Wine tasting at Domaine Carneros, Alpha Omega Winery

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Today one of the members of Team Corkboard celebrated a birthday. As you might expect, we used the occasion as an excuse to do a bit of wine tasting.

As you’ll see from the slideshow included below, we started the day off at Domaine Carneros where we enjoyed a sparkling wine flight paired with tasty cheeses and dried fruits.

By far and away our favorite of the three wines (and the most expensive) we tried was the 2002 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs, which we found to be clean and crisp with nice hints of apple and lemon and a surprisingly lengthy finish. The 2002 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs goes for $85 per 750ml bottle at the winery and can also be found at a select few restaurants throughout the Napa Valley.

After snapping some photos and grabbing a quick bite to eat at Taylor’s in Napa, we made our way to our second stop.

Alpha Omega Winery in Rutherford has long been on our list of places to visit, but we’ve been holding out until the construction on the new tasting room was complete (the bulk of the construction concluded about five months ago). Upon stopping by this afternoon, we were not disappointed.

The new tasting room is beautiful, with high ceilings, large windows and plenty of open space for people to move about. The outdoor patio scene looked truly amazing, we absolutely would have opted to sit outside had the weather cooperated, with plenty of lush seating areas, wooden tables, fire pits and more all overlooking the vineyards and the on-site pond and water fountains.

We tried a variety of wines, including two Chardonnays (one un-oaked and one aged in oak barrels), a proprietary red wine and a couple different Cabernet Sauvignons. The wine that absolutely stole the show for us however, was (surprisingly) the 2007 Napa Valley Syrah.

A more middle-of-the-road Syrah, we didn’t get any of the white/black pepper notes typically found in bigger, bolder Syrah blends. At $62 per 750ml bottle, this 100% Syrah had subtle hints of vanilla and lavender on the nose and on the palate it shined with strong raspberry/strawberry jam flavor notes and a nice overall balance and structure.

TechTags Plugin [ Napa | Napa Valley | wine | winery | napa wine tasting | alpha omega winery | domaine carneros | 2002 Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs | Alpha Omega 2007 Napa Valley Syrah ]