The River Crab

Here we were on our first major venture since the new virus from Wuhan changed outings.  I guess that even the cars in the caravan were practicing social distancing, as we didn’t see the other cars as we drove the ten miles or so from the dock of the Huron Lady II in Port Huron to the River Crab in Saint Clair, Michigan.  We were going to try to have dinner in Port Huron like we did the last time, we were there for the boat excursion, but since economic downturn from the mandated lockdown, even though they have been partially relaxed, it reminded me of the old Blue Laws where everything was shut down.  We tried several locations, including one place that took over from another place and they even kept the old place’s phone number. The only place I could think of, was an old stately Inn that was taken over and modernized and it had lost its charm and just became another place to go to.  One of the others in the group, then mentioned the River Crab. 

The River Crab, back in the old days was a Chuck Muer restaurant.  In Detroit there was Joe Muer and then there was all the Chuck Muer locations and some are still in existence and some have been taken over, but most of them still have the quirky charm that set them apart from day one.  You see, none of the restaurants were cookie cutter clones, as some used the charm of an older building and some were brand new structures, and even the menus were all different.  The River Crab was taken over, but they kept the name and they were still the restaurant attached to the Blue Water Inn, that claims that every room has a view of the water and all the boating activity, as well as their own small marina and wharf.  We had to wear a mask to enter the restaurant and each time, if we had to use the facilities, but they accommodated our group with three tables rather adjacent to each other and it worked very well.  I took the seat with my back to the waterfront and let everyone else have the good views.  We arrived a little after three and they had a “Lunch Box” special for those that wanted to take advantage of it on the menu, and my Bride almost had our waitress do a blood oath to guarantee that the tables could take advantage of the specials.  We started off sharing with some of the others an order of Maryland Style Crab Cakes, corn sauté and Mustard Sauce and it was probably the same recipe from day one.   My Bride had the Lunch Ocean Cobb, which was a salad of chilled Lobster, shrimp and Crab “Louie,” bacon, egg, avocado, blue cheese, red onion and a White Balsamic dressing.  I went with one of the “Catches” of the day, and had Sea Scallops with potatoes and asparagus.

I was trying to get something wet for the table that could conceivably work with whatever would be ordered, as the thirst needed to be taken care of before the hunger.  At first, my Bride was against my selection, because the waitress mentioned that it had nice acidity and a soft strawberry nose and finish.  I think that my Bride was having flashbacks to the artificial wines of the late Sixties like “Strawberry Hill,” and I allayed her fears that strawberry was good for this wine.  I had selected a bottle of Lucien Albrecht Cremant d’Alsace Brut Rosé NV.  Outside of Champagne, Cremant d’Alsace is the second largest region for sparkling wine in France and the manufacturers must abide by the rules, just as in Champagne.  The Alsace appellation law requires that only Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Auxerrois plus Chardonnay, which is not otherwise allowed in the region, but because of the acceptance and success in Champagne it is allowed in the Cremant, and by law the grape varietal must be indicated on the label.  This particular bottle was made entirely from Pinot Noir.  As with all Cremant appellations, the Methode Tradittionnelle is used to make the wines.  The wines must spend a minimum of nine months on their lees, to aid in creating a certain accepted level of complexity.  This allows the wine to impart some of the terroir and a better finish to the wine, and the traditional dosage concept is used, as this wine was a Brut, which had a small dosage to keep it dry.  It was a very easy drinking wine and easily paired with our dishes, and the bubbles and the color made the table more festive and the strawberry notes were pure pleasure on that sunny afternoon as we watched the freighters go by. 

Testing the Waters

After how many months of living like hermits, I think everyone is trying to venture out into the world, beyond hunting for toilet paper and hand sanitizers.  After how many Zoom sessions, my Bride and her sisters, except for the Louisville clan decided to go on a boat excursion along with some cousins and a good friend of my Bride’s as well.  We had done this boat excursion before with one of her cousins and her husband, but back in the winter, everyone had wanted to do this trip and they bought a package of tickets and the crowd was getting antsy and this seemed like the perfect way to do something.  The crowd also wanted to go out to eat afterwards and in today’s climate, there was a lot of planning to do. We were off to Port Huron, Michigan which is right across from Sarnia, Ontario, Canada; and we didn’t need our passports, because the boat was not stopping on the Canadian shoreline.  We are blessed in Michigan with the Great Lakes and they are such a large body of water, that you could take all the water from the Great Lakes and cover the entire map of the United States nine feet deep.  It is also one of the busiest waterways in the world and conveys more shipments than the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal combined.

