Wine From Here

We went to the Porter Creek vineyards last Thursday. They are located a little North of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County.

We wanted to catch the picking of their last grapes so we got up early and arrived at the winery around 6:30am. Alex Davis, vineyard manager and winemaker, then drove us to the vineyard where the picking was about to happen. Right after the sun rose the pickers came and about 5 bins were filled up with Syrah grapes. It was a pretty sight. And the pickers were impressively fast. Hopefully we have some decent footage of it all.

We were then able to witness the processing of the fruit, destemming and pump-overs of some previous harvest. We also toured other vineyards closer to the winery and got to taste most of their wines.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we asked Alex a few questions, and we did that on top of the Fiona Hill vineyard. See a short bit of that interview below.

Thanks a lot to Alex and the others at Porter Creek. It was a very good day.

Santa Rosa. Friday early morning. Knocking on the door of NPA, the cool crew handing out wine in reusable klean kanteen bottles. We’re a little anxious because we feel those guys are especially relevant for our documentary.

We met Kevin Kelley (NPA’s founder and top dog) and Hardy Wallace (NPA’s joyal ambassador), talked a bit, before starting a quick tour of the premises. We introduced our project, things became clearer. They seemed to get it.

They offered us to do the interview on the first floor, because there’s more space, less noise. Bonus: those guys are into photography as well, so they even provided us with a spot light for improving the lighting for the interview. We asked Kevin questions about his philosophy and the reasons why he makes the wine the way he does. Good interview.

Then Hardy took us on a tour in the cellar, where he generously hopped from barrel to barrel, thiefing juice in our glasses and explaining genially why each wine was the best wine ever. A highlight of the tour was the pinot gris 2010. We thought it was amazing. Better than the 2009, with less nail polish and more nuts. Plus, they are still holding on to three barrels of Chardonnay 2009 still sitting on lees, the depth of which blew us away.

Hardy Wallace from NPA

Before delving into something else, we were offered to stay for lunch — and what a tasty lunch that was! A couple of blind tastings followed, trying to figure out what the wine is and where it is from.

All in all, our NPA stop was a success. We talked about terroir, mother nature, while collecting quality footage. Big thanks to Kevin, Hardy and the crew!

We paid a visit to Ashley and Chris last Wednesday. They are both taking care of the Black Sears vineyard and winery on top of Howell Mountain at the northern tip of Napa Valley. They made us feel very welcome and were very patient with all of our questions. They even let us play in the vineyard where we spread hay in preparation for the rain.

Black Sears grow a little more than 20 acres of vines, mostly Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon. They farm it organically and most of it is dry-farmed. We witnessed a pump-over as we toured the winery. We also went down to the cave and tasted their Zin and their Cab Sev straight from the barrel: om nom nom nom.

We interviewed both of them at the same time, on a picnic table outside the winery. It was a very good day for us. Thanks to Ashley and Chris!