosure, we’re still bring a ‘regular’ case shipper
back too, but 4 of these cases seemed too much. I can’t explain it.) It turns
out that Stag’s Leap Cellars sell the Wine Case (complete with their
<sarcasm> super discrete logo </s> printed AAAAAALLLL over the
front of the bag. The good news is that we tasted their wine, had a nice chat
with our hostess and got the bags for less than the manufacturer was selling
them. Who says advertising doesn’t pay!
For dinner tonight, Kris got us into Morimoto in Napa. We’ve
been here on previous trips and really loved it, but I think this is our last
visit. Now, to be fair they were slammed with BottleRock crowds and I find ‘we’re
busier than expected’ to be a crummy excuse at a place that tightly controls
their reservations. Our service was crummy from start to finish; courses either
came out on top of each other or we were ignored for more 20 minutes with no
explanation or apology. When I asked our waiter what happened he gave me a
snooty ‘Well, we ARE busy.’ All of that could be forgiven if the food was top
notch, but several courses were okay at best. The halibut in one dish was so
overcooked, my assumption was that they were trying to kill some pathogen. In
the end, there are too many amazing places to eat in the Valley to waste time
on a ‘name’ that no longer respects their customers.
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