Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Up and rested from the marathon day of vis­it­ing vine­yards and winer­ies, we were off to the Sonoma County Fair for — wait for it.….Wine Tast­ing! Pretty high class county fair, don­cha think?  There were more winer­ies and wines than you could shake a twisted stick at all under one roof and like most events at a county fair– they all had been judged.

A few years ago, Evette and I attended a promi­nent wine tast­ing event in Atlanta, but what did we know then? After a day of wine tast­ing under our belts, lit­er­ally, we were ready to See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip,  & Savor! And with 56 pages of wines avail­able to us, we had to pre­pare our strategy.

We were each given a wine glass, a book­let list­ing all vari­etals, winer­ies, price, year, name and they were all bro­ken down by award lev­els: Best of Class, Gold, Sil­ver, Bronze. There was no “show”, as in win, place, show. I have a feel­ing that they were just placed in the Bronze Class. But who cares, we had no inter­est in Bronze wines.

Oh~ I for­got to men­tion, we also received a slip of paper called a “pass­port” that listed the Best in Class wines. If you chose to sam­ple these wines, you were required to present this pass­port which would be care­fully checked and duti­fully delin­eated with a pre­cise check mark. Appar­ently, there had been some “over sam­pling” of these wines in the past years, so this pass­port was insti­tuted to con­trol the abuse. In the­ory this seems plau­si­ble. In prac­tice what really hap­pened was that the vol­un­teers pour­ing the wines were a bit over­whelmed by masses of peo­ple charg­ing the tables with glasses in their hands. They were check­ing the pass­ports at first, but after repeat­edly mark­ing the wrong wine, cross­ing out, get­ting flus­tered by the num­ber of bot­tles of wine they each had to pour, they gave up and fig­ured– Hey, when we’re out, we’re out…it’s not com­ing out of my pocket. Nor­mally, I don’t appre­ci­ate apa­thy, but in this case, I was will­ing to give it a pass.

Now back to the strate­gery. We had pur­chased tick­ets ahead of time and were there early to be sure to get a table. Since Angela and Michelle were wine-fair vet­er­ans from 2007, they were adamant that procur­ing a table was of utmost impor­tance. That way we had a place to set up the gourmet nib­blies we had pur­chased ear­lier and we also had a base camp from which we could send run­ners to the out­ly­ing rows of tables to hunt & gather tast­ings of our tar­geted wines and return to the fold to share and cri­tique. And that is just what we did for 3 relax­ing, enjoy­able hours.

The value of this expe­ri­ence is get­ting to taste dif­fer­ent vine­yards with the same vari­etals, side-by-side. It was fun to taste the Best In Class, yet really pre­fer the Gold or Sil­ver place. It gave me more con­fi­dence in wines I had pur­chased and in my own palette. But there’s no account­ing for taste ~ so to speak.

It is only right that we topped off our trip with a bit-of-the-bubbly and a visit to J. Vine­yards & Win­ery, which is known for their fab­u­lous sparkling wines. We were attend­ing J.‘s Fall Sparkling Release Party. Wow, you says to your­self– that sounds glam! And YES, it was!

We totally lucked into this event– with just a bit of a well-placed con­nec­tion. Angela is a mem­ber of their wine club. We orig­i­nally were going to visit The Bub­ble Room, which is a seated tast­ing salon where you are served per­fectly paired meals with the wine flight of your choice.

“Unfor­tu­nately”, they had sched­uled the Sparkling Release Party the week­end of our visit, so they offered invi­ta­tions to the exclu­sive event instead. Yes, well, that will have to “do.”

I had been lucky enough to be given a bot­tle of J.‘s Cuveé Cham­pagne for Christ­mas — Oops! Did I say Cham­pagne? Well, my dears, let’s clear some things up right away. In order for a sparkling white wine to be called Cham­pagne is must be pro­duced in the Cham­pagne appel­la­tion or region of France. If it is not, it is a sparkling white wine. As I was say­ing, I was for­tu­nate enough to have for­merly par­taken of J.‘s fab­u­lous Cuveé, so I was excited about tast­ing their other offerings.

There were four Releases being pre­sented that day and each had it’s own sta­tion and host­ess avail­able to explain the wine. There was also a tray of pre­cise food pair­ings for each wine pre­pared by J.‘s Exec­u­tive Chef Mark Cald­well and his culi­nary team. I wish I had payed more atten­tion to describe those to you. C’est la vie.

Wait­ers also floated through­out the crowd with sil­ver trays of addi­tional yummy arti­sanal nibblies.

