Be a wine tasting winner

Wine clubs and competitive wine tasting

Did you know wine tasting is actually a competitive sport? This year, a Chinese team achieved a perfect score, identifying twelve French wines by taste alone. The team said wine tasting was “fifty percent knowledge and fifty percent luck.” If you want to be an expert wine taster, try joining a wine club and going to wine tastings. Look at the wine against a white background. Swirl it very carefully. When you smell the wine, try to think of everything the smell reminds you of — not just fruit, but flowers, smoke, even crushed stone. When you taste it, notice the texture and mouthfeel. Once you’ve swallowed it, notice the aftertaste.

Wine tasting at a vineyard near St. Helena, CA

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where visitors can sample current releases and library wines. There you may find the 2010 Signature Vintage Cabernet Sauvignon, a deep purple wine with a slight red edge that comes from the best two barrels of the vintage, has an aroma that begins with a strong cassis, with streaks of blackberry and blueberry and highlights of blue flowers. The oak adds elements of smoke to the bouquet. The palate of the ’10 Signature is similar to the aroma, with the taste of black, blue and red fruits, anise, smoke and violets. This is a wine that deserves to be kept and allowed to age. Join their wine club and order some of their wines today.

Cabernet Sauvignon rugged, high-quality

A quality grape that grows in many places

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world’s most successful varieties of grape. The grapes are small and thick-skinned, so the tannins and other flavors that come from grapeskin are found abundantly in this wine. They also help give the grape the ability to survive all sorts of environments, which has made the Cab globally successful — they’re as hardy as Mission grapes and produce much better wine. No matter what the climate or soil, Cab grapes can be relied on for a complex and balanced vintage.

Some very good Cabs near St. Helena, CA

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a short drive from downtown St. Helena, produces world-class wines at affordable prices, including a famous Cabernet Sauvignon. The Conn Valley Cabernet has been known as one of the top Cabernets in the world since the first vintage in 1987. The style is more Bordeaux in style than the average Napa Cabernet. The Conn Valley Cabernet is one that chefs find it easy to pair with almost anything because of the beautiful bright and refreshing acidity on the finish. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate praises the 2012 vintage for its “terrific purity, plenty of depth and ripeness, and a full-bodied mouthfeel.” They also offer Estate and Signature Cabs, which are of particularly high quality.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Wine club members save $25 buying the 2013 Signature Cabernet Sauvignon online. If you’re looking for a good wine to serve at a special occasion, order a bottle today

Napa wineries worth touring

Exploring Napa wineries

When planning a trip to Napa Valley, find a room at one of little bed-and-breakfasts. You can rent a car or take advantage of shuttle bus service. Then it’s time to plan the wine tastings and winery visits. There are vacation packages that will let you tour the Napa wineries. If there are specific wineries you want to visit, or if you want to see some other places, just draw up your own itinerary.

One of the best Napa wineries near St. Helena

Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley near St. Helena. One of the more famous wines produced by Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards is the intense dark purple and red 2011 Signature Cabernet Sauvignon. Drawn exclusively from the best five barrels of the 2011 vintage, this rare wine is the child of a wet, cool year that produced low yield but high quality. The wine has an aroma of dark berries, smoke, blue flowers and anise. The palate is dominated by the fruitiness of blackberry, with hints of licorice and the finest tannins from barrels of French oak. This is a wine that will improve for decades.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. By ordering six bottles per year, you can join their wine club, giving you discounts on many of their finest wines, tickets for two to their parties and a complimentary cave tasting. Buying 12 or 24 bottles will gain you more tickets and the chance to bring more guests. Join today.

Touring the wine caves of Napa Valley

Find a wine club that offers cave tours

If you’re thinking of joining a wine club, pick one that offers cave tours. Caves are great places to store and age barrels of wine. They maintain an even temperature all year, low but not freezing. They’re also humid, which reduces the loss of wine by evaporation that you’d normally get when storing a non-airtight barrel for years. The humidity of a wine cave should be at least 75 percent. And wine caves are often carved, decorated and lit to suit their owners’ imaginations and sometimes have their own water features that draw from underground rivers. They can even be good places to have dinner. With dinner, you can taste the latest wines and the library wines from previous years stored in the cave.

Cave tours near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards, near St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn how they make and store the wine. One of the wines in its library is the ruby red 2009 Éloge. A fine blend from an excellent growing year, the ’09 Éloge has an aroma with a core of concentrated dark fruits, with crème de cassis, cigar box, spice and streaks of red currants. Its flavor is similar — deep and full-bodied with concentrated dark fruits, spice and mocha.

Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Join today.

Visit St. Helena and the surrounding part of Napa Valley

Wine clubs around St. Helena

St. Helena, “Napa Valley’s main street,” is one of the centers of the world wine industry. A number of wine clubs are centered here that are well worth trying. If you’re planning to visit St. Helena wineries, get out into the countryside and explore the multitude of microclimates for which this part of California is famous.

A winery near St. Helena

Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. Just a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. The grapes they grow are closer to mountain grapes than the grapes in the St. Helena AVA proper. At the vineyard, you have the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces an Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2012 Estate Reserve might be their best ever. The growing season of this dark purple and red blend brought out the perfect balance of flavor and sugar in the grapes. The aroma has many notes, including mocha and red raspberries. The palate is deeply layered with dark red fruit, spices and licorice, and a smooth mouthfeel. There are hints of white pepper in the finish.

The winery has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club. This will get you a discount on many of their finest wines, including a $10 discount on the ’13 Estate Reserve. Join their wine club and try a bottle today.

Discover 2018’s best wine at a barrel tasting

Barrel tastings

Barrel tastings are an opportunity to try the most recent vintages and guess how good the wine will become. It may help to understand the process of wine fermentation and aging. The fermentation itself happens in two stages during the first two to three weeks. For three to five days, while the vessel is open to the air, the yeast multiplies. In the second stage, which takes one to two weeks, the vessel is closed and the yeast just turns sugar into alcohol. Once it’s inside the barrel, the aging begins. In the case of red wine, the wine turns a more brick-like color with age. The aroma becomes less fruity. It loses its acidity. The oak of the barrels leaches tannins into the wine.

Barrel tastings near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled. Tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Try a recent Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. An older Estate Reserve Cab, 2007, is a dark ruby red wine with an aroma of dark fruit, Bing cherries, licorice and cigar box. Its flavor is balanced between fruit, oak and acid, with sweet tannins and hints of cedar and chocolate cake.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide.

Napa Valley wines go way back

Napa Valley wines and their history

About this time, vineyard workers are harvesting the grapes that Napa Valley wines are made from. The first wine grapes in Napa Valley were Mission grapes, brought to California by missionaries. They were tough and could adapt easily, but didn’t necessarily make the best wines. Better varieties of wine grape were brought to California in the nineteenth century, including the Cabernet Sauvignon grape which has Mission resilience and French quality.

Napa Valley wines from a winery near St. Helena

Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. A 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, these vineyards produce world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is south of Howell Mountain, and offers you the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave. Wine Merchants Gourmet includes them in one of its Middle Valley tours.

An example of what this winery has to offer is the Éloge, an exclusive blend. The 2008 Éloge comes from a year notable for its extremes — storms followed by a prolonged frost in spring, a cool spring and early summer followed by sweltering heat later. All this led to a vintage of low yield but high quality — a dark ruby red wine with extraordinary aroms of black cherries, cedar, leather, crushed rocks and smoked meats. It tastes of chocolate-dipped black cherries and plums with toffee and spices. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club, giving you discounts on many of their finest wines.