Life is Sweet in Napa Valley with Silver Trident Winery

Life is Sweet in Napa Valley - Intimate Micro-Experiences in the World of Wine, Food, and the Art of Relaxation (PART TWO)

By Kat Thomas, Edible Skinny

Yesterday I wanted wine.
Today I’m drinking wine.
Follow your dreams…
And drink up bitches!!!

Sip sip hooray!!!  Part Two of our FAB trip through Napa Valley (and a big shout out to Beau Wine Tours for helping plan out all these AMAZING winery adventures!!!)

So here’s to life being delicious, all your moments being postcard worthy, and Cabernet all day, everyday in Napa Valley!!!

SILVER TRIDENT WINERY

Returning to the hustle and bustle of Yountville (or what Napa Valley calls hustle and bustle...), we were greeted at Silver Trident Winery by the glowing Mallory.  Intimate and inviting, Silver Trident Winery has appointment only wine tastings in their beautifully warm Tuscan-style stone building.  Their “Tasting Home” consists of a living room, dining room and library, all furnished with Ralph Lauren Home.  There’s no tasting bar, no standing on your feet, no rush, at all.  Crafting small production wines (2-3k cases per year) created in the heart of the Napa Valley, Silver Trident Winery has the catchphrase of: “Big Personality, Small Production.  Endless Passion.”


Along with working at Silver Trident Winery, Mallory runs Vine Living blog, so she give us the skinny on it all!  She explained to Kelly and I that Silver Trident Winery is the passion project of Bob Binder, cofounder of Oceania Cruises.  Binder helped make this luxury cruise line’s food and beverage program one of the finest at sea, collaborating along the way with such food luminaries as Jacques Pépin, Bon Appétit, and Wine Spectator.  Binder resides in Napa with his partner Walter Jost.  Mallory gushed, “they are the nicest sweetest men.”  In 2009 Binder and Jost decided to made 100 cases Cabernet.  The next year they added 100 cases of Pinot Noir.

They opened their “Tasting Home” in 2012, with a whole new approach to wine pairing: great wines with the world-class home decor of Ralph Lauren.  In the past, the iconic fashion company had crafted Ralph Lauren Home-furnished suites on two of Oceanic largest ships.  These 2,500-square-foot suites, with their ebony baby grand pianos and mahogany and quartzite bars, were specifically decorated to “capture the feeling of Ralph Lauren’s passions for sailing, adventure, and travel."  While working with Ralph Lauren Home, Binder learned the company was looking for an opportunity to open a northern California showroom. That got him to thinking about the possibility of offering wine tasting in a home setting.

Wine tasting in the town of Yountville is a unique experience because the Yountville Town Council requires wine tasting rooms in town to use at least 25% of their floor space for retail sales of items other than wine.  You will find wine tasting rooms in town that also include wine accessories, artwork, antiques, and even cookware (shoutout to our friends at Hestan!).  So when it came to the decorating of Silver Trident’s “Tasting Home,” Binder and Jost decided to utilize the luxury home master once again! ;-)

To continue the concept of the “Tasting Home,” Silver Trident collaborated with chef Sarah Scott to create food pairings for each of their five wines (since homes traditionally serve food…). Sarah has been cooking in the Napa Valley since the early 1980s and has developed a talent for food and wine pairings.  She is the co-author of a cookbook with Connie Green titled The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food.  Noshes we sampled at Silver Trident include: Herbed Labneh and Goat Cheese, Mushroom Duxelle, and Piquillo Pimento Cheese Spread.  Yummm (with 3Ms!!!)!

Some wine favorites from our time at Silver Trident Winery include:                  

• Apollo's Folly Rosé (2017) Complex, yet ready to play!  Ripe red raspberry and watermelon make this “Paris, in the 1920s, in a glass.”  Sipping this Rosé was the perfect compliment to the black and white photography of Tunbridge Gallery throughout the Silver Trident’s “Tasting Home.”  Classically clean, it knows what it wants.
• Benevolent Dictator Pinot Noir (2015) Classic Russian River Pinot Noir with flavorings of cherry, cola, and pomegranate.  All aged in French Oak, 40% of it new.  A great fireside wine with a calico cat in your lap!
• Playing With Fire (2015)  A red that changes every year… because Silver Trident is a small winery they consider this their take some chances, break some rules, and play with fire.  Remember how your parents always told you never to play with fire?  And remember how that just made it a little bit more exciting?  Silver Trident chooses a variety of berries, a variety of barrel toasts, and experiments with fermentation temperatures.  Playing with fire can spark some deliciously thrilling results (and create my favorite wine at their “Tasting Home.)”

