Tag Archives: Napa County

Pride (Mountain) and Prejudice

  • Rolling vineyards, rolling hills; all beautiful
  • View from the picnic table at the top of Pride Mountain.

I admit to being a bit prejudiced about Pride Mountain Vineyards.  I like going there for the tasting, and I like their wines, especially their Merlot, which is one of the top 10 in Napa/Sonoma (IMHO). 

Lori and I took my mother wine tasting to Pride Mountain Vineyards a couple of months ago, just before harvest.  We were last there 3 years ago (and posted about the Pride visit). Mom was last there 25-30 years ago, before they built the beautiful tasting room and winery that’s now there.  We brought lunch with us, and picnicked before our tasting at the top of the hill.  Great views from there. 

  • The Pride caves under the mountain.
  • Pride Mountain straddles the Napa/Sonoma county line.

I like the way Pride does tastings.  You start with a white, at a table outside the tasting room.  (In years past, you would be inside the tasting room, but not with Covid-19 rules.)  Then you walk with your tasting guide towards the caves, stopping to see the brick line on the ground denoting the county line between Napa and Sonoma Counties.  It’s an interesting complication to their operations to straddle the county line, having to keep wine from one county from moving into the other county (or else paperwork is needed). 

In the caves, you get to taste both finished wine from the bottle and wine still aging in the barrels.  Typically, you’re going to get a taste of each of their red varietals:  Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.  However, which is bottle and which is barrel, which is Napa and which is Sonoma, which is pure varietal and which has been blended can change each time you go there. 

  • Rows of vines at the top of Pride Mountain.
  • Grapes are getting ripe!

After a nice long walk and taste in the caves, it’s back into the sunshine for a final taste at your table, and the discussion about which wines to purchase.  Pride does very well with Viognier and Merlot, and so that’s usually on our purchase list.  On this trip, they were sold out of Viognier, so a few bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon came home with us, along with the few bottles of Merlot.  Those are laying down, next to the Merlot from the last visit, waiting for the right “special” occasion (which could just be dinner for Lori and I!). 

Pride Mountain Viognier dessert wine.

What we did open, for dinner the next night, was a bottle of their Viognier dessert wine that we had purchased on our last visit.  A nice way to finish the weekend. 

At the time we visited, it was not clear what damage fires and smoke would do to Pride Mountain’s property and to the harvest. The last I heard from them, the fires had come all around the property, however, there had been only minimal damage. Regarding the harvest, they didn’t say, but I assume that they’re like most other Sonoma and Napa wineries and are only going to have white wines from the 2020 vintage, with most of the reds having smoke taint.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Pride Mountain Vineyards: Tasting and Picnic

Lulu chilling in the Pride Mountain tasting room.

Lulu’s weekend of wineries concluded with a visit to Pride Mountain Vineyards. Pride sits on the ridge between Sonoma and Napa counties; actually the county line runs through the vineyards and winery. This makes for some painful logistics, having to keep track of which county which grapes come from, and having to do paperwork if grapes and/or juice is transferred from one county to the other. Also, while it’s a winding road up the mountain to Pride (which is at about 2100 feet elevation), if you haven’t been completely turned around, it seems that the counties are on the wrong sides of the line, with Napa on the west and Sonoma on the east. It’s just that the county line is not even close to straight, so it is backwards up there. (I wonder what the history of that line-drawing is, and if it’s documented anywhere.)

Pride Mountain Vineyard tasting room.

We did an initial tasting in their tasting room. Most of the grapes are grown right there, the exception being the Chardonnay, grown in the Carneros region. Lori and I both thought their Viognier was excellent: not too flowery a nose, good acid and fruit, nice body. One of the best that we’ve had. Left there with a bottle of that. They also make a dessert Viognier by just fortifying the Viognier juice. This makes a dessert wine that is not too high in alcohol (less than 14%), not too sweet, not too syrupy. We also left with a bottle of that, and we don’t ever (well hardly ever) get dessert wines. Not that we don’t like dessert wines, just that we don’t usually drink them, so we don’t buy them. We also tried the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, which were excellent. And there was a 2001 Merlot open! This one had aged quite nicely; yes we brought home some of the current release Merlot.

Winemaker Sally Johnson-Blum gave us a tour of their cellars.

We then took a tour of their caves with the winemaker, Sally Johnson-Blum. They have about 20,000 square feet of cave space for barrels. As we went through, we stopped at some of the interesting barrels for tastes: Cabernet Franc from two different vineyard blocks, Merlot from different vineyard blocks, Cabernet Sauvignon field blend, and a couple more. A lot of fun tasting with the winemaker and getting her perspective on the different vineyards and varietals, what she likes about each, what she thinks about when she’s blending either the straight varietals or the Bordeaux style blend.

View from the Pride Mountain Vineyard picnic area.

Last, we had a picnic. They’ve got a few picnic tables essentially at the top of their vineyards. Tremendous view, and we had an excellent lunch of quiche, lox, salami, cheeses and fruit, together with one of those Merlots. Beautiful.

No veraison yet (July 30th) in the Pride Mountain vineyards.

By the way, grapes grow differently in different microclimates, different AVAs. Of course we knew this, but here was direct evidence. The previous day we were in the Dry Creek Valley and veraison had started; the grapes had started turning red. Not so at Pride. Sally mentioned that their harvest typically runs a couple of weeks later than that for wineries on the valley floors.

L’Chaim,

Larry