We were all going on the Huron Lady II, which started life as a ferry boat for passengers and whatever else for conveyance to Mackinac Island, when they changed over to hovercrafts which are faster and probably more economical, there were several boats that were up for sale and we ended up on one of them.  We all wanted to be on the upper deck, with the open air, the lower deck had air conditioning, but this was an outdoor adventure.  The excursion boat is rather spartan, the seating is like park benches and they were trying to have everyone do “social distancing” and no one had to go over the rails into the water to accomplish this, though the family was bending the rules.  Even though we were in the fresh air on the upper deck, I did notice that some people were still wearing masks, most of us did not.  I might also add that I noticed that the crew when they were not doing other assigned duties were going around sanitizing the rails and parts of the boat that get touched the most often. The last time we did this trip, the Captain was a female and she was far superior to the male Captain of this trip regarding the narration of the tour, explaining some of the nautical “right of way” etiquettes and pointing out some of the highlights and historical sights.  There were plenty of pleasure crafts as well as the huge vessels that ply the Great Lakes.

On the lower deck or the main deck was a concession stand that was opened up for business once the boat had set sail, I guess that is maritime law.  Halfway through the excursion my throat was getting a wee bit parched and if I didn’t splurge, I wouldn’t have had an article, so I bought a glass of Sutter Home California Chardonnay NV and they had the wines in those handy-dandy individual size bottles that one sees during flights, or did the last time we flew.    The Sutter Home Estate is located in St. Helena, one of the famed cities in Napa Valley, the estate was actually a winery in the 1870’s and continued until the government in their infinite wisdom decided to make decisions for the citizens and we had the great tragic experiment known as Prohibition.  After Prohibition the estate was just basically abandoned until 1948 when the Trinchero family purchased it and began a winery again.   In 1972, the family was experimenting with a Zinfandel wine that ended up white and dry and they called it “White Zinfandel, “and they produced 220 cases.  In 1975, the 1974 production had a problem and it had residual sugar and slight pink cast, and history was created.  The wine was getting popular and was at production of 25,000 cases and eventually this one wine grew to a count of 4.5 million cases.  This was nothing to sneeze at, and while the Chardonnay is probably not produced in that large of numbers, it is a bulk wine that pleases plenty of people.  In fact, in 1994 Wine Spectator gave Bob Trinchero a distinguished service award for “having introduced more Americans to wine on the table than anyone in history.”  I actually remember that issue, and at first, I was shocked, but then I agreed that any wine that is used as an introduction is great, and I have had worst wines over the years.  It is just fun learning some new things that I did not know, but then I also realize that Sutter Home Winery has allowed the Trinchero Family to expand and produce wines at the other end of the spectrum, so all is good.  The good news is that we did not run aground, collide or sink and a good time was had by all.  Then we all got into our cars and we off to our next destination.  We were all making the most of this day out of captivity. 

Vina Robles Rosé

Vina Robles Rosé is the June New World wine from my wine club at Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  At the moment, it is the personal touch that they extend that is keeping them in business during these hard-economic times as wine shops are not considered essential.  They were able to reach out to their customers and do special deliveries and curb-side pickups, as well as the club offerings.  One of the main parts of their business has been curtailed, because they can not have wine tastings, which was a great way for them to maintain their existing business and to grow it, when new customers learned of the feature. 

Vina Robles is the story of Hans Nef from a village outside of Zurich, Switzerland.  From his agricultural background, his interest took him to the southern United States in the early 1990’s.  He had also developed a passion for fine wines and created his own import business.  His appreciation for California wines kept increasing and his desire to make his own wines.  In the mid 1990’s he discovered Paso Robles, and he wanted a winery to be a cross of his European heritage and the heritage that was becoming Paso Robles, with the intent of creating world-class wines.  Nef and an old friend and business associate Hans – R. Michel who became his managing partner planted the first of what would eventually become six vineyards in 1996.  Vina Robles was created and later in 2012 they hired Winemaker Kevin Willenborg.  The hospitality center was opened in 2007, a blend of California Mission-style and European elegance.  In 2013 they opened the Vina Robles Amphitheatre and has been averaging thirty world-class artists each year.   In 2019 they opened up a new state-of-the-art winery, so they have not been idle.

