At WineStyles last night, we tried some nice wines made by a full time firefighter in Napa. Di Angelo is the gentleman's name, and he made a very flavorful El Dorado County Sauvignon Blanc with layers of tropical fruit and good herbaceousness, a decent entry level zin, a quite good "Shake Ridge" Zinfandel with dark plum and blackberry fruit, balanced alcohol, and a nice mouthfeel, and a decent "barrel sample" of his 2007 Napa (basically Oak Knoll-Hagen Road for locals) Cabernet that has a lot of potential. Nice guy-good to see the little guys doing something good!
I also opened a
2002 William Harrison Cabernet Franc that was showing really quite well. It's too bad I can't afford to stay in their wine club anymore
Opened with a bit of funk, which blew off leaving a very smooth, lean, quite elegant red and blue fruit Cab Franc. Warning: this wine did show a noticeable herbaceous/green pepper element, but this flavor was well integrated with the fruit and supported the overall feeling of the wine. A very classy Napa Cab Franc.
...(Humans) are unique in our capacity to construct realities at utter odds with reality. Dogs dream and dolphins imagine, but only humans are deluded. –Jacob Bacharach
