The Napa Valley Vintners’ Association held its annual wine auction on Friday, the 21st of February, bringing together for the thirteenth year, industry participants consisting of eighty brokers and wholesalers, another eighty retails shop representatives, and seventy restaurants and one hundred wine critics and journalists along with the denizens of the wineries most easily recognized by any wine country tours participants who have traversed the storied Napa Valley wine country. Where Napa’s summer wine barrel tasting is a decidedly more casual affair, this auction is all business, drawing restaurant owners and sommeliers from across the nation and internationally with noticeable representation from Japan.
In advance of the relative spending frenzy given the economic recession – and I don’t think anyone at the event could have felt that anything in the outside world was slow given what was happening on the inside - the organizers of the event staged blind tasting of 2006, 2005, and 2004 vintages. Such efforts never cease to throw surprises at even the most seasoned and refined palettes, much as the blind tasting back in 1976 at the Tasting of Paris wine competition which put Napa Valley on the map and dethroned the French dominance of both red and white wine. Amazing things can happen when people aren’t pre-programmed by names, labels and reputations.
Throughout the evening there were more traditional events with assorted parties, tastings and wine launches. The most popular affairs were those where attendees could sample multiple producers’ products side-by-side and speak with the wineries’ owners, gain insight from the vintners, and generally regain the comfort of familiarity clustering around names, labels, and reputations once again.