The Vina Robles Vineyards & Winery Rosé Huerhuero Vineyard Paso Robles 2018 was inspired by the Rosé wines of Southern France.  The grounds are very similar and the Huerhuero Vineyard is a hilly terrain that actually spreads into both the El Pomar and Geneseo sub AVA districts of Paso Robles.  The locations are fortunate to get marine air from both the Templeton Gap and the Salinas Valley and the soil is a gravelly calcareous subsoil.  The wine is a blend of sixty-eight percent Syrah, twenty-seven percent Grenache and five percent Viognier.  The harvest of the fruit was over a month to maximize the three different varietals.  The fruit was crushed and put into Stainless Steel vats and then blended just before bottling.  The wine is said to have a nose offering red cherry and pomegranate with hints of peach and rose petals. The wine is described as having red cherry notes and moderate acidity.  It is suggested to pair with pork, chicken and oily fish and rich cheeses.  It should be gone this summer, especially with all the wine we have been drinking at home.

Chateau Juvenal

As I can finally catch up to the Fine Wine Source Wine Club Old World selection for June.  I have been playing catch up with my reporting, as Fine Wine Source was under lockdown for about a hundred days, just like most of us were.  The wine shop was not considered essential, because they don’t sell beer, liquor, potato chips and lottery tickets.  Fine Wine Source has survived so far, by doing special orders and special deliveries to his customers.  He has been running specials and contacting his customers on line.  He has also continued with the Club selections and I am sure that it helps to generate some income for the shop as well.

Chateau Juvenal is a residence formed by a Provencal country house and an old farmhouse completely renovated and is called The Castle.  The estate has five bedrooms and three lodgings with a classified 4-star tourist accommodation rating and also offers a swimming pool, a wellness center and a wine estate as well as producing olive oil in an ancestral method.   In 2001, Bernard and Anne-Marie Forestier bought the Provencal castle in order to restore the vineyard and open up a gite; a gite (so that I will keep your from looking it up, is a specific type of holiday accommodation, a home available for rent and they are usually fully furnished and equipped for self-catering.  Chateau Juvenal is located in Ventoux and until 2009 it was known as Cotes de Ventoux when the appellation was completed for the harvest of 1973. It is in the far southeast of the Southern Rhone and abuts Provence.  It is forty kilometers from Avignon. 

Chateau Juvenal “Les Ribes du Vallat” Ventoux 2017 is so named because the plots are distributed on the hillsides (the “ribes” in Provencal) which border the ditch (the “Vallat” in Provencal) which crosses the domain.  In the spring, painters are known to set up their easels and paint different perspectives of the grounds, hence the artist and his easel on the label.  Bernard and Anne-Marie Forestier teamed up with the Alban family, wine makers for three generations to build the wine cellar and to offer new wines.  They have gone the organic route to create the wines.  The wine is a blend of seventy percent Grenache and thirty percent Syrah from plots located at the foot of the hillside (ribes), on the edge of the ditch (vallat).  The wine is described as having the fruity sweetness of the Grenache, and balanced with the minty, licorice and peppery notes of the Syrah.  It is touted as the perfect wine for anything grilled or later for stews. 

Eight Bottles of Cain Five

Cain Five is the flagship of Cain Vineyard & Winery and rightfully so.  Back in the day, only a few wineries were making blended wines and going after nuances and complexity in California, they were doing there own thing.  I guess you have to look at it from my viewpoint and history.  Fifty years ago, you had the Medoc, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol and some of the wineries there do spectacular jobs, but these were the wines that I first had in my self-taught and self-appointed education of wines.  Considering that I started out making a dollar and a quarter an hour, I ended up with quite a series of wines that I had and I am glad that I saved the labels, because who would have believed it.  The reason that I bring this up, is because, even in my early years of being a clothier, customers would tout me on wines to watch for and Cain Five was one of those recommended.  The first time that I had it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and reminded me of my youth and some of the awesome wines of that era, versus the big, bold jammy wines that I was drinking at that time from California for the most part, the wines that defined Napa Valley. 

