Robert Mondavi is perhaps the most revered figure in the modern history of California wines. His passion for high-quality wine, vision for what Napa Valley could offer, skills as a corporate leader and work as an ambassador of California wine around the world all played huge roles in the rise of Napa Valley as one top wine-producing regions of the world. But, revolutionary as Mondavi may have been in some respects, he was very traditional in his belief that food and wine should be served together — creating a harmonious meal and a daily celebration of family, friends and nature’s gifts.

Robert Mondavi and his winery promoted this connection between food and wine in many ways over the years. The winery building, constructed in 1966, includes a private dining room called the Vineyard Room which has been used for a wide range of events related to the combination of food and wine. In 1976, Robert Mondavi Winery initiated a series of classes called the The Great Chefs of Robert Mondavi. The first culinary series offered by an American winery, it gave attendees the opportunity to learn from and cook side-by-side with famous chefs, including Julia Child, Alice Waters, Jacques Pepin, Paul Bocuse and Rick Bayless. Later, Robert Mondavi was a major benefactor of The American Center of Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa.

Nearly 35 years after founding The Great Chefs of Robert Mondavi, the winery continues to be a leader in promoting the culinary aspects of wine and wine country living. You can sign up for lunch in the Vineyard Room or garden, courses in pairing wine with food or special dinners featuring library wines dating back to the 1970’s. For a more hands-on experience, reserve a spot in one of the winery’s “Garden to Table” events.

The Garden to Table experience lasts four hours and includes time in the garden, helping Chef Jeff Mosher prepare a meal using fresh local ingredients, a walk through the vineyard, a brief tour of the winery and then a delicious meal outdoors. The Garden to Table experience costs $150 per person, each of whom also receives a Robert Mondavi Winery apron and a hard-bound book of recipes. Garden to Table will take place every Saturday this August. Attendance is limited and reservations go fast, so sign up soon.

The winery recently gave me a sneak preview of the program. I had a great time and am sure that you’ll enjoy it too. My experience began as I and a handful of other journalists were greeted on the winery’s patio by Margarit Mondavi, Chef Jeff Mosher and refreshing glasses of Robert Mondavi Winery Fumé Blanc.

We spent a few minutes chatting with our hosts and then strolled to the adjacent herb and produce garden. There, Chef Mosher talked about the winery’s commitment to local ingredients and organic gardening. They create their own compost and even have a worm farm. After that, we armed ourselves with bowls and commenced harvesting herbs, lettuce, strawberries and edible flowers for our lunch.

When we’d filled the bowls, we headed into the kitchen. We received a quick orientation in the kitchen, were shown where to put scraps for composting and then began to wash and chip the herbs. Chef Mosher quickly blanched arugula and tarragon. Using the very useful VitaMax, he quickly whipped up a tasty arugula puree to go with our seafood course and sweetened tarragon cream for the strawberries. [It would have never occured to me to use tarragon in whipped cream, but it was excellent.] After we had honed our herb chopping chops and gotten the food prep off to a good start, we were whisked off for a tour of the winery and vineyard with senior wine educator, Inger Shiffler.

The Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard is one of the most storied in Napa Valley and it comes with a great view of the Mayacamas. In the winery proper, substantially renovated as of 2001, you’ll see something unique — 56 mammoth oak fermentation tanks. Specially made to Mondavi’s specifications by Taransaud barrel-makers in Cognac and more porous than stainless steel, the tanks allow red wine to soften through natural micro- oxidation and tannins begin resolving during maceration and fermentation. This allows the wines to be ageworthy, yet still approachable when young. Unlike old fashioned wood fermentation tanks though, these are each equipped with a precise, high-tech cooling apparatus to allow the winemakers to very carefully control fermentation temperatures.

When our tour was complete, we headed back to the patio for lunch. There was just enough time to dive into a glass of Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc To Kalon Vineyard I-Block before the first course was served. It was a delicious lunch paired with delicious wines. I’ve listed our menu below. Of course, yours will be different due to the focus on fresh, local, seasonal ingredients.

