I’ve been very busy during my stay here in Napa this week but have tasted a number of tremendous wines I will blog upon my return home. But probably the most interesting event for me was one I have just returned from hosted by Silicon Valley Bank. One of the secrets of the wine business is bankers are very important to keep choppy cash flow bolstered and the winery I am working at is a customer of SVB. Each year they host a wine tasting featuring a bottle from each of their customers in the area. It’s by invitation only and just winery owners, winemakers and other top folks from their customers are let in the door. Somehow I had the good fortune to be on the guest list.

So imagine my delight as I entered, was given a stem and a program with the likes of Screaming Eagle, Stalin Family, Harlan Estate, Silver Oak, Sea Smoke and Rubicon Estate. There were even personal favorites like D-Cubed, Robert Biale, T-Vine Cellars and August Briggs, as well. To say that this was a wine geek’s dream would be an understatement but this was also my first exposure to the inside of the wine business. Very interesting to say the least.

So what about the wine? Although I didn’t keep notes, I will generalize and say that nearly all the “big names” above where disappointing. No, they were not bad wines; in fact most were very good, it’s just that they were not what I expected. At no time did I feel I had a potential 100 point wine on my hands no matter if it was a $1,500+ Cab or $400+ Sauternes (yea, d’Yquem was also there). I enjoyed a few wines more that were many times less expensive with the Andrew Geoffrey Diamond Mt. Cab sticking out at a mere $75 a bottle. I also noticed that most, if not all, the higher priced wines showed a lot of new oak. All in all an interesting tasting with great food topped off with two very fine Sauternes.

What I took away from this event is that great wines are not always correlated with price or reputation. As an example, I tasted the 2003 Ladera Howell Mountain Cabernet earlier in the day which was easily superior to anything tasted this evening. It’s a bargain at “only” $70 a bottle. Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Rieussec are very fine Sauternes but I would most likely not pick them up due to their price (the d’Yquem from ‘86 has an amazing nose while I preferred the flavors of the ‘89 Rieussec). So I guess price does matter here as there seems to be diminishing returns as you go up in price wine quality-wise. Or that’s the way it seemed to me.

Yes, just another day in Napa Valley. Another awaits tomorrow…