Grand Tasting at Quintessa

August 17, 2009 by GMN

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

So far it has been a full day of wine. And it isn’t over yet.

After we finished our panel discussion at we head back to Bus #7 and head out to our next destination Quintessa Winery for the Grand Tasting. I have to admit that after all that Cabernet my tastebuds were a little worn out. So I decided to concentrate less on “tasting” and more on enjoying a glass or two of wine.

As we were walking up to the roof of the cave, I noticed that the facility had (in part) a green roof, specifically a roof top garden. As someone who worked on encouraging roof gardens and other forms of green roofing (please don’t get me started, it ends up being a long a boring conversation about the merits of various roofing products and colors… boring for you at least). When we reached the roof we were greated with a nice cool glass of Sauvignon Blanc (I noticed a pattern here. I Sauvignon Blanc the new Chardonnay?). Naturally I was compelled to take a look at the garden. You would have noticed me. All alone over at the far edge taking pictures of meadow grass. You would have come over, perhaps to see what I was looking at and you probably wouldn’t have noticed anything. But I was happy. And then I took a look at the other side and looked at the buses lined up ready to take us later to dinner too.

Eventually I headed down into the cave which was cool and dark and lovely after sweating all afternoon. In fact, I am ashamed to say that I was remarkably damp, but quite sober which means that I was burning through any alcohol that I had ingested. Helpful really, as I had more events to attend. The cave contained the winery operations and was almost surreally dark and stainless steel at the first level. In fact, it looked a lot like something out of Blade Runner, without Harrison Ford or any violence, which for me really works out better (the violence part that is… not the Harrison Ford part).

I descended from the mod level to where the rest of the conference folks were. This level was still very stainless steel in some parts but very wooden in others. I walked down into the show part of the barrel storage where it was even cooler. The centerpiece of this room was almost like a church. Dark, quiet and lit by candles, it inspired awed in all of us that stopped there. I learned from the Wine Bard, Karen Gurney that all of the barrel heads are marked with a series of codes that indicate the location of the forest the oak was harvested from and the amount of toasting on the inside and on the head of the barrel. On the way back, I saw a new type of “barrel” (for lack of a better word). It was steel and concrete and shaped like an egg. If the upper part of the caves was like Blade Runner, this storage unit was definitely out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But soon enough I joined the huddled masses, yearning to drink wine. I found that I couldn’t really drag myself to taste more than white wine. So I tried the Chardonnay at the Frank Family Vineyards where they were pouring their wine through a decanting system that looked like the Verso Vino system except that the shape of the receptacle was teardrop. I haven’t been able to find anything similar on the internet (which is surprising because I usually can find what I mean to). Next I tried a Schramsberg Brut. It was lovely and bubbly and soothed my soul. At this point, I needed to go sit down for a bit. Since there were no chairs I sat on the ground against the wall that formed the cave and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.