I remember booking a reservation for the tasting at Cain, and even back then, it was the only way to do a tasting, along with a tour of the grounds.  We had already been in Napa for a couple of days, by the time we were going to Cain, and we were spoiled, because all the wineries were in close proximity to each other and going from one end of the valley to other, was not that long of a trip.  Then we went to Cain, and back then, we had no GPS devices on our phones, but we had bought an auxiliary GPS that we carried with us a part of our luggage, no to mention that pages of computer print out of maps to the various wineries that we knew we were going to.  Cain defied our logic of thinking that everything was close by, when we got off the main road and start ascending up the mountain side on a rather shaky two-lane country road.  Finally, we saw a sign post up ahead and thought it would be directing us to Cain Winery, how silly of us, it was a sign that said “End of County maintenance of the road” and this questionable two-lane road became a lane and a half, and I am being generous.  It got a bit hairy as we were still going up, with the popping in the ears and we would have to hug the mountain side at a dead stop, because a panel truck would be coming down the road on the cliff side.  We did finally make it to Cain with just moments to spare for our tour and the tasting afterwards.  In 1980 when Jerry and Joyce Cain purchased the property which would become the mountain vineyard, the vineyard was dedicated to Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Fran, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot.   The fruit inspired the name Cain Five and the first vintage was in 1985, the winery was originally “Cain Cellars” and their first crush was in 1982.

We had the good fortune to buy two Cain Five wines from their library and a six pack of a current vintage.  Cain is a mountain winery and they pride themselves that the fruit is hand harvested, so they can actually pick the grapes at the proper individual time, because the vineyards are too steep for machinery.  Spring Mountain District is a lesser known AVA and plenty of the land is forest covered and too steep, and the growing time is different, because of the elevation and the lack of the fog that settles in the valley, and the AVA was only issued in 1993.  The fruit for Cain Five is all from one vineyard, estate grown and estate bottled.  The two older wines that we purchased was Cain Five 2007, and it is a blend of sixty-eight percent Cabernet Sauvignon, sixteen percent Merlot, six percent Malbec, five percent Petit Verdot and five percent Cabernet Franc.  The six pack of Cain Five 2015, which is their Thirtieth Vintage is a blend of fifty-five percent Cabernet Sauvignon, twenty-eight percent Merlot, eleven percent Cabernet Franc, five percent Petit Verdot and one percent Malbec.  The great thing about a six pack or a case is that one can actually follow the maturity of the wine over years.  I can foresee some grand dinners and parties centered around our new and old collection of Cain wines. 

Cain Cuvee Vertical

Cain Cuvee has been one of our favorite wines from the first time we tried it.   When ever we can find it, in a store or even a restaurant, guess what, that is what is chosen.  We affectionately call it “Cain Five Lite” only because it is so affordable in comparison and still delivers quality.  It is always a pleasure for me to watch my Bride when she finds the wine when we are out, there are even times when the whole dinner menu selection is altered, because of this wine.

In 1980, Jerry and Joyce Cain purchase fifty-five-hundred acres, part of the McCormick Ranch on Spring Mountain.  Their vision was to create a mountain vineyard with the intention of emulating the great wines of the Medoc.  The first vintage was in 1985, and in 1986 they were joined by Jim and Nancy Meadlocks, and since the retirement of the Cains, the Meadlocks became sole owners and have continued to follow the original vision.  Five generations of a family grew up on the McCormick Ranch and much of the ranch is still in the family’s hands.  At one time the ranch was three-thousand acres on both sides of Mayacamas Range and was used for sheep ranching, until it became financially unviable in the 1970’s to continue that business.  The homestead is part of the McCormick Sanctuary, through the largesse of the family and has become part of the California State Park System.  In 1991, the vision of the Cains became known as Cain Vineyard & Winery.

While Cain Vineyard & Winery makes Cain Five from the original mountain vineyards and Cain Concept is a similar wine made from vineyards from the Benchland, Cain Cuvee is now a Merlot dominant blend and originally it was made each year as a vintage.   In the cellar, we still have Cain Cuvee 1996 and 1997 that are still Cabernet Sauvignon dominated and label “The serious art of having fun.” Then the wine changed in 1998 still with the traditional label but now it is Cain Cuvee NV8 and then Cain Cuvee NV9, the numerals designate the year of blending, because the wine is a blend of two vintages and while most wine that is listed as NV means Non-Vintage as in Sparkling Wines, Cain uses the two letters preceding the numeral and it is read as “eN-Vy” and these wines are still Cabernet Sauvignon based.  The other wines of this series that I have in the cellar have a new style label and they are Cain Cuvee NV5 and Cain Cuvee NV9 for 2005 and 2009 and now the wines are Merlot based. 

