Yesterday, the UCLA School of Law held a wine tasting for prominent alumni who had assisted with the school's Law Firm Challenge fund raising project. I was asked to conduct the tasting. The following were my opening and closing remarks.
Opening
I would like to join in thanking all of you for your generous support of the UCLA law school. Exciting things are happening here these days and we are all delighted that prominent alumni like yourselves want to be a part of it.
When Charles Cannon asked me to conduct this tasting, the first person I thought of was my friend Julie Ann Kodmur.
Julie Ann is a top notch PR person based up in Napa Valley and I knew she could put together some great wines for us. With her help, we've assembled nine wines from eight different wineries. Most of these wines are small boutique producers, many of whom sell primarily through mailing lists. We hope you'll be intro ducted tonight to some wineries with whom you might want to develop an ongoing relationship.
We have 4 white wines and 5 reds. Most of the whites are Napa Valley Chardonnays. Most of the reds are Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. All from recent vintages. There are two ringers. One of the Chardonnays is not a Napa wine; it was sourced from a vineyard outside Napa. One of the red wines is a Cabernet Franc rather than a Cabernet Sauvignon. See if you can spot the ringers.
After we have an opportunity for everyone to blind taste the wines, we'll unblind the wines and I'll offer a few thoughts of each.
Finally, let me remind you that even if you're resolutely spitting instead of sipping, you will still absorb alcohol through the tissues of the mouth and by inadvertently swallowing some. So please exercise caution! With that in mind, please have fund tasting and judging.
Closing
I trust everyone's had a chance to sample all the wines by now. Again, I'd like to thank Julie Ann Kodmur for helping us put this event together. I'd also like to thank each of the wineries that so generously supported this event by donating the wines we've been enjoying.
Let's start with the whites. [I should emphasize that the following is not a rank ordering of the wines. It's simply the order in which we tasted them, which had been randomized so as to ensure a blind tasting.]
W1 = 2004 Charles Krug
Carneros Chardonnay, Napa Valley: One of the grand old names in Napa,
this winery has been owned for many years by Peter Mondavi (Robert
Mondavi's brother). In recent years, there has been a real uptick in
the quality of the wines they're producing. This wine is crisp without
being tart. The flavor associations it suggested to me included peach,
pear, and green apple. There's a healthy dash of buttery oak, but this
wine is more about fruit and finesse than wood. 
W2 = 2004 Robert Keenan Winery Chardonnay, Napa Valley, Spring Mountain District: here we shift from cool Carneros to mountain-grown wine. Spring Mountain is just west of St. Helena and is home to a number of famous vineyards. There's an awful lot of great wine coming off that mountain these days. Keenan's model seems to be Chablis rather than California. They avoid secondary malolactic fermentation and ferment about one-fifth of the juice in tank rather than barrel. Even so, it has a soft and round attack on the palate. I pick up red apples, pear, white peach, and a hint of lemon rind. On a personal note, I started drinking Keenan wines back in the 1980s, but had a couple of bum bottles of their Merlot in the late 1980s. I hadn't tried their wine in a long time and am pleased to see that this old friend is making fine wine. I'll be putting them back in my rotation.
W3 = 2004 Borra Chardonnay, Lodi. This was the geographic ringer. My guess is that it also proved the wine on which opinion most widely diverged. Along with the fruit, there's a layer of earthy spices (nutmeg, perhaps?).
W4 = 2003 Smith-Madrone Napa Valley Chardonnay. Tart, crisp citrus and green apples. Like the Kennan, this wine is sourced from a Spring Mountain vineyard. It nicely illustrates the Chablis-like character you can get by dry-farming Chardonnay up on a hillside as opposed to down on the valley floor. It strikes a happy medium between the two extremes of California Chardonnay: Blowsy buttery oaky or steel austerity. I'd serve this wine with shellfish, especially raw oysters, where the crisp tartness would be like a squeeze of lemon.
R1 = 2002 Peacock Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, Spring Mountain District: Another winner from the Spring Mountain AVA. This wine is made by Craig Becker, who also works with the folks at Borra. I think this is one of his most successful wines. I liked the 2001 vintage of this wine quite a lot when I reviewed it for my wine blog, but I think I like the 2002 vintage even better. It offers dense dark fruit flavors, but it is surprisingly accessible for such a young Cabernet. This would be an ideal restaurant wine, as it's round structure makes it very food friendly, while the supple tannins make it easy to like now. Well-balanced and harmonious.
R2 = 2002 Coniglio Cabernet Franc, Napa Valley. Our varietal ringer. Cabernet Franc is closely related to Cabernet Sauvignon (in fact, DNA work shows that Franc is one of Sauvignon's parent varieties). In both Bordeaux and California, however, Franc is usually relegated to a fairly modest role as a blending wine. It usually is said to add aromatic components, while softening the structure of a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated blend. This somewhat unusual 100% varietal bottling, however, shows the same firm structure on sees in many Cabernet Sauvignons. One tell-tale that you're dealing with a Cab Franc, however, is the hint of olives and olive oil. That's a characteristic marker for Franc.
R3 = 2001 Judd?s Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley: This wine includes dollops of Merlot and Cabernet Franc. It's a mixture of grapes from the Finkelsteins' estate vineyard and those from contract growers from several other Napa Valley sites. Unlike a lot of Cabs from the east side of the valley, this wine isn't at all jammy. Instead, it's a well-balanced and graceful mix of black cherries, blackcurrants, mocha, earthy spices (nutmegs and cloves, perhaps?), and smoky/toasty oak. The supple tannins make it easy to drink now, but there's enough structure to support several years in the cellar.
R4 = 2001 Pina Napa Valley Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Grown. A limited production wine sourced from Howell Mountain grapes and very reasonably priced at around $50. Earth, cigar box, dark berrries, mocha java, and sage. Lots of toasty new oak. Very drinkable now, especially if given a double decanting, but the firm structure suggests laying a few bottles down for the usual 8-15 year aging of quality California Cabernet. I liked it a lot when I reviewed it in June 2005.
R5 = 2001 Smith-Madrone Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. The very firm structure is not surprising, given that this is another mountain-grown dry-farmed wine. This wine needs some time in bottle to soften up, but it is very promising. In fact, I've laid down the better part of a case of it, which I plan to leave alone until at least 2009. Blackberry and currant fruit flavors are buttressed with earthier notes of chocolate, mocha java, anise, and chocolate covered black cherries.
