Sideways - For the Love of the Grape

A few days ago I was picked up in a huge, glossy black 4x4 by an Italian/American called Janie to embark on 3 hours of sampling the delights of the grape in the Napa Valley.

on this journey with me was a great couple from Oregon. There is a significant link here...Oregon is fast becoming the wine growing region of America. The changing climte is damaging the perfect cool mornings and hot afternoons the Californian vineyards require...they are very aware of their competition!

In a 10 mile stretch, there are over 100 vineyards. Wine is a very serious business in California, people talk seriously about the grape...the vintage and the food it compliments. The landscape is beautiful...If you've ever seen the film 'Sideways', every glance could have easily been taken from the film...lines and lines of neatly planted vines on flat fields and rolling hills, each one having its own microclimate to produce a different type of wine.

I was pleased I had taken the option to be driven to appreciate all of the landscape and of course...drink!

There were lots of Pinot Noirs, Chardonnay and Zinfandel to be tasted and I wasted no time!

I'm pleased I went for the 3-hour tour...any more and I would have fallen over..we started at 10.45a.m. and finished at 2.15p.m.!

Janie knew a lot of the growers and this added to the experience!

Wine does not come cheap...unless of course, it is the 'Gallo' vineyard. The name 'Gallo' makes many Californian wine makers shudder. The 4-6 pound bottles we see on our supermarket shelves are mass produced by shaking the vines violently with machines until all the fruit has fallen. There is a snobbery about this type of wine in California. More and more growers are producing 'boutique' wines where only 500 cases are produced and some of the process is done by hand.

Boutique wines cost between $16-35 dollars a bottle. I settled for a juicy Zinfandelat $22. The winemaker has had an unusual path to winemaking...his parents paid for him to go to Harvard to study law. After two years with a top law firm, he told his parents he would prefer to make wine! They were horrified, he was their investment...but seeing how determined he was, gave him a deal that he could make a case of wine and if it was any good he could continue, if not, it was back to the law firm....and so the story goes the case won many gold wine awards and the rest is history..

I quite like the idea of buying a wine from someone who went for his dream and got it.

I got on really well with Janie. We ended up having lunch together and she then she asked me to join her at the weekend on her friend's yatch close to the Golden Gate Bridge to waterski..sounds great!