Now onto the new wines that we purchased, a library vertical of three eN-Vy years that we bought a case of, without tasting a drop, just based on our faith of the winemaker and his skill and artistry.   The labels have changed again and are now a diamond shape and the back label now reads “harvested, vinified and blended for freshness, lightness, complexity and balance.” The wines also carry a Napa Valley designation as the fruit can be from their Spring Mountain estate and from their Benchland vineyards.  The labels are also written different.  NV12 Cain Cuvee Napa Valley is a blend of fifty percent Merlot, thirty-two percent Cabernet Sauvignon, ten percent Cabernet Franc, four percent Petit Verdot and four percent Malbec.  NV13 Cain Cuvee Napa Valley is fifty-one percent Merlot, twenty-eight percent Cabernet Sauvignon, nineteen percent Cabernet Franc and two percent Petit Verdot.   NV14 Cain Cuvee Napa Valley is forty-eight percent Merlot, thirty-one percent Cabernet Sauvignon, thirteen percent Cabernet Franc and eight percent Petit Verdot.  As you can see, the wines are not a cookie-cutter assembly, but done through plenty of experimentation to get the best wine from the vintages.  I am sure that we will have offers from friends to offer their expertise on a vertical tasting or just to help get rid of some of the old dust covered bottles. 

Cain Concept

Getting two cases Cain Vineyard & Winery wine, certainly put this house on high alert, and we were almost giddy waiting for the actual moment of delivery.  From the first time that I had the wine, and then later when my Bride and I shared our first bottle, it has been on a hallowed mantel in our thoughts and cellar.  We have had other wines that are lauded by the press and other bloggers, but we keep going back to Cain, when we can find it, which is not often around here.  Maybe it doesn’t have the cachet, and to be truthful, that is fine with me, as it prevents the wine from becoming even dearer than it already is.  There was a pounding on the front door, and I left my spot in my office on the computer to run down to answer the door, I even went so far as to put on a mask, when I opened the door one case was already on the front porch and the driver was already bringing the second case to the porch.  I guess with everything going on, the protocol for signing for the wine has been on hold, maybe because when the driver looked at me, he was pretty sure that I was past the Age of Majority and was probably thinking that the wine was shipped overnight, because who knows how long I would be on this earth to enjoy drinking wine.  Any ways, I did not have to sign and by this time, my Bride had left her work station to open the screen door for me, as I carried the cases into the living room. 

I went to go get a razor knife and started opening up the packages, and they were the best packaged wine shipments we had ever received, and I would venture to say that we have had plenty of cartons arriving at our door.  It was also the first time we had wine sent to us overnight with ice packs enclosed, the Styrofoam bottle holders actually had special slots to hold the ice packs to keep the wine rather temperature regulated.  I thought back to the time that we visited Cain, and I had made reservations for us, right after we had booked our flight and the house that we were renting for the week, overlooking the entire valley.  Initially, there were only a couple of wineries that I made appointments for, while my Bride and Ms. Yoga had the job of booking a dinner reservation at The French Laundry.  There was a lot of logistics for this trip, trying to get everything lined up.  Those were great memories that we still carry around from that trip and Cain was definitely one of the highlights and one of the big hits watching my Bride tallying up all the wine while we were there after the tasting.  I will actually talk more of the winery in the next two installments, because as jaded as I can be, we were both pretty excited. 

The Cain Vineyard is located at the crest of Mayacamas Range that overlooks the Napa Valley and Saint Helena.  The four bottles of Cain Concept “The Benchland” 2007, from their library collection, is from vineyards lower down the mountain side going from Yountville to Oakville to Rutherford to St. Helena and all very special real estate of its own.  This wine is a blend of fifty-seven percent Cabernet Sauvignon, eighteen percent Merlot, thirteen percent Cabernet Franc and twelve percent Petit Verdot.  Cain Concept is handled by the winery the same way as they produce Cain Five (which is the mountain vineyard) and it takes a total of just over three years of production.  There are no notes, but I do know the wine is barreled as I have seen them stacked.  Now, I can look forward to having some of the Cain Concept 1996 as I am sure it is ready to be tried and there is three left of that wine.

