Wednesday, June 13th
Our appointment for the first winery of the day was at 10am. We picked up the group at the Flamingo at 9:30a to make our way to Imagery Estate Winery in Glen Ellen.
Our host, Ryan, was very good at making us feel welcome.
The winery itself is part of the Benziger Family and both wineries have a unique practice. Artists submit art for bottle labels and, if chosen, are compensated with wine with their label on it. There are more than 300 artists represented; you can see their gallery HERE. Beverly (our HOB artist-in-residence) took an application and plans to submit something. One of the requirements is that the art contain (somewhere) a likeness of the Parthenon:
Many artists did this quite cleverly and I'm sure that Beverly will, too. Can't wait to see "her" wine.
Here's one of my favorite labels:
...and the wine was tasty as well!
The wine was fairly unremarkable (especially compared to our visit to August West yesterday) though Fran joined their wine club (of course)! (Fred successfully suppresses his joy...)
Our next stop was Audelssa Winery also in Glen Ellen. Here's the backstory on how we discovered Audelssa: A couple of months ago, Gael went into our cellar and brought up a bottle of 2007 Audelssa Tephra (a cuvee):
It was delicious. She contacted the winery about a possible visit and they asked how we heard about them since they have virtually no distribution outside of California; we had no real idea. During the conversation Gael mentioned the Porthos Wine Club and Hal Oates -- and that was the connection.
They were sold out of the 07 (of course) but had 08 available and were happy to host a tasting.
Our host was the very lovely Vanessa:
...who did a great job of making us feel at home in their cozy tasting room:
The 08 Tephra was also delicious. Vanessa remembered her talk with Gael and whispered that there were two cases of the 07 left in the library. She offered to make one available -- and at the same prices as the 08. We took her up on it! And others purchased the 08 and other wines there as well. A great visit with a very knowledgable young lady as our guide.
Oh, and Fran joined the wine club (duh!):
Time for lunch so we headed into the city of Sonoma and Roche Winery:
We picked the Roche tasting room because of their nice picnic area (that we planned to take advantage of) shown above:
This composition (below) just jumped out at me as we were having lunch:
Their guy Harry was "in the weeds" so we each bought a glass of wine to have with lunch and dined on sandwiches, fruit and chips that Gael had purchased at Safeway at dawn. Great idea and kept costs down as well.
After the tasting, Harry gave some of us a barrel tasting of their 2009 Winemaker's Blend, their 2011 Syrah and their 2011 Reserve Merlot.
All were pretty darn good, I thought.
Back in the SUVs for a perennial favorite Roessler Cellars just off the square in Sonoma:
The prior owner, Roger Roessler, recently sold the label to a family who is now bringing out wines under their name, Walt Wines:
...But our old friend Scott was still running the tasting room so we had a great time tasting the Walt-equivalent Pinot Noirs.
Consensus: the wines were more favored under the Roessler label. We learned that the Roessler winemaker wasn't part of the deal on the sale to Walt; that explains a lot, I'm thinking.
Scott set us up in the private tasting room with a tasting menu that read "HOB Wine Tour 2012" so that was very classy:
And the wines were fine, just not (in our opinion) up to the Roessler Pinots we'd loved for years.
From Roessler it was off to the Charles Creek tasting room:
The tasting room is on the square in Sonoma so we walked the two blocks to visit Alan.
Alan is another gentlemen who does great credit to the "behind the counter" heroes that make the wine tasting experience so pleasant. We've often said that the person in Alan's role is 50% of the experience.
The tasting room is quite small but we had a private bar in the back where we enjoyed the Charles Creek wines.
A centerpiece of the room is life-size cow made of wine corks. I'm not kidding:
As we left, we encountered these lovely ladies waiting outside:
After an enjoyable tasting (and a visit to a custom leather shop next door - don't ask) we decided to head over to our dinner location, the highly-acclaimed Estate in Sonoma.
Estate is part of "the girl and the fig" restaurant group and was highly touted. We sat outside (which was delightful) but most of us thought the food was sub-par. Only the two who had the Arctic char enjoyed the (fairly expensive) dinner. Bummer. But at least WE looked good:
Back to the Flamingo for the night; another big HOB day tomorrow!
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