The Menu

Seared Alaskan Halibut
Wild Arugula Purée, Garden Herb Salad
Meyer Lemon Beurre Blanc

2006 Robert Mondavi Winery Napa Valley Chardonnay Reserve
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Pan-Roasted Niman Ranch Ribeye
Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Green Garlic
King Trumpet Mushrooms, Baby Carrots, Broccoli Rabe
Bordelaise Sauce

2006 Robert Mondavi Winery Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve
~~~~~~~~~~~

Strawberry Shortcake Garden Fraise Des Bois
Garden Tarragon Cream
Strawberry Balasamic Sorbet

2009 Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Moscato D’Oro

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When Grand Prix motorcycle racers crash and go sliding down the track on their back, they have to be very careful when standing up. Their brain has become accustomed to the high speeds of racing and can trick them into believing that they have stopped moving while they are still sliding at 25 mph. If they tried to stand up at that speed, their boots could catch on the ground flipping them upright and then down, face first, into the pavement very hard. That would be a very painful lesson in the importance of a sound frame of reference.

Tasting wine is a low-speed activity and, as long as one doesn’t overindulge, risk of injury is extremely low. However, having a good and extensive frame of reference is still vital. There is great diversity in California’s grape varieties, terroir and winemaking styles. On the other hand, any Sauvignon Blanc wine from Napa Valley you might try is probably more similar to one from another quality growing area in California than it is to one from Marlborough or Sancerre. I make a concerted effort to taste a wide variety of wines from other parts of the world because those wines provide important points of reference for evaluating the qualities and value propositions for the wines of California. It is also rewarding from a personal standpoint because there are so many great and interesting wines made in other parts of the world.

My wife and I did this just the other night. A great time was had by all and we tasted a lot of excellent wines. In preparing the menu, we didn’t obsess over wine pairings either. We just put out a lot of tasty, hearty food and opened wines that would stand up for themselves. It worked out just fine.

Nothing says “welcome” like sparkling wine, so we greeted our guests with Champagne:
NV Gosset Brut Excellence (12% alc.)
Inexpensive for good Champagne at just $30, the Gosset is refreshingly crisp because it doesn’t go through malolactic fermentation. The freshness makes it an excellent palate cleanser and appropriate for a warm summer evening. It has enough depth of flavor to go well with lightly savory foods.

NV Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé (12% alc.)
Rosé Champagnes are more expensive than their pale counterparts and the Billecart-Salmon, which is among my favorites, sells for around $70. The color is a very pretty salmon pink and the body and flavors are on the light side for rosés, gently crisp rather than creamy. It’s nice to sip its own but still has the heft to go with hors d’oeuvres. It’s excellent with mousse made from salmon or foie gras.

With hors d'oeuvres:
2000 Voyager Estate Semillon, Margaret River Australia (14% alc.)
This is a wine I got at the winery and hand-carried back from Australia. It was less than $20 Australian at release, probably about $12 U.S. From one of the cooler regions in Australia, there’s always a fair amount of green on the nose and palate of this wine. But it’s an interesting and attractive green. When young, it’s grassy and tropically green. After ten years in my cool cellar it is still drinking very well. Some of the freshest fruit had subsided and an aroma of pine resin had emerged. This isn’t a shy wine and worked very well with the hummus, babaganoush, toasted pita and olives we had laid out for pre-dinner snacks, which is exactly why I’d opened it.

2005 Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc, Graves (13.5% alc.)
A Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc blend with evident yet not excessive oak treatment, this wine is drinking great right now and evolves quickly in the glass. To start, oak-derived flavors and matchstick were prevalent, but lovely white peach soon emerged. It was an interesting contrast to the Voyager Semillon which preceded it. People, such as myself, who complain about the price of California Sauvignon Blanc blends when they get over $30 or so should take note that this wine, a respected Bordeaux Blanc, goes for around $80.

This is a photo of the vineyard at Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte I took from my balcony when I stayed there a couple of years ago.

2000 Remoissenet Pére & Fils Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes (14% alc.)
This was brought by a friend to whom we were all grateful; it’s an excellent wine. A white Burgundy with generous oak treatment, it had a lot of the flavors you’d expect from a California Chardonnay. It stopped well short of too thick, too oaky, too sweet or too anything though and wore the flavors like a silk gown. It was fleshy, but the richness was kept in shape by mouthwatering fruit. There was no sign of oxidation (which is sometimes an issue with white Burgundy of that period) and it seems like it still has some good years ahead of it.