Life is Sweet in Napa Valley with Hestan Vineyards

Life is Sweet in Napa Valley with Hestan Vineyards

By Kat Thomas, Edible Skinny

“God is in the details.”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe


HESTAN VINEYARDS
Our first sipping adventure of the day was Hestan Vineyards, at their tasting room in Yountville.  Hestan Vineyards is a family-owned estate on the eastern slopes of the Napa Valley.  Their carefully-tended 110 acres are blanketed with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec producing 5,500 cases per year. 

At the door we were met by Michelle, an Australian expat getting her wine ya ya's out in the Valley and Grant, a self proclaimed “Cork Dork.”  Hestan Vineyards was born from the culinary passion of Stanley Cheng and his wife, Helen. Hestan is an amalgamation of Helen and Stan’s names (like Brangelina, but with the marriage intact..).  Stanley pioneered hard-anodized cookware in the 1970s.  The Meyer Corporation produces high-end, heavy-duty, customizable appliance from breakfast to back-of-house to the backyard.  “If you see him, please thank him for me,” pipped Kelly.

Taken together, Meyer affiliate factories comprise the world’s second largest cookware manufacturing operation, producing over 100 cookware lines distributed in over 30 countries.  The factories employ more than 6,400 people, manufacturing more than 42 million pans per year on average.  Retail partners include William Sonoma and Rachel Ray while the commercial side includes the cooktop grills at French Laundry and Bouchon.

For Hestan, their wine labels are a side hustle passion project.  Winemakers Jeff Gaffner and Thomas Rivers Brown translate these varietals into award-winning, limited-release wines for the Hestan, Meyer, and Stephanie labels.  Each has different techniques: Thomas Rivers Brown (whose name sounds like a country music jam band) who creates the Hestan and Meyer lines, is a purist who does believe in any blending.  In the past 15 years Brown has made more than 25 wines that have received perfect scores from Robert Parker Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator. (He’s not sure of the exact number, which seems in character for this laid-back Southerner..).  Winemaker Jeff Gaffner fully embraces the art of mixing varietals crafting the two labels named after Stan and Helen’s children: Stephanie (their only daughter) and Vincent Christopher (named after their two boys).. 

As Grant pointed out, wine is the opposite of food, the grapes don’t lie.  They can’t be covered over with spices.  Most crucial decision is how to pick in that 48 hour window.  And the person in charge of that decision and everything else is Angel Camarena, who has overseen the viticulture at Hestan Vineyards since planting the first vines in 1996.  Since then he has personally overseen every aspect of vineyard development and maintenance, in addition to managing the balance of the estate's 237-acre ranch property.


Angel is appropriately named!  Living on the property since the vines were planted, last year he fought the Napa/Sonoma wildfires like a captain going down with the ship.  Three times the cops came to remove Angel from the Hestan property for his safety and all three times he hid from in the vines he’d known for over twenty years ago.  Angel saved the Hestan Vineyards (and neighbor’s property) that night.  This year when his daughter got into an Ivy League school, Stan reciprocated by telling him not to worry about paying the bill!

Some of our favorite moments at Hestan included the wines:

• Hestan Chardonnay (2011)  Citrusy lightly oaked Chardonnay brought straight from the mouth of San Francisco Bay.  Clean and crisp, this wine is a tightrope of buttery and bright.  It’s plaid J. Crew shorts and a white yacht club sail.  Perfect late September picnic vibes.  Oh, and it’s been served at the White House 3 times now!

• Vincent Christopher Pinot Noir (2015) Valentine’s Day in a glass!  Hestan’s only non-estate wine grown on the Sonoma Coast at a 1200 foot elevation.  It’s a Pinot that drinks like a Cab.  This wine walks into a room quietly and soon becomes the most desired talked about guest.  This wine sits and speaks with you; knowing your secrets in a most tender beautiful way.

• Hestan Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon (2014) This is a November campfire wine, a “opulent and Hedonist” drink.  Hestan’s Flagship Cab., it received 96 points by Robert Parker Wine Advocate.  With triple black fruit flavors, it’s Edgar Allen Poe in a bottle, full of dark velvet and echoing beauty.  

Kat Thomas is the Editor in Chief of Edible Skinny, a site dedicated to making your life postcard worthy. She is also the CEO of the creative media company This Way Adventures. You can find more about both brands at http://www.thiswayadventures.com