Ben Tex wrote:I just returned home to Texas from a business trip to northern California. I went out a day early to spend in Napa Valley. It had been a while since I'd made the trip, and it brought back a lot of memories. One especially is how, when doing tastings at various wineries, the "pourer" can make or break the experience. Sadly, this message is often brought home through a negative experience. I went to one "boutique" winery on the Silverado trail, and was disappointed to see how un-welcoming the pourer was, how she made all who were there feel rushed, as if we were intrusions on her time. To me, and I'm sure to many of you, wine is about the experience. I know that had I purchased any, drinking it later would only have brought back the negative feelings. I wonder if wineries realize this, and monitor who they put in those positions. Fortunately, the good experiences outweighed the bad, and the day was a success. I'm curious if others have similar experiences, both good and bad?
Best,
Ben
FWIW, if you're looking for a positive tasting experience, Napa is not a destination that offers great odds of finding it. That's a generalization, of course - there are good experiences to be found in Napa - but wine tasting is so long established as adult tourism there (the "adult Disneyland", I've heard it called) that your chances of finding somebody who's actually involved with the wine are low. The odds rise, of course, if you visit a smaller, by-appointment kind of place.
I more or less gave up wine tasting in Napa twenty years ago or so when I discovered how much more pleasant it can be elsewhere. My observation was that there are places in CA where the wine can be good but the experience awful (Napa) or the vice versa (I found several of those in the Hecker Pass area, near Gilroy, south of the Bay Area). But there are areas where you can taste quality wine
and have the opportunity to talk to someone knowledgable: Sonoma County, Sierra Foothills, Santa Cruz Mountains, Anderson Valley being examples. Like you, everybody from out-of-state gravitates toward Napa if they haven't visited before. But I'd suggest if you visit again that you consult here for suggestions. If it you're visiting the Bay Area and have just one extra day, think Sonoma or Santa Cruz Mountains.