For the main courses:
2003 Staglin Family Vineyard Sangiovese “Stagliano” Estate Vineyard Rutherford, Napa Valley (14.8% alc.)
Well, I couldn’t avoid California entirely! I pulled this one out of the cellar because I thought it might go well with our dinner. One of the side dishes was a smoky tasting combination of cooked tomato and grilled eggplant. Sangiovese usually pairs well with rich tomato dishes and I didn’t have any Italian Sangiovese of a proper age. Perhaps that was fortunate, because everybody loved this wine. Some folks might have been concerned that, at seven years old, this wine would be past its prime. On the contrary, it was still extremely fresh with gorgeous plum, red fruit and a rich, silky mouthfeel. It went very well with both the tomato dish and the garlic- and dill-marinated, grilled leg of lamb. And it didn’t overwhelm the grilled chicken breast either.

1999 Veritas Winery Shiraz Mourvedre “Pressings, Binder’s Bull’s Blood” Barossa Valley, Australia (14% alc.)
This wine was a nice counterpoint to the Staglin. Whereas the Sangiovese was all about silky fruit, the Veritas was earth, leather and spiced meat. As the wine sat in our glasses fruit, including dried plum, emerged. It was also yet another good example of Shiraz from Australia that isn’t jammy and over-oaked. There have been loads of really good wines made there, and have been for decades, but they’ve been overshadowed in the public’s perception by the huge volume of cheap, sweet wines and a few low-volume but high-profile expensive wines that focus on maximum ripeness and extraction at the price of super high alcohol. Don’t throw out the baby with the Kool-Aid!

1996 Chateau Montrose, St. Estephe, Bordeaux (12.5% alc.)
I had a quartet of this wine and wanted to open one as they are just now supposed to be entering their prime drinking window. According to Robert Parker, that window should extend for at least 15 years, so I’ll leave the rest in the cellar and not even think of opening one until the next World Cup, or perhaps the one after that. [It’s totally drinkable now, I’d just like to see how it changes.] It is a very good wine that probably would have shown even more complexity given more than the quick splash in a decanter that I gave it. Aromas and flavors of earthy, smoky black plum and currant fruit were matched with powdery tannins that are fairly well integrated at this point. In one of his notes on this wine, Parker says that it’s 72% Cabernet Sauvignon but, due to the ripeness of that fruit, tastes as if the wine includes a lot more Merlot than it does. We hadn’t seen that note prior to the tasting and we all did, in fact, peg it as mostly Merlot.

1993 Joseph Swan Vineyards Pinot Noir Steiner Vineyard, Sonoma Mountain, Sonoma County (12.1% alc)
Note the low alcohol! This wine was a stunner. The color was ruby with pink overtones and it was a bit cloudy. I suspect that it is unfiltered. There were loads of juicy strawberry on the nose and palate and enough other things going on to make it pretty interesting. You’d need a lot of willpower to swirl and sniff it over an extended period of time though. It just tastes too darned good and disappeared in a hurry. I’m really glad I’ve got another bottle or two in the cellar.

For dessert:
1969 Baixas D’Agly Rivesaltes Vin Doux Naturel (17% alc.)
Another wine brought by a friend, this was dangerously good. A dessert wine that could have been made from any of about half-a-dozen different grapes but probably includes quite a bit of Grenache Noir, it tastes great and is far too easy to quaff for a wine with this much alcohol. It had a red-orange color and smells and tastes similar to Australian Rutherglen Tokay, though the Rivesaltes is much more restrained. I got stewed cherry, raisin, wood, cold tea and very complex spice. Though the wine is of the 1969 vintage, it will have been recently bottled, the wine quite possibly having been stored in big (20 gallon or more) glass jugs for decades. High sugar, alcohol and acidity mean that it will last for decades even now that it’s in bottle. But why wait? [I can't find a good link for this winery, but here's the wine at J.J. Buckley.]

NV R.L. Buller Rutherglen Tokay (18% alc.)
Since someone had mentioned that the Rivesaltes reminded them of Rutherglen Tokay, I just had to pull out one of those. The similarity is definitely there — especially the cold tea — though, as I mentioned above, the Rutherglen Tokay is much more concentrated. I also get a lot of sweet, stewed rhubarb and caramel that I didn’t get at all in the Rivesaltes. Rutherglen Tokay has nothing to do with the Tokay, more properly “Tokaji,” of Hungary. The Aussie wine is made with late-harvest Muscadelle grapes that are further dried, fortified early during fermentation to retain sugar levels, and then left to further concentrate in wood barrels for an extended period of time. The final product is a blend of wines from multiple vintages. It has a dark amber appearance with a slightly greenish rim and is almost like syrup. The sweetness of these wines is very, very high though it is prevented from being cloying by high acididty. That said, it’s still not a wine that you drink a lot of at one time or that would disappear as quickly as the Rivesaltes.

