Wine Auction Travels

In April, I travelled to Napa Valley as part of the 2018 Wine Auction lot offered by Paul Leary, President of Blackbird Vineyards and its parent company, Bespoke Collection; Paul has been a consistent supporter of our auction. Blackbird has trained and mentored many young, enthusiastic wine stewards, and they openly embrace visitors.

Our first tasting began at Napa Valley AErena Galleries and Garden. Bespoke Collection operates this art gallery along with their lifestyle services. Surrounded by vintage mid-century leather seating and a record player, we tasted their blend BlackMail Red, and then their high-end labels, including Paramour, Illustration and Contrarian, each highlighting a specific varietal: cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and merlot.  We later met Kathleen Heitz at her new home in downtown St. Helena. Kathleen is a long-time supporter of our wine auction. In 2018, Heitz Cellars was sold, and Carlton McCoy, the Master Sommelier at Aspen’s Little Nell, was named as Heitz Cellars’ President and CEO. They are clearly gearing up for a major revival.

The following day we headed up Spring Mountain to Lokoya winery, overlooking their three mountain vineyard appellations: Diamond Mountain, Howell Mountain and Mount Veeder. Lokoya’s hospitality room floated above the Spring Mountain vineyard and reminded us of a Restoration Hardware showroom on steroids. It includes a beautiful contemporary wine cellar and art, including a piece by Picasso. We tasted their four mountain fruit Cabernet Sauvignons, all powerful and natural, and made by Winemaker Christopher Carpenter.

We then drove to Futo Wines, a boutique winery producing less than 2,000 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon each vintage. Tom Futo hosted our tour and shared his vision to produce wines capturing the purity and depth of fruit. I met Tom at Wine Auction 2018, where he poured wines at the Vintner’s Reception and contributed an auction lot. We tasted two vineyard specific cabernet sauvignons and a third, which was a blend from his various vineyards. They were of the highest quality. After a winding drive up Silverado Mountain, we met owner and winemaker Michael Hirby at his upstart winery Relic Wines. There we tasted multiple varietals, including a chardonnay, two pinot noirs, and a petit syrah.

Greeted by warm sunshine, our last day started at Dakota Shy winery, where we listened to owner Todd Newman’s journey from sommelier at the Michelin-starred restaurant Martini House to winery owner. It is a great American work-hard success story. Our final tasting was at Hourglass, which is situated at the narrowest separation of mountain ranges, in Calistoga, and has beautiful vineyards. Their tasting room was a cave built into the side of the mountain, among the barrels, and they poured us older vintages as well as a new barrel samples. A friendly blond Labrador sat on my lap during the tasting, and then bid us farewell. Paul Leary hosted dinner that evening, and poured his wines, a perfect conclusion to the trip.