Wine 16.03

I am sorry to say that I probably won't be making many more wine posts... reason?  

I have decided it's more efficient and useful to use an app on my phone to keep track of the - Catch - it allows you have a page of pictures and descriptions, which you can scroll through quickly.  Unfortunately, I don't know how to share it without giving editing access to the people I share with, and I would rather not allow random tampering by members of the infinite void that is the interweb.  I may still do segments about particularly awesome wines... of note recently have been:

Sequoia Grove - best Chardonnay I've had in a while, bought three wines from them, including the Chardonnay, the Rebellious Red (blend), and their Syrah Rose.  

Elyse Winery - we were going to visit them, but a link (on their website) to their Yelp reviews shows a TON of people who were really unhappy by the treatment they got at the winery, i.e. snobbery.  We received their Zinfandel in our last gift wine subscription, and it was extremely good, but I didn't want to risk them treating us like inferiors since we are just a couple grad student-aged wine enthusiasts of moderate monetary means...

On that note I'd like to briefly discuss the following: Snobbery in wine country.  The more I go, the more I seem to get a sense that people think you have to go to a small, unknown winery to get the "true" Napa experience.  Y'know what I've found?  The small wineries, while quaint and more private, are often younger wineries that have changed hands numerous times and were bought in the last 30 years by some rich retiree who had always wanted to run a small winery in wine country.  Prior experience in wine making is extremely variable, as most people spent 50+ years in a different occupation.  People may think the bigger, more crowded wineries that have been established in Napa for 50-100 years or more are "touristy" or have sold out, but they are popular for good reasons: they make their wine accessible and have been able to establish a certain consistency in the quality of their wine that only comes with time and experience.  That's not to say all small wineries aren't worth visiting - some are absolute gems - we visited one owned by a retired physician and their winery produced an affordable and very good Cabernet Saugivnon that is still in the wine cooler waiting for some special occasion.  Maybe it's just the fact that Napa is famous worldwide compared to other wine regions.  Either way, those are my latest thoughts on Napa.