Benovia Barrel Tasting & Dinner With Elizabeth
Sunday, March 7th was a beautiful day on San Francisco Bay. The sun was shining through clear blue skies and the weather was unseasonably warm. Unfortunately, the day started with a minor crisis. MY college buddy, Matt, was set to arrive the next day and we were to depart for Squaw Valley early Tuesday morning… or so I thought. When I got out of bed Sunday morning, I went to check on Matt’s arrival information for the next day and discovered that he was arriving at 7:00pm THAT NIGHT! My stomach fell through the floor: not only would this conflict with my plans to have dinner with my sister Elizabeth and her family that night, but it also meant that I had really dropped the ball booking Alissa’s return flight on Tuesday. Alissa would be pissed and I couldn’t blame her; she had dropped everything and flown out for 3 days together and now my blunder had cost us one of those days.
Fortunately, it all worked out: Matt stopped in the city to have dinner with Gabe while we ate with my sister in Moraga and Alissa stayed with her cousin on Monday. After scrambling to adjust our plans, we were still determined to make good use of the fabulous weather. After a brief hike through the Mt Tam Watershed, a fantastic outdoor brunch at the always delicious Half Day Cafe, and a quick tune-up of my skis at the local ski shop in Kentfield, we headed North for Santa Rosa and the Benovia Winery.
If the day had started with some potentially disastrous news, it had continued with some unexpected great news: it was Barrel Tasting Weekend in Napa/Sonoma! I discovered this after Alissa told me that JP and Meg had scolded her for going to the Bay and not going on some wine tastings/tours… of course this incensed both the perfectionist boyfriend as well as the cultured snob in me, so I decided to call Benovia (a little-known small Sonoma winemaker, but a favorite of ours since getting some inexpensive cases of their 2006 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from Perman Wine Selections in Chicago). I was disheartened when the woman answering the phone told me we couldn’t schedule a visit that afternoon, until she told me that it was Barrel Tasting weekend andthat wecould buy a ticket at the door for $30 that would give us access to their tasting as well as tastings at over 100 other wineries. Now that I know about BArrel Tasting Weekend, I plan to plan ahead and make a full weekend of it in the future; however, I knew we wouldn’t have time to go to any other tastings that day, but I figured the $30 was probably worth it for Benovia alone.
Incredibly, when we showed up at the winery with only 30-45 minutes left before they closed down the tasting for the day the owner Joe Anderson—who was greeting everyone himself—told us to come on in and taste the wine without putting down $60 for two tickets. Once word got out that we were from Chicago, it felt like the whole Benovia staff took us under their wing; they thought it was amazing that two Chicagoans had found their way to BEnovia at all, much less that we drank their Pinot regularly. Mike, the winemaker & partner, remembered doing a tasting at my favorite Chicago wine retailer Perman Wine Selections, across the street from my old apartment; he eagerly answered all my questions and even snuck into the backroom and brought out some of the 2009 Zinfandel futures for us to taste! Bob, the owner’s brother in law who was around to help out with the barrel tasting event, is from Chicago and made a point of coming over and talking to us for a long time. After he heard about how nearly a case of my favorite Benovia Pinot disappeared from my parents’ whine cellar, Bob made an incredibly generous offer to give us two of his bottles of the 2007 Bella Una Pinot Noir the next time he comes to Chicago. So not only does Benovia mean great wine, it also means good people.
After trying all they had to offer, and then some, we drove off for my sister’s place with a case of Pinot in the trunk and my wallet a bit lighter. As usual, I was running on Noyes time, i.e. a bit behind schedule, so in order to dodge traffic on 580 and save some time I decided to take highway 12 across Sonoma and Napa. Not my brightest idea ever. Several wrong turns and many stoplights later, we had taken over 2 hours to drive what google maps told me would have taken 90 minutes with traffic going on the interstate. Oops. I would recommend driving highway 12 through wine country if you are looking for a scenic drive, but don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that you’ll be saving any time doing so.
Once we actually made it to Elizabeth’s place—finally—we had a lovely meal. Norayr cooks a mean filet. As an added bonus, James’ girlfriend Ruriko had diner with us. Ruriko had just spent a month at Stanford (doing what, I’m not exactly clear) and this was her first night of a week staying with Elizabeth. I’m not sure exactly how much fun Ruriko had spending a week out in Boreaga—as Elizabeth lovingly refers to Moraga—but I do know that she was a big hit with Elizabeth and particularly with her kids.
