Palmaz

[JonB]

It had been 3 years since a group of friends had a trip to Sonoma County, so we decide to return, this time with spouses.

The first winery we visited was Palmaz. It was a fascinating tour and history lesson. Palmaz is owned by the inventor of the stent, who then focused his passion on making wine. They purchased a 600+ acre estate (in Napa) developed as a vineyard in the 1880s, and fell into disuse during Prohibition. Currently only about 50 acres are under production, mostly to Cabernet Sauvignon, and it is divided into 24 vineyard subsections. The wine making facility is state of the art science, built in a 4 level underground cave system in the side of a mountain. It is designed so there is minimal human touch or intervention, with each vineyard subsection being handled separately from an optical sorting table that chutes into one of below ground 24 stainless steel vats (depending on which subsection is being picked, the vats are mounted on and positioned via a track system along the perimeter of a circular celler. it is a fascining process of sclence and engineering, designed around tannin managment, eliminating unwanted bacteria, minimizing unwanted exposure to oxygen (and thus no pumping), as well as a high micron filtration system. It was fascinating and well worth a tour for this wine geek. The son of the founder gave the tour, and the daughter is the head winemaker. I don't think they need to sell their wines, but they do to a few restaurants as well as a club, and visitors. We tasted the 2011 Chardonnay, which was a pretty, understated and lightly oaked. Very nice. We had the 2008 and 2009 cabernets, as well as their 2009 best barrel cabernet (Gaston). All the wines were more new Bordeaux style...subtle, earth and minerals, not in the typical fruit forward style. I liked them....but generally they are plush and velvety much like the 2009 Bordeaux vintage, but these are not "wow" wines...well-made but stripped of some personality? www.palmazvineyards.com I bought a few of the cabs just to follow their development.

Our next stop was called Napa Valley Reserve, where there was much more focus on the art of wine blended with the science, but the wine was disappointing . More on that in a future post.

[Houndsong]

When I saw the title I thought you were stylin on a Palmer vertical.

Sounds nice.

[Comte Flaneur]

As in Chateau Palmer meets Jay-Zee?

But you never know it could be the next Le Pin, a one in 50 chance perhaps but nice far out of the money call option?