Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Art imitates wine.



I thought it would be fun to post some art for a change. Very expensive and beautiful winery art. 

During the MW Seminar, the Napa Valley Vintners Assoc. sponsored several dinners at several different wineries on the same night. I was lucky enough to get to go to Hall, which we carried at aoc in the past, but I knew little about the winery. 

Katherine Hall, the proprietor, was the US Ambassador to Austria. She and her husband, Craig, are both great philanthropists and very successful business people. They must of had a little cash lying around when they decided to build this place. Lots of money clearly helps when you're founding a Luxury brand in Napa of this stature, I can't imagine there is huge return on investment when you're making small amounts of premium Cabernet. This winery is truly a piece of art. The table we sat at for dinner is just off the barrel room - 2 stories underground. (No cell service by the way.) The root structure of a very old vine with thousands of lights and crystals illuminated the room. It was really impressive. 

The truth is I expected that the wines would just be ok, assuming that way more time and thought was put into making the winery space magnificent and the wines good enough to get by. But I thought the wine they served, Kathryne Hall Cabernet, was so well balanced, concentrated black fruits, fantastic round rich mouthfeel and moderate alcohol (well, it tasted moderate anyway - not sure what the abv actually is - I was tired and didn't look - ya'll know how I get lazy sometimes). I was really impressed. Plus I sat next to Cathy Corison, who happens to be a really cool person, and her wines don't exactly suck either. I love her elegant, focused style. What I like about both wines is that though they are made in totally different styles, neither are bombastic or have that Napa vanilla oak bomb thing. Just really great wines. It was good company to be in!

Anyway, it was fun to find wines from Napa that were made in a more subdued style that fits me a lot better than many cult cabs. 



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Amy- May I quote you?
Cheers, Cathy

Amy said...

Hi Cathy - sure quote away!!!! I had a great time at the dinner - it was great to taste all the wines and I had pretty good company too!!

Amy said...

And just an added note, by "don't exactly suck" I mean they were really great. :)

YHBHS said...

hey like the posting of those lights!!!

david

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful "center piece" I tweeted about you :)

Amy said...

Thanks for the Tweet! I need to get more on top of the "web 2.0" thing.

Andy said...

WOW!!! Amazing lights, Great work. Thanks for sharing.
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