Just Being Friendly

In case you never noticed, I like wine, and I like to talk about wine.  I think that I am a rather friendly person, unless I get rubbed the wrong way; and then sometimes it is hard for me to forgive the deed.  As I said, I like talking about wine.  I have been drinking wine since at least 1969 and have only been writing about wine since May 2012.  I am rather slow to accept new fangled concepts, but I did start making notices about this blog on Facebook at the inception of the blog.  Later on, I discovered Twitter and I just started that site mid-stream on my writing.  After continual prodding from friends and colleagues I started on Instagram, where believe it or not, even though it is owned by Facebook there is much less political stuff there and I enjoy seeing the wines that people tout.  I actually began posting my photos as posts on Instagram from my earliest article with a photo, and eventually I will catch up, and all the sites will be in sync.

All that rambling is because I have posted over 2,200 photos and there is a small amount of duplication from over the years of article and there are some photos that I have never posted on Instagram from here.  Through the years I have acquired followers and I have followed other accounts; some are wineries, some are wine bloggers, some are wine drinkers and some have absolutely nothing to do with wine (believe it or not).  I am not sure when Cain Winery and I met on Instagram, but for me, it was love at first post.  I also somewhere along the way began following their “story” posts and they would politely acknowledge my like.  Also, I tried whenever I posted about Cain Winery, I would leave the cryptic @cainwinery or #cainwinery and maybe, because I was kind of a pest, a casual discussion began. 

I am not sure if I ever told the gentleman that handles the Instagram account about how I first discovered Cain Five at a restaurant, before my Bride had become my Bride, but we were an item by then.  My Bride was at shower and I was having dinner with someone I had just met, because the woman he was dating was also attending the shower as well.  I had heard about Cain Five from a customer and I had never encountered it until that evening.  It was one of the best-selling jobs in my entire career, because I was told, why order a California Bordeaux when you can just order the real thing.  I won the argument, fell in love with the wine and truth be told, I think the other gentlemen did as well.  Cain Five is one of the dang wines that don’t belong to the Meritage Society, but was making that type of wine before the society was formed along with some of the other old guard Napa wineries that have unique names instead of Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot on the label. 

Anyways, as I was chatting with my liaison at Cain, he asked me if I was still buying their wine, especially Cain Five.  We had some from our original trip to Cain and we were going to buy a case and we were told as we were placing our order, that we could only buy two bottles, so I was going to buy two and have my Bride buy two, but that was nixed and were told that we could only buy two per couple or household, I understand that she is still there and eventually they put Cain Five on a subscription basis and we were shut out, but we have bought some after market offerings.  My liaison offered that we could buy some if we wanted and my Bride was all excited, especially in these lockdown days when the only wine to be bought is at the grocery stores.  I was telling the young man, about the current holdings of Cain that we still had eleven bottles, but as I am getting ready for a major shift in the cellar, I found three additional bottles of good tidings. 

We are now adding additional wines in all three categories Cain Five, Cain Concept and Cain Cuvée.  There was one year of Cain Concept that we bought, and four sets of verticals of the Cain Cuvée and finally an offering of Cain Five from their library holding and then we bought six of the current Cain Five as well.  My Bride was ecstatic and so am I, and I have to think of the right moment to try opening up some of twenty-year-old wines and the meal will have to be as stellar as the wine. 

Darioush Viognier 2001

The majority of the people that I talk wine with, don’t usually put Darioush Winery and Viognier in the same sentence; most people think of their rich red wines.  For the last hundred days or so,  I have put on my miner’s helmet with the lamp on it, and have gone excavating in the cellar, as I have decided to bring the cellar up to a more recent set of vintages, though there are still some special wines down there and the right occasion will be found and we will be prepared.  My Bride has been above the call of duty, trying out new recipes, as she slowly finds what she has put away in the freezers in anticipation of big family parties and events which were outlawed, at least in our state.  One can always be guaranteed that our dishes will be spicy as we both enjoy food with a tang, and I think that subconsciously our wines have been purchased with our culinary likes in mind. 