There are sev­eral winer­ies in Napa & Sonoma that have Exec­u­tive Chefs on staff that work with the wine­maker to con­coct the most sump­tous and taste-bud tick­ling food & wine pair­ings for your din­ing plea­sure. Be sure to try and visit one of them if you plan to go– it is quite enlight­en­ing and brings the wine-tasting expe­ri­ence to a whole new level. For a head start in your research, here are a links to reviews: Sonoma Food & Wine Pair­ings, Napa Food & Wine Pairings.

As you might imag­ine, the tast­ing note descrip­tions of Sparkling wines are fun, flirty and “bub­bly.” I won’t list them all here, but be sure to click on each of the links to get an inkling of the ambiance of being at J.

The first 2 tast­ings were out­side on the ter­race over­look­ing the front vine­yard, gar­dens and pond with water­fall (I said it was Glam– does a Sweet diva lie when describ­ing the sweet life? And this was Sa-WEET!)

The J. Cuveé 20 &  J. Brut Rosé were the first we tasted. I pre­ferred the Cuveé 20. A great exam­ple of enjoy­ing a Sparkling white as a refresh­ing apéri­tif or a fab­u­lous spe­cial occa­sion indul­gence. At $28.00 a bot­tle, it can’t be beat.

Here is an exam­ple of tast­ing notes for Sparkling wine:

The non-vintage J Cuvée 20 Brut grace­fully opens up with crisp lemon peel, hon­ey­suckle and del­i­cate yeast aro­mas. Upon entry, these notes are fol­lowed by a mix of Fuji apple, grape­fruit and a sweet hint of angel food cake. The mid-palate is inter­laced with toast, caramel and almond fla­vors. The acid­ity adds just enough live­li­ness and the cit­rus zest leads to a lin­ger­ing, warm pear and lush fin­ish. This wine pairs beau­ti­fully with a Kumamoto oys­ter topped with Tsar Nicoulai Caviar in a J Cuvée 20 mignonette.

…just to add, they did have oys­ters and caviar to pair with the wine. I passed on the oys­ters, but did try a few caviar yum­mies paired with some of the other releases ~ and they were loverly!

Are you ask­ing your­self, “Self– what is a cuveé, a brut?.” Well Self, a Cuveé can mean a cou­ple things. First– it can mean the best grape juice from the press­ing of the grape. Think Extra Vir­gin Olive oil; best of the best. First press. Sec­ondly, it can mean either or both a blend of vari­etals or vine­yards. In J.‘s case they are refer­ring to blend­ing the best fla­vors of the juice after fer­men­ta­tion from dif­fer­ent years/vintages.

The 2000 J. Vin­tage Brut is the cuveé (mix) from dif­fer­ent vari­etals from the same year/vintage. Since a “Vin­tage” wine means grape from the same vine­yard in the same year, the har­vest from that grow­ing sea­son is of extreme impor­tance and the yield is also less, ie: higher price. Here is the math: Bad cli­mate year, bad har­vest, bad taste, no wine. In the case of 2000, as Frank Sina­tra would sing, it was a very good year.

And now for the créme de la créme…1998 J. Vin­tage Brut, Late Dis­gorged!!! Dis­gorged? Could there be an uglier word to describe such a beau­ti­ful Sparkling wine? This LD (short for Late Dis­gorged for those in the know) is a Téte de Cuveé; best of the har­vest, best of the vin­tage, best of the varietals…best. Best. Best. A diva will accept noth­ing less, when she can afford it. Late Dis­gorged means that it is aged for an addi­tional year. I think they could come up with a bet­ter descrip­tive term, like Extra– Fab, but I guess the wino-philes pre­fer this exact process terminology.

Each bot­tle was an afford­able $115, if you want to splurge and still a lot less than the best or medium level Cham­pagnes. Need­less to say, we vis­ited this sta­tion in the VIP loft sev­eral times. Is there another word for more than sev­eral? Sev­er­als? You get my point.

They had delec­table Charlie’s Choco­lates, Fleur de Sel Caramels to sam­ple. These were truly divine, the best choco­late cov­ered caramels with a hint of sea salt. Salt, choco­late and caramels? Yes. Try them.

One last note of inter­est, I have saved the best for last. The owner and founder of this vine­yard is a WOMAN! Yes, a Sister-Diva, Judy Jor­dan. Let us close our eyes in a moment of Sparkling thanks to the God­desses of Wine.

And there you have it, La Dolce Diva Goes to… Sonoma. All in all, it was a very enjoy­able trip that truly filled the senses..sight, sound, taste, touch & smell. It made the wine-world much more acces­si­ble, invit­ing and under­stand­able. I hope I have imparted those feel­ings to you.

Go forth and drink wine with con­fi­dence, my Diva –Sis­ters. There is noth­ing to be scared of!

I would love to hear from you– leave a com­ment or ques­tion ~ won’t you?