 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Hi, I'm Sherene Tan. Welcome back to the show today. Well, we got some Napa wines here because we are going to talk about our week at Premier Napa Valley. You like it? Oh, it was a lot of fun. So what is Premier Napa Valley? It's an annual auction that happens in February and what they do is producers try to create the best wine they possibly can make one barrel, two barrels, and it gets auctioned off at the end of the week. And during that live auction and online auction as well, all those proceeds go back to the Napa Valley Vintners and for the repromotion of Napa Valley wines. I think this year at the auction they raised over 4 million. It's like 4.14.2 million. Cool thing is there's the auction on Saturday and then all week there's different tasting parties, different open houses that lead up to Premier Napa Valley. So what did we like about it? What did you like about it? I really enjoyed the AVA tasting because when you get to an AVA and you taste like let's say we went to Oakville, you really get to taste through all the wines and from different producers and one AVA. That's when you really get a sense of what the AVA is about. You see the consistency, you see the differences between each wine. It was cool because we attended Spring Mountain AVA tasting, all the runners of Spring Mountain, Oakville and Staggs Leap. There were also random open houses, random dinners. We couldn't attend everything because we were already at the Wine Writers Symposium. Otherwise we would have done everything. Yeah, it's so much fun. What wines did we like? Let's start with the tastings that we did. The AVA tasting, Spring Mountain, Oakville and Staggs Leap. Anything stuck out to you in particular? I think in general some of the Spring Mountain white wines can be quite interesting. The Spring Mountain Vineyards, the Sauvignon Blanc Sauvignon was very good. Do you remember that? That was because I'm not a huge fan of Napa Sauvignon Blanc and that was very delicious. Now Oakville on the other hand, that's an AVA that Shereen was completely engulfed. Do you remember any big names that you liked? Back to Spring Mountain, I also noticed that the red wines sometimes have a little bit of that pureesine note which can work like the green capsicum actually sometimes work in the red wine. Anyhow, yeah, Oakville, I like that it's big, full body, robust. The oak integration is so well done over there generally. Actually yeah, I'm not a single one that's oak-y and it was just a really nice soft small tendons in the wine. There wasn't a single bad wine from Oakville. I remember it's specific. One of our favorite producers is Miani and Friuli Venice Giulia and Shereen looked at me and said, there are many Mianis here. You know, in the Oakville, I was really impressed with B-cellars, Bond, the new Harlan estate was very good. Also, Vine Hill Ranch, I'm sorry, you liked Vine Hill Ranch quite a bit and as much as it get poof poofed on the new vintage of Opus One was very good. Yeah, the Opus One really tastes distinctly different. It had different characters. It was a little bit, it just said different nuances from all the rest of the Oakville wine. I really liked it. And next we move down to Stag's Leap. The Stag's Leap A-V-E tasting. I was a big fan of Odette. I was a big fan of Odette. You love Cliff Lady, right? Correct? Very much, yeah. And it may be quite unfair to make this sort of comparison but I think a good reference is like the wines from there from Stag's Leap is more Italian-esque because it has a certain freshness in the wine. Of course it's much bigger but it has a certain freshness that you don't get in Oakville. For me, Stag's Leap, what I tasted, you distinctly get the herbal, some capsicum, silky notes and it's more like dark tobacco that I smell whereas opposed to in Oakville it was kind of like white sweet so it was like a ripe sweet cedar type deal sweet tobacco. And also distinctly we could tell the difference between the Oakville Tannin and Stag's Leap Tannin. Yeah. This is generalization but all the wines that we tasted Stag's Leap had this like a velvety Tannins whereas Oakville was a little bit more grippy but small and very beautiful Tannins. Yeah and then we moved on to the online auction and actual the online and the live auction tasting and what was cool is right before that we did a perspective tasting where we did a blind tasting of 2013, 14, 15 Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa, some top stuff. I learned a lot from that tasting even though I couldn't get all the way through because the Tannins were ripping my face off. What did you take, you went through every single lot. All the Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Sauvignon Blanc was a little bit difficult for me to go through. To be honest, I mean we drink, we really like Sauvignon Blancs from Santa Barbara. We really like it from certain parts of Italy and also from France as well. I think that there's potential for Sauvignon Blanc in Napa Valley but as of right now I had to go through quite a lot of pretty okay examples to get to the really good ones. And Tive Leady makes a really good example. But what about the Cabernet 13, 14, 15? That's the name of the game. 13, 14, 15. 