We have only been to Napa Valley once, as strange as that sounds, but when we have two children and five grandchildren in Las Vegas, it is hard to get farther west then there, and Darioush Winery was not on the landscape and Silverado Trail was far less dramatic.  The winery was established in 1997 by Darioush Khaledi and is considered one of the places to visit both for its dramatic interpretation of Persian architecture, but also for the consistently high marks that the Signature Series of wines have earned almost immediately.  Darioush Khaledi was born and raised in Iran, and his father made wine as a hobby.  He immigrated to America in the Seventies a founded a successful grocery chain called KV Mart.  While celebrating his Twentieth wedding anniversary, he and his wife visited Napa Valley and discovered California wines, and he decided to buy land and start a winery.  One has to look beyond his regal visitor’s center and tasting rooms to discover that he owns vineyards in the Oak Knoll and Mount Veeder AVAs in Napa Valley.  The vineyards are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz, Chardonnay, Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc.  These are used to produce his many Signature series wine and his blends, as well as his flagship wine Darius II Cabernet Sauvignon.  The wines immediately attracted Robert Parker who has always shown favor for the big and jammy wines that Napa Valley does so well.

The Darioush Winery Viognier Napa Valley 2001 was made before the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley was granted an AVA in 2004.  Oak Knoll has been recognized for having cooler temperatures and a potentially longer growing season, while maintaining the critical acidity of the grapes.  The wine is pure Viognier and they use whole cluster pressing and the juice goes directly to the sixty-gallon French Oak barrels for the primary fermentation.  The wine was then topped and inoculated for malolactic fermentation, and then aged for seven months Sur-lies with minimum handling.  This bottle I had found far from the other white wines, because it is one of the heavier and thicker glass bottles that a lot of winery use to denote all around quality, and the bottle did not fit into my rack structure and was forgotten about and we had probably bought it when it had just been issued, along with some other wines from Darioush Winery.  We did not know what to expect and my Bride was ready to give me the evil eye that we had lost a wine from a great house.  Lo and behold, this wine was still fresh with fruit and the nose was still aromatic with floral fragrances that I just adore about Viognier.  Maybe ten or fifteen years earlier, the wine might have been more vibrant, but there was nothing wrong with this wine for a nineteen-year-old, in fact it was better than some red wines of that age, that I have had over the years.

Magnolia Court Dorrian Cabernet Sauvignon

I am now going to talk about the May New World wine club selection from Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  They like all of the businesses that took it on the chin, because they were not considered essential clawed tooth and nail through the last three months that they were forced to close.  They didn’t take it the easy way, after all they also owned a fine dining establishment in Downtown Detroit that was also closed, so they were looking at no income coming in anywhere.   They created their own business by advertising specials and either creating special curbside pick up of wines or they would personally deliver your wines at a set time.  Who wants to watch a lifetime of work, disappear in three months.  While we were not hurting for wines for the three months, because I actually started being nosy and discovering what is still there, and I am still discovering, we still ordered some wine, plus the monthly wine club selections.  Of course, I and all the regulars miss the impromptu wine tastings courtesy of the Coravin system. 

The New World club selection for May is Magnolia Court Dorrian Cabernet Sauvignon California 2016. The Miller Family Wine Company’s California farming and ranching legacy starts in 1871, when William and Francis Broome moved from England to begin farming in southern Ventura County.  The farming legacy was passed down to William Broome’s granddaughter Elizabeth who married Robert Miller in 1942, and then it became the Miller Family.  In 1973 the family developed a vineyard in the Paso Robles highlands and named it French Camp in honor of the Basque shepherds that once populated the area. There is fourteen-hundred acres of French Camp which supplies the Miller Family with their highest quality fruit. The parent corporation is the Thornhill Company, named for William Broome’s son, and they now are into the fifth generation of family control.  They make four different branded labels and then they also make limited production runs of assorted wines for multiple businesses for their house wines and private labels. 

The Magnolia Court Dorrian is a tribute to the generation of strong woman in the family.  There were no production notes for the wine, even though it is listed as a limited production wine.  The tasting notes for the wine suggest an inviting nose with characteristics of dark fruits like blackberry and plums, with a hint of vanilla.  The wine is also described as fairly light and fresh with decent acidity, though light in structure. I am sure that once we get back into the swing of things for parties, this will be a bottle for us to try as it should be very good with chicken or pork tenderloins.