Top wines.                                                                         Gargiulo 575 OVX G major    95 pts.

Screaming Eagle 94 pts  

Hoopes Vineyard   93 pts

Dalle Valle    92 pts

Harlan           92 pts

Stanton         92 pts

Detert Cabernet Franc 92 pts

Paradigm Cabernet Sauvignon    92 pts

Other wines I tasted and enjoyed, Tierra Roja, Showket, Nickel and Nickel, “Branding Iron” and Opus One.

The comparative top values of the Oakville tasting - Hoopes, retails for $60.00. Paradigm Cabernet retails for $60.00, Stanton retails for $75.00 and the Detert Cabernet Franc retails for $50.00 if you can find it.

2005 vs 2006. It was fairly close to even as to the number of wines from each vintage and there is no headline here. Some wineries make better wine in 2006 and some made better wine in 2005. The 2006 Ghost Block and  Tierra Roja were presented this year and I preferred the 2005 over the 2006 for both houses, Hoopes and Gargiulo made strides in 2006. The 2005 vintage crop was the largest in Napa Valley history. Many of the wines of the 2005 vintage show good structure but some can be green, a sign of over-cropping.  The 2006 wines are softer, showier, easier to enjoy on release but some are flabby or flat on the mid-palate. I see no trend to make any overall blanket statement about the quality of the two vintages as we compare them. I guess we are forced to try taste all the wines for the purpose of research.

I did not get to all the wines in the room, some I have tasted recently, Cosentino, Oakville East, and some --well I just ran out of time.  It isn’t always possible to taste every wine at every tasting. One of the three stories of the event for me was that I felt like quitting for a few minutes in the middle of the event.  Winemaking has changed, later harvest, riper fruit, bigger wines. It has been happening for a while and some  writers and buyers have made comments about the ever rising amounts of alcohol. Eric Asimov writes that high alcohol wines overwhelm the meal. Sacramento retailer Darrell Corti refuses to carry table wines in excess of 14.5 percent from his store. I understand but there are wines that are high in alcohol but don’t taste alcoholic, Greg Brewer’s wines for example often top 15 or 16 percent but the alcohol is not confrontational to the senses and the wines are fine with food. Higher alcohol doesn't make me get off the bus. I expect it. The days of wines at 12.5% alcohol are gone forever. On this day about an hour and a half into the event  I had to stop tasting wine for about 15 minutes. I had hit a wall of fatigue.... it wasn’t only that my palette was tired of tasting intense wines, but my mind was distracted, the wines were starting to taste very similar to each other.. I had to get off the bus. I wasn’t having much fun at the Oakville Tasting.   (A shocking thing to say I’ll admit) But for a moment it felt a bit like a ZAP tasting in terms of the fatigue because I was just  tasting  one big wine after another. They were intense and concentrated but not more complex or expressive.  I walked away from the Plumpjack table and stood an empty table considered what I was experiencing. Alcohol was part of it, but there was something else. These wines were not similar because they all came from Oakville vineyards, they were similar because they were crafted to get an impressive score  I can’t be surprised that Plumpjack or anyone else wants to make a wine that tastes like Harlan.  As a wine buyer, I expect to have a guest at the restaurant ask for a wine that I think is as good as Harlan or Screaming Eagle but that is less expensive. But as a sommelier I am not loving the evolution of current winemaking where power comes at the expense of grace. I understand and appreciate the goal of creating a wine with intense and concentrated flavors. But that is a  wine-making style that strips away any sense of nuance and terroir. I had two thoughts, First, there isn’t much sense of place in a place named event. and second this is a tough savvy crowd tasting the wines and these other wineries have to compete with Harlan and Screaming Eagle ever year in this room. Not an easy task for these wineries and it’s bound to have an effect on their winemaking efforts; the competitive instinct to win this day and financial rewards of  a high score are strong driving reasons to make bigger wines.  

But of course this is not an Oakville problem, it is a winemaking response to make a wine that wows its way to the top of the tasting panel. Parker, first and foremost. But everyone plays a role. Steve Heimoff reviewed a wine on his blog, gave the wine 94 points and proclaimed that the wine would succeed in the cult market. (The grapes come from Prichard Hill and St. Helena, not Oakville) The label says Cabernet Sauvignon but the wine has  13% Syrah and 10% Petit Verdot. It was presented to me at the restaurant, I tasted it and passed on buying it. I decline to buy any and all overpriced velvet meatloaf wines. Petit Verdot adds color and Syrah adds spice and aroma, but both varietals dilute the Cabernet Sauvignon in big doses, so if someone’s Cabernet Sauvignon needs to be fixed by adding double digit Syrah and Petit Verdot--what can I say but that Cabernet must be pretty broken.

No one is going to take down the Napa Valley Wine is Bottled Poetry sign and replace it with Wine is Bottled Rap Music just because I have had a cranky tasting day in Oakville. I don’t expect anything to change because I am holding my breath, pouting, in the barrel room at Robert Mondavi Winery. Styles change. Maybe the pendulum will swing back toward balance and beauty. I ate some cheese and bread and walked over to the Harlan table.

I don’t know how Bob Levy does it and by the taste of all the wines that are Harlan-wannebes, neither does anyone else in the Napa Valley. For seven of the past nine Oakville tastings Harlan has been in the top two wines in the room. Dalle Valle has been right there. Those wines historically have alternated number one or two in the room. Harlan wines have always shown intensity and concentration, but there is depth and significant varietal character. The fruits are ripe, baked pie fruits, but not dried, not raisiny. If I compare Harlan to other “Big” Napa Valley Cabernets Sauvignons, inevitably those are the two differences, Harlan tastes varietal, and many others taste “over-blended” and it is not harvested so late to taste like raisins. Bob Levy has a talent to push the envelope of without crossing the line. Like an Olympic gymnast, Harlan is muscular but toned. there is a beauty and precision in the wines that leaves me surprised at its success. As impressive as the 2005 wine is to taste, I would advise waiting on the the vintage, drink the 2004 if you have it.

The 2006 Screaming Eagle is a beautiful and complex wine,  It shows superior structure for this vintage with evocative spice notes of black pepper, black licorice and cigar box. If you back to the Jean Phillips / Heidi Barrett years, this is a different Screaming Eagle. a bit more of a Bordeaux style, less fruit driven, more spice and it may have a bit of Petit Verdot in the blend. Tasting Screaming Eagle is hard. I have heard many reports throughout the room in the course of the day that tasters had varied and  very emotional opinions on the Eagle. Unless you are an experienced blind taster. you can not help but taste the wine and think about the price. One question that is always asked of me when this wine is brought up as a topic, “Is the wine worth it?” The best answer is no, not if you are thinking about money when you are tasting the wine. If all you can think about when you are tasting the Eagle is “Is this worth $2000.00?” then you are not experiencing the wine at all. You may as well stick hundred dollar bills in to a paper shredder while you try to focus on tasting the wine.

Of course Screaming Eagle ran out of wine. It would be illogical if they didn’t. After all the mystique is that you can’t get the wine. Interestingly, Plumpjack ran out of wine as well.  I spend a few minutes talking with Ursula Hermacinski about the wine project. She looked at the empty table and borrowed a vase of yellow flowers to grace the center of the table, just in case anyone coming from San Francisco and arrived late to the tasting, at least they could enjoy the bouquet.