NV Yalumba Museum Reserve Muscat (18% alc.)
Of course once we started discussing Rutherglen Tokay, the topic of Rutherglen Muscat came up so I had to open one of those for comparison too. This particular example is from an older selection of vintages than the Buller Tokay and was therefore darker in color — nearly mahogany. While the two wines have similar levels of sugar and alcohol, the flavors and aromas are very different. Rutherglen Muscat is made from Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains, often called Muscat Canelli or Muscat Frontignan in California. This grape is distinctive for the floral and sweet white grape aromas and flavors it gives to wine. These characters give the Rutherglen Muscat what some might consider a feminine bearing while the Rutherglen Tokay is masculine. Of the two specific wines we tried, the Yalumba is definitely the highest quality, though both are quite good (in small doses — they come in 375ml bottles and we have more than half of each left).

It was a fun and tasty dinner with excellent, wide-ranging conversation. Sometimes we even talked about the wine! My favorites from the evening were the non-sparkling French whites, the California reds and the Rivesaltes. I’m looking forward to the next time I need to recalibrate my frame of reference.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it! Icons for popular sharing services are at the right above and also below.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check outour comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved

Enoteca La Storia opens tomorrow in Los Gatos. The new wine bar/wine shop should soon become a favorite hangout for locals and those visiting the area to shop downtown or taste at local wineries. Enoteca is a welcoming place, spacious with a long white marble bar, comfortable stools and a row of tall tables. The decor is elegant but inviting and evocative of Italy.

I attended a small pre-opening gathering last night that served as both a celebration of the opening and a final dry run for the staff. Enoteca was pouring some of their more value-oriented wines and serving up samples of their food. My antipasto platter included tasty mortadella and Barolo-marinated salumi, cut thin on shiny red and chrome slicers that remind me of vintage Italian race cars, an assortment of cheeses, olives, cippolini onions, marinated white beans with capers, mushroom and truffle tapenade, olive oil, rosemary focaccia and sliced baguette. For dessert, they served up cubes of delicious carrot cake made from a recipe of the owner’s mother. Some people may become regulars just for that. The wines were good too, including one Italian red that goes for just $10 a bottle.

The selection of wines is roughly one-third Italian, a bit more than a third domestic (mostly northern California and heavy on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay) and the remainder non-Italian imports. There is a good mix of wines ready to drink today and some that will grow more complex with age. The wine selection is not as extensive as it would be at a large, off-premise-only wine shop. However, a lot of care has been put into the list and the staff can answer questions about any of the bottles. There is also the added benefit that you can take any bottle off the shelf and have it opened at the bar with just a modest corkage fee. Try before you buy is the way to go if you’re thinking of buying several bottles of a wine. Of course, Enoteca will also offer several wines by the glass.

In addition to their on- and off-premise wine sales, Enoteca La Storia offers a number of wine-related services. These include three different wine clubs, wine cellar consultation, wine tastings with producers on hand and wine classes. If you’re purchasing for a big event, volume discounts are also available. They will have an online store, but it's not up and running yet.

Located at 416 N. Santa Cruz Avenue just off of Los Gatos-Saratoga Rd, Enoteca La Storia is less than 5 minutes from the freeway. It’s in a small shopping mall and there is plenty of parking, a bonus in Los Gatos. There is also a side room for private events.

Enoteca La Storia
416 North Santa Cruz Avenue
Los Gatos, California 95030

408-625-7272
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Hours
Mon – Weds: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Thurs: 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM
Fri and Sat: 10:00 AM – 11:00 PM
Sun: 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM

ZAP 2010 is officially rolling. Tonight, the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers kicked things off with an event they call Good Eats and Zinfandel Pairing. It could also have been called Mountains of Food and Plenty of Red Wine. I guarantee that nobody left hungry tonight.