St. Helena, Napa Valley - Food Night is coming to you live, from the shotgun position of the sporty VW Jetta as we attempt to locate Togni Vineyards.*
* Let’s briefly touch on the proper pronounciation of this place, which the owners lend their last name to. As best I can tell, from listening to our hosts pronounce it, it is TAWN-yee. It is definitely not TAHG-nee… which is the way we had been pronouncing it. Linguistics experts we are not. Please forgive us. After some back and forth, we finally zero’d in on our target. You see, the enterances to wineries typically look something like this…
Or this…
Togni’s enterance? It looks like this…
Yeah. A simple gate with a padlock. No signage to alert you to your proximity to world class cabernet, almost as if to say “We let the wine speak for itself here.” It was later explained to us the gate is useful in keeping deer out of the property. So world class wineries don’t like the deer either... I knew I was going to like these people.
After calling the winery from just outside the locked gate, because we (obviously… and predictably…) forgot the combination to the lock, we coasted down a little hill to a charming little vineyard scene. There were lovely rolling hills, a house further down the hill and what looked to be a winemaking facility next to the “parking lot”. And when I say “parking lot”, what I really mean is the parking SPOT. It was immediately evident that this is not some high traffic tourist trap scenario. This is a small (2000 cases a year, max) family operated winery that the Togni family has taken much care and pride in cultivating.
The experience at Togni was a true highlight of our trip to California. Let’s have a look at we saw…
As we climbed out of the Jetta, Birgitta Togni greeted us and proceeded to show us around the property. I couldn’t help but think it’s probably a good sign that the last name of the person showing us around coincides with the name that is on all the wine produced here. Just an observation. I like to state the obvious sometimes, bear with me.
One of the first things we saw was this awesome medieval-looking door…
What do you think it leads to? I half expected to see a bunch of bearded fellas wearing fur garments sitting at a table drinking meade and gnawing at turkey legs the size of footballs on the other side of that door, but no… twas not to be. What actually WAS on the other side was far better (and less dangerous) than that. That door leads into…
… the barrel rooms. Pristinely clean barrel rooms, I might add. Here, the pressed and free run juices rest in new oak barrels… like this one…
It was here we got the INCREDIBLE opportunity to taste wine from said barrels (I believe it was the 2008 vintage)… a first for me to be sure. I figured we’d be tasting from bottle, obviously, but all of a sudden…
… there goes Birgitta with the “wine thief”, siphoning off juice and releasing it into glasses as I tried my darndest to suppress my inner 5-year-old that was desperately trying to illuminate the room with a joyous rebel yell. I mean, two days ago at that time, I was sitting in a stale cube while staring at a computer screen in St. Paul… and now here I am drinking wine out of a Barrel at Togni Vineyards that ROBERT PARKER drank out of. For you math majors out there… (Wine out of a Barrel at Togni) > (Cube Farm) x 1,000,000.
First we tasted the “free run” juice, which is the juice that is… well, think of this this way. You put a couple of tons of grapes in a tank. The ones on the bottom… they get crushed by their brothers and sisters sitting on top of them. So the juice resulting from that natural pressing is called “free run” juice. This juice is removed from the bottom of the tank via a valve or similar relief device, and is sometimes/often distributed back over the remaining grapes in the tank.
Next we tried the “pressed” juice, which is juice that is extracted from the remnants of the naturally crushed grapes via this bladder press…
I thought the free run juice was fabulous, but the pressed juice….. WOW. That stuff was
uber complex and fat and unctuous with massive amounts of structure and acid and sophistication. World Class, the
Togni cabernet sauvignon.
After Birgitta showed us around the barrel rooms, we exited the barrel rooms through a different door*...
* What is it with crazy wicked cool old doors at wineries???... and were led into the warehouse where we met Philip
Togni, gentleman, winemaker. Philip started making wine at
Chappalet back in 1960’s, and has been growing grapes on the 25 acre plot of land where he and Birgitta live since 1981. These were such “real” people, true masters of their craft, yet completely down to earth, humble and affable.
One of my favorite things about this family owned and operated business I found over in the corner of the warehouse. The label making “station”…. shown here…
I mean, can you imagine how the labels are put on bottles at a place like, say, Sutter Home? Or Yellow Tail? At Togni… there is a table in the corner with a roll of labels and a chair with no back to sit on. Soooooo charming. And real. Loved it.
As we made our reluctant exit, I noticed Philip was somewhere out of view, fudging with bubble wrap or some such thing. Then as we were about to head up to the car, Philip, every bit the gentleman, hands us a bottle of Tanbark cabernet that he has wrapped in bubble wrap and explains in his fabulously articulate and distinguished English accent “I thought you might be having a bit of lunch next, perhaps you might like to enjoy some of our wine with your meal.”
I mean………. Does it get any better than that?!?!? No, it doesn’t. So classy. For the record; we were late for our subsequent appointments, so lunch was quite rushed, and as a result we enjoyed the bottle at dinner that night.
Thank you to the fabulous Philip and Birgitta Togni…
… for your gracious hospitality. Making the connection between a wine and the people that make it takes the enjoyment factor of said wine up an immeasurable amount.
And so we made our way back up the hill, past the padlock, bound for more tasting appointments, knowing full well our day had already peaked.
