 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel! I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Hi, I'm Surey and Time. Welcome back to the show today. We are tasting some wines from Napa Valley. We're excited, you know, we just got back from Napa. We did the Wine Writer Symposium 2018, and we also did the premier Napa Valley 2018. You love Napa, right? Very much. I love the spirit there. Of course, the wines. And it's really cool. A lot of people don't realize like this. We have some wines here from Smithma Drone. They're the Spring Mountain AVA. Napa Valley is also broken into 16 actually AVA's. And every AVA produces different kind of fruit. There's a different kind of house style there, right? It's not house style, AVA style, so to speak. We went to a Spring Mountain tasting. What were your overall impressions of the Spring Mountain tastings? Spring Mountain wines tends to be a little bit more fresher than, for example, Howell AVA's. But when you're talking about fresher in the Napa Valley kind of standard, it's not like you're not expecting high acidity and all that, right? Well, Spring Mountain, where these vineyards are, Smithma Drone, their vineyards are about 2,000 feet. We're talking about 700 meters in elevation. So you are going to have a little more acidity. I'm really excited to taste these wines. Shall we just get into it? I'm very much excited. Small producer, 4,000 cases per year. They dry farm fruit, which means they do not irrigate, which is really ballsy in California where they've had many years of drought. Yeah. So let's get going. First of all, we have the Smithma Drone Resling 2014 30 US dollars. This is made entirely in stainless steel. You don't think of Resling when you think of Napa, but Napa does a lot of things. Well, it's just Cabernet's the most famous because producers can get more money for Cabernet. Let's give this a go. What do you think? I love it. I love the nose. Wow. Wow. Very German, very German, Resling style. To me, Alsace is still kind of Germanic, right? Wow. I love, for me, I'm getting the white apple, the baked apple, the flint. I'm getting definitely some petrol on the nose. This smells really, really good. Let me get it. Fruit fall in the mouth. I love the finish. I drank it. I like it a lot. It's killer. The finish is lovely. Very spicy. I bet your producers can't move Resling very much because when you think of Napa, you don't think of... This is 100% dry. This is not off dry wine, but the sweet fruit. The sweet fruit on the finish just makes this awesome. Pretty big body for stainless steel. What's the alcohol in this? I can't even see this. 12.8 killer. Why? For me, 4.3 out of the vino out of 5 very easily. What do you think? Very good balance of acidity and with you, sugar. I still think that we use you, sugar in this, but very nicely amazingly balanced. I think when I looked on the website, it's 0.76%. Really? So less than a gram. I think it's the sweet California fruit. I know we keep going on about this wine, but I find this so interesting because it has the flintiness, the stuff they're going to get from Alsace, from Moselle, but it has the sweet California fruit that makes it killer wine. I keep saying this. I think I want this for dinner. Let's move on. We have the two grapes that Napa is most famous for. We have the 2015 Smith-Madrone Chardonnay. This is 34 US dollars, sorry, barrel fermented and aged in French oak for 10 months. Majority of that French oak, I think it's French oak. Majority of the oak was new. That's what I know for sure. Let's give this a little bit of a smell. Shareen is the Chardonnay Nazi. Over here, she's the worst on that wall. We haven't tasted a lot of Chardonnay when we're in Napa, but we have an idea. But we have been drinking a lot of Chardonnay from Santa Barbara, and this is distinctly different. This is perfect with it. Perfect with integration. There's wood in this. It's toasty. When we were there, we did some Chardonnay tasting. Some of the Chardonnays were just a little bit too woody for me. Annoying. I'm really shocked. The first two wines. I'm very impressed so far. You smell the oak, but it's more of a big apple tart kind of smell. So it's very attractive, very delicious. And what's the fruit that you pick up on this? It's not all big ripe tropical banana fruit. It's more like white pear. White pear, white peach. Wow. Let's give this a go. What do you think? A little bit oily in the mouth. I like it. The finish is very clean. Despite the oak and all that, it finishes really elegantly. Spicy finish from the barrel a little bit. I don't know how much of this went through Malo. How much do you think of it went through Malo Lactic? I think 100% for sure. You definitely have the acidity sticking out, dancing in the mouth. The fruit isn't banana-y over buttery. Big tropical fruit when you think of Mapa Cabernet. Much more elegant. Wow. This is really good. 4.2 out of 5. What do you think? 4.3 out of a similar quality. I love the oak integration. It's really excellent. These are good wines. These might be so far my favorite. We did the Spring Mountain tasting. I like these two wines. The most, yeah. Besides Spring Mountain Vineyard Sauvignon Block. You ready to move on? I'm saving everything today. Let's move on to what Napa is known for. Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet from 2014. 52 US dollars. But you got to remember. That sounds like a lot. That is a bargain. When it comes to small producers in Napa. 18 months in oak. Some producers, they're really, you know, step 22 months, 30 months is the norm. 18 months more in line with Bordeaux. What they do. Dark color. You know that you're drinking Cabernet. True dark color. What do you think? A lot of dark fruit. But there's still a bit of redness in it. Which makes it lifted and bright. The leafiness comes out for me. The capsicum comes out definitely. A little bit, a little bit. You know, I pick up for Napa. This isn't, I mean, this is dark. But I can see my fingers through it. It's not ridiculously dark. I can definitely sense some red fruit in this. It's not just all castes black fruit. Excuse me, I got too excited. Cabernet Sauvignon that we had from Spring Mountain. Quite a lot of them expressed that greenness. But it's not in a bad way. Again, it actually helps to give it a lift. And complexity. You know, 2014, I'm excited about tasting this. We did a perspective tasting of many producers. 13, 14 and 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon is blind. 14, we found to be the most approachable now. Right? 13 is supposed to be like one of the vintage of the century. Napa, those are still hard. You still need to sell them. It's hard to get a young for me to really get a feel on. So I'm expecting this to be plush and round of the mouth. Let me give this a go. Much more lenience and fresher for Napa. Thank you. Very, very more, almost kind of Bordeaux-y. Bordeaux-y has the Bordeaux acidity. A little bit more fresher. It's not big, plump and fat like you're going to get in most Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. What do you think? What are you thinking about this after? I appreciate it, but I like structured fresh red wine. But where I'm in Napa, I want big Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a bit fresher style. This is definitely for fans of the old world for me. 4.2 out of 5 easily. I think these all are wines that are going to be 90 to 92 point type wines from major press. Really strong showing for people that want more earthy, fresher Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a must, I think. Anything else on Smith-Madrone? I'm really excited and I can't wait to actually explore more of that wine. I'm very encouraged by these 3 bottles that we... They also make the 4th wine. It's called the Cooks Flat. That's the top end. I know this has 85% cab and this has I think about 8% or low 7% Cabernet Franc. If I remember right. Good showing by Smith-Madrone. I really like these wines a lot. Check them out. I will put the link in the description box. Anything else? Guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We will see you at the next episode.