13 was a lot more Tannins, Tannins structure really built to age for the long term. 2014 was the most accessible Cabernet for me right now. It was a lot of them, most 50% of the Cabernet from 2014 that I taste actually has a little bit of this floral more herbal nose that I find it really attractive. 2015 at this point it's accessible as well. In fact more accessible than 2013 but I find that it's much more fruit driven. They were irregular too. Like 13 is supposed to be one of the greatest vintages in Napa Valley. They were wines that were just not ready to drink. 14 was enjoyable, 15 they were kind of irregular and a bit young at this point right. Yeah that's a conversation that we often also like to have for people as well because you don't look at just price and quality as it is. Sometimes you buy one and you pay for it for a long-term aging potential and 2013 could very well be their kind of wine. And let's talk about the lots. So the cool thing is the online and the live auction on Saturday first you taste it all morning and then they had the actual auction. The wine that stood out to me the most was the Three Clicks Grenache because there's not a lot of Grenache in Napa and it was big structured Grenache. Even you liked it. I did enjoy it. What about some of the other wines you remember from the live auction that show you? Oh my god, the Schwarmsturm sparkling wine. Oh the Schwarmsturm 1997 which was... 1997. Yeah 1997, late discourse that was beautiful. You liked the Stagglin, what Stagglin had to offer I think right? And Stagg's Leap Wine Sellers. Stagg's Leap Wine Sellers. And I like the Cabernet from the Jarvis. You liked also the Tempraneo Cabernet from... Who was that from? Altezza. Yes Altezza. So there is a lot of interesting wines. We also got a sample to take home of the Free Mark Abbey Cabernet 70 on 2016 which the winner of that lot is going to be very very happy. Some excellent wines. Another cool thing is during lunchtime we sat down and we had the big buffet spread and there was a lot of wines out for tasting. Just for lunch before the auction. They probably boozed us up before even though we weren't bidding. I boozed everybody up before the auction and I thought it'd be kind of basic wines but for lunch I had a glass of Schaefer Hillside Select Continuum. Paul Hobbs, Nathan Coombsville Vineyard and Stagglin. All right there that was pretty darn nice right? So I think in general what can you say about the week and what they were actually trying to accomplish with Premier Napa Valley? I think Premier Napa Valley really shows the spirit of Napa Valley. Innovation, community spirit, generosity and creativity because all of this wine will be made specially for the auction. So we're talking about 60 to 240 bottles in general. That's a really really small production for a winery to make but it really I think it also opens a platform and a space for people to be creative to do something different and special bottling. Even maybe try out a different clone or variety that they have not released to the market and I think it's just a beautiful platform for people to to explore and also people coming together right you know learning from each other getting excited. For me I think it sums up what Napa is all about right? It's almost quick to say so Napa Valley is about trying to create the best quality wine in the world with what they have and that's what Premier Premier is trying to take that even a step forward. I enjoyed my time there I hope we get invited back sometime you loved it there. And also the after party as well really getting people together to know each other you know in the media in the trade everyone just enjoying themselves tasting wine it's just a special moment and a good opportunity. Yeah so great it was great if you ever get a chance to check it out I would highly recommend it we're gonna have a little tasting article with some of our favorite wines I'm gonna put the link in the description box. Anything else you want to add on Premier Napa Valley? No I realized I was talking really fast today anyhow. So guys if you like this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel exotic wine travel I will see you at the next episode.