About Me

My photo
Northern California
Our Story and Mission- Ever since we were old enough to drink wine, we have been frequenting winery tasting rooms throughout California. Our trips in the late 70’s involved stops at 6-8 wineries (or maybe more) in a day. My first date with my wife was a day of wine tasting in Sonoma 31 years ago. So we are experienced with this stuff. I think there are several ingredients to a satisfying Tasting Room experience. The wine has to be good for starters and generally the known wineries all put out pretty decent wine. But there are other key factors in making the experience memorable. Sometimes a classy tasting room works for us, but sometimes standing around a barrel outside does the trick. At other times it is just good service that pleases us. Certainly one of the keys is the person serving the wine. So there are a whole bunch of things that make visiting a Tasting Room a positive experience. The point of this blog is to talk about and recommend Winery Tasting Rooms where we have had good experiences.The blog was conceived after spending a weekend with my sisters who normally do not frequent wineries and running into a couple of disappointing stops.

Friday, December 14, 2012


Robert Biale Vineyards
Napa, CA


We met some friends at Robert Biale Vineyards a couple of weeks ago.  They left their home in Napa at seven minutes to Noon and arrived on time to the winery for our Noon appointment.  Biale sits in the Oak Knoll district of the valley right on Big Ranch Road.  The road quickly turns from residential to rural as you drive north from town.  The Biale family has farmed this ranch since 1937.  Aldo Biale who founded the winery with his son Robert in 1991 used to make homemade wine as far back as the mid 50’s and delivered it to family and friends as part of the family farm produce business.  The story goes that customers calling on a party line could discreetly order a Black Chicken as part of their order and they would receive a jug of Aldo’s homemade wine. 

Biale specializes in Zinfandel and Petite Sirah.  We have tasted the wines many times at events and met Robert Biale previously and been impressed so tasting here has been on our list for a while.  When we arrived we were surprised at the newness and size of the facility.  We kind of did not expect there would be many guests since it is an appointment only winery and it was a rainy day.  We sat outside at a nice table.  At first I thought that it might be cold but with heaters above it was very comfortable and even in winter it really is nice to sit outside right next to the vineyards and in this case 70+ year old vineyards.  Tom was our host and he really turned out to be pretty much our private host for the tasting.  I thought for a minute that Tom was going to be a bit too intrusive, after all we wanted to chit chat with our friends a bit, but the Biale story and wine information was well worth it.  I want to be like Tom some day.  When is the last time you left a winery knowing so much family history, and the Black Chicken story and such and remember it two weeks later?  Much of Napa history dates back to the 60’s and 70’s but this very property, still in the same family, has been farmed for 70 years.

 
We tasted quite a few wines.  Although 30% of the grape source for Biale wines is the home property they source Zinfandel from throughout Sonoma and Napa county and Petite Sirah from Napa county vineyards.  They also make some Barbera and Syrah.  One of the wines we tasted was the Monte Rosso Zinfandel.  Monte Rosso is one of those classic vineyards just over the hill from Mt Veeder on the Sonoma side where grapes have been planted since the 1880’s.  Many wineries source Cabernet and Zinfandel from here which was owned by Louis Martini for many years and is now Gallo owned.  This was a dark and intense wine and could compare with the best Zins anywhere.  Another wine we had was the Like Father Like Son Red Wine.  This is a blend of Syrah and Petite Sirah.  This wine had finesse and I thought a really nice drinking (alone) wine.  We bought a magnum and this will be for something special.  We then had the Oak Knoll District Petite Sirah.  As deep a color the Petite had, the finish was very clean.  Why didn’t we come home with a bottle of this too?  The wines were priced from the high $30’s and up.

Anyhow, you can tell we totally enjoyed the tasting here and I’m ready to go back.  It really is a treat to taste just a couple of varietals and I am really glad that Tom spent the time with us.  He was a wealth of knowledge with everything Biale and it really is nice to have a story to tell versus many on the wineries that exist because their owners were successful in another business.  And we ran into Robert Biale the next day in Walnut Creek at a local event and told him how much we enjoyed our tasting.  He was appreciative of our nice comments and seems like a great guy.  And for the locals, Rocco's in Walnut Creek (Rocco Biale a relative of Robert) is a great spot for pizza, pasta and sports and has live music on Thursday and Saturday evenings

What we liked- A non rushed tasting experience.  Great history.  Excellent outside winter tasting (warm heaters).  All wines were excellent.

What we bought- Like Father Like Sun Red Wine- Magnum.  Our plans are to hold it a few years and open it for our friends son’s graduation (although he does not know it so who knows).

Vitals:
Robert Biale Vineyards
4038 Big Ranch Road
Napa, CA  94558
(707) 257-7555
www.robertbialevineyards.com
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)