SippingFineWine is always excited in trying new wines and especially the rare opportunity to taste an inaugural vintage of a superb wine, and sharing such insights with wine aficionados. Yan Cellars is a small exquisite boutique winery crafting wines from esteemed vineyard sites in Napa Valley. Their 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon was produced from the Fern Rock vineyard owned by the Castellucci Family, who have reputation of sourcing some of the finest grapes in Napa. Yan is owned by Eugene Bayani, and Patrick Saboe is the winemaker. Together they produced 600 bottles of their first vintage; 2017 Yan Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. The Spring Mountain District in Napa is about a…
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Patria 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Napa For the better part of the last 19 years Anthony Biagi has been crafting wines in Napa Valley for Paraduxx, Neal Family Vineyards, PlumpJack, and Cade Wineries and currently for Hourglass, Sinegal Estate, and Amici. Following his parent’s sage advice “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life,” he finds himself extremely fortunate that he has been able to do what he loves from the day he graduated from college. Following a dream he set decades ago, Anthony founded Patria (homeland) in 2013 with Kimberly Jones. Perched at 1,400 feet, in the eastern hills of Napa valley,…
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Kelley Fox Wines Kelley Fox Wines was founded in 2007, together with her father, Gerson “Gus” Stearns, producing about 100 cases or so. Today, Kelley has grown production to about 3000 cases per year. Grapes sourced from the historic Maresh Vineyard, the Demeter-certified biodynamic Momtazi Vineyard along with Hyland, Freedom Hill, Weber, and Durant Vineyard. Kelley has been immersed with her full-time pursuit of making Fine Wines since 2000. In fact, literally Kelley is submerged into her wines. One of the many winemaking decisions a winemaker contends with is Pigéage, a French word meaning to “punch down.” Punching down refers to a winemaking process, during the early stage of fermentation,…
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Sill Family Vineyards 2017 MERLOT, Atlas Peak Sill Family Vineyards is a family-owned and operated exquisite boutique winery with estate vineyards producing ultra-premium, very limited production carefully hand-crafted wines. As a Court of Master Sommelier, Winemaker, Igor Sill became passionate about Bordeaux wines after being introduced to Château Margaux, Château Latour, Château Haut-Brion and Château Lafite Rothschild in the late 1970s by H. Lyman Emerson, a renaissance gentleman and noted fine wine collector. Sill owns and operates two distinctive vineyards, Atlas Peak Mountain vineyard located on a plateau 1,650 feet above sea level, and St. Helena terraced vineyard. Unfortunately, the Atlas Peak fires of Oct 2017 destroyed their Winery and…
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Lapostolle 2010 Clos Apalta (Limited Release) Lapostolle was founded by Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle and her husband Cyril de Bournet in 1994. The Marnier Lapostolle family, founders and owners of the world-renowned liqueur Grand Marnier, is famous for producing spirits and liqueurs, but the family has also been involved in winemaking for generations. In creating Lapostolle, the family has pursued the same uncompromising approach to quality that made Grand Marnier a global success. Its objective is simple as it is ambitious: to create world-class wines using French expertise and the superb terroirs of Chile. Lapostolle is distributed in more than 60 countries around the world. In the past few years I…
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2016 Viader Black Label Napa Valley Viader Vineyards and Winery (pronounced “Veeya Dare”), founded by Delia Viader, born in Argentina, who is a ground-breaking visionary and one of the first female winemakers who was very successful in creating one of the sought-after “cult” boutique wineries. Grapes sourced from a 92-acre Howell Mountain vineyard at a 1200 ft elevation with a 32% slope, with a terrior that features rocky volcanic soils, western exposure and vertical planting of vines, resulting in low yields and exceptionally concentrated fruit. I should note that most Napa vines are planted with horizonal terracing. The result are wines that are soft, expressive and align with the terrior…
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Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2016 Insignia; 2013 Insignia; 2006 Insignia I recently wrote about Joseph Phelps Vineyards having its roots dating back to 1973, and reviewed some of their wines I tasted on my Napa trip. While many of the early Joseph Phelps wines were made with grapes from the Home Ranch in St. Helena, Joe also sourced fruit from outside growers. But as the winery continued to grow and he traded earlier efforts in Riesling and Chardonnay for Cabernet, Merlot and other red Bordeaux varieties, he began acquiring vineyard land in the Rutherford, Oakville, Stags Leap District, and Oak Knoll District AVAs. These vineyards became important sources of Insignia and…
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Occidental Freestone-Occidental Pinot Noir 2017 Steve Kistler, founder and winemaker of Kistler Vineyards for 37 years, has established a new pinot noir brand “Occidental” which is owned and operated by the Kistler family. Occidental built a state-of-the-art winery on a ridge top next to the Bodega Headlands Vineyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and was completed in August of 2013 just in time for the harvest. Occidental makes very small quantities of Pinot Noirs, from select vineyard sites and are allocated to their Mailing List members. If you want to grab a few of these gems, click this Mailing List Link to join! Medium Ruby color with rich sweet red fruit…
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Chateau Phélan Ségur Saint-Estèphe 2016 In 1805, Daniel Phelan, an Irish wine broker, acquired le Clos de Garamey, located in Saint-Estephe. The acquisition was followed in 1810 by the purchase of the Segur de Cabanac estate, creating a magnificent wine-producing domain that remains practically unchanged today. Bernard Phelan, upon his death in 1841, left this vast estate, known as Chateau Segur de Garamey, to his son Frank. Frank devoted his life to promoting the renown and improving the quality of the wines produced on his property, and at one point became the mayor of Saint-Estephe, holding the post for thirty years. Since 1985, Xavier Gardinier has been running the vineyard…
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Shafer Vineyards 2015 Napa Valley Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon Continuing on with my Shafer Vineyards visit, see my November 6, 2019 & December 20, 2019 reviews of 4 of their outstanding wines together with some of its history. Keep checking back with SippingFineWine.com as I recently made a trip to Napa during 2019 harvest, visited several wineries, tasted some great wines, and met some outstanding individuals. I’ll continue to report on my discoveries. Today I’ll discuss Shafer’s signature wine, Hillside Select, sourced from the slopes of an amphitheater-like structure of thin soil and rock, where thanks to a series of knolls and outcroppings some vineyard blocks receive southeastern sunlight, while…