Auction Week!

Sheesh! Another exhausting wine-drinking marathon was completed last Friday, at the Auction Napa Valley Friday Marketplace. Literally hundreds of wines were poured under the tents alongside most of Napa's restaurants. Compare baby back ribs from Bounty Hunter and Mustard's? Go ahead. Try some Ahi with Sauv Blanc and Chardonnay? Fine, good on ya. It was a great opportunity to taste new releases, glad-hand, and generally get loopy with like-minded folks.


Then off to the barrels - inside the cavernous Sutter Home barrel room - more inky, dense, insanely young wines being thieved out at high rates of speed. We loved:

Hartwell
DR Stephens
Blackbird
Pride
Shafer
Honig
Stewart

to name a few...

Aaron Pott of Blackbird was telling me about a very old bottle of Mayacamas Gamay I gave him one day when he stopped by and how killer it actually was. We both love all that crazy old stuff.

A woman walked by me while I was sampling Blackbird and I said to myself, hmm, she really should be an Oprah impersonator. That was before I saw the guys with the earpieces and funny bulges in their jackets. Holy bejeezus! That IS Oprah! She started bidding on a Bouchaine barrel lot! Very cool. Hope she won a few.

Somehow, in the blasting heat, I walked back to our office without passing out, and promptly fell asleep on the warehouse couch under our brand-new 10-ton evaporator. Ah, heaven...and just another day at the office.

- Stefan.