Regis Martin - Napa Offline 2006

[Kcwhippet]

As mentioned, we are tightly constrained to the end of July, so we've made our own arrangements to stay in Santa Rosa. We'll be doing Napa on Friday and Monday, with Sonoma Cty on Saturday and Sunday. Over the course of the past 25 - 30 years of living and touring out there, I've found that Napa has increasingly become the place to stay away from on the weekends.

At any rate for those of you opting for the Sep/Oct timeframe, and those planning that event, I'd like to offer some suggestions I just read on another Board regarding wine tours. A lot of what they said were thoughts I'd had, but neglected to voice. First off, the audience here are wine geeks for the most part, not casual wine tourists. Personally, what I want to see are wineries not available to the general public, where I can barrel taste with the winemaker, or someone equally knowledgable of the winery and the wine. I want something the average person won't be able to get on their own. If a "regular" winery with a tasting room is on the schedule, I want a VIP tour. I don't want to be standing three deep with a bunch of people off the street who are there to shoot down as much wine as possible before they race to the next winery down the road to do the same there. Take me out back and line up a vertical the folks out front have never even heard of. On both of the last two offlines, we had opportunities to share lunches at wineries with the owner/winemaker, with their wines. We also had some wonderful dinners with some of the winemakers, as well as face time with them away from their wineries. This is very possible in any wine region, because we've done it, besides the wonderful interactions we had when we were hosted by Gene Pierce in the Finger Lakes and Kathy Kongelbak in WA. We've sat with Doug Wight of Lewelling in St. Helena at his dining room table for over four hours just talking about family, wine, philosophy and just life in general (of course sipping wine, too). So, I want a memorable visit someone off the street isn't going to get. Oh, and even though we may be (wine) geeks and we have a lot of bottles in the cellar, we're not listed in Forbes, so bargain accomodations are a must if we're going to have anything left to buy the great wines we're going be tasting.

Just a few thoughts gleaned from another board and out of the dusty recesses of an aging brain.