52 Glasses of Wine in One Day!

Today I went to a barrel tasting of wines produced from grapes from Stagecoach Vineyard. Stagecoach Vineyard is the first vineyard I contracted with for grapes. I will be bottling my 2006 Stagecoach Vineyard Syrah in about a month from now, but today’s tasting was of wines from the 2007 vintage. Jan Krupp, the owner of Stagecoach hosted the event. Wineries were asked to submit a barrel sample of the wine they made from last year’s grapes. Today we assembled at Coles Chop House in Napa and tried all the non Cabernet Sauvignon varietals. There were about 40 winemakers present and the wines were broken up into seven flights. In all we tried 52 wines, ranging from Chardonnay and Marsanne all the way through to Merlot, Malbec, Petite Verdot and Syrah. This was the first time I have participated in an event like this and it was pretty cool to have my wine tasted by my peers. I have to admit that I was a little nervous; especially when I found out I would have to stand up in front of the group and talk about how I made my Syrah (mine is second from the right in the above photo). But all went well. My wine tasted good and held up nicely to all the other Syrahs. In fact all the wines were pretty good and by the end of it, my teeth and tongue were stained purple. Stagecoach really is a fantastic vineyard and with the dedication of Jan and his crew, they really do grow outstanding grapes. If you want to find out more about Stagecoach, you can visit their website: www.stagecoachvineyard.com