
The wine tourists who spend a day or two hopping from winery tasting room to winery tasting room along the Napa strip may come back home with souvenirs of big parking lots, stretch limos and glitzy tasting rooms. But one of the things which surprised me in this California wine region is that in spite of the full-blown commercialism of the area along highway 29, the region retains an almost intact authenticity as soon as you take a side road, like Silverado Trail for example.

Farella-Park is one of these quiet family wineries you can find on the back roads (you better have a good map, though). It is still very close to the town of Napa (east of Napa), right near the wooded, provencal-looking foothills of the Vaca mountains. This visit was planned by fellow blogger Alder Yarrow, of Vinography, who spent time with us in spite of his busy schedule that weekend (this was the Napa Valley Wine Auction weekend). We were staying a few days in the region at the Bothe Napa Valley State Park north of St Helena (great campground !) and Alder went there in the morning with his wife Ruth to meet us. Meeting in the real world someone with whom you only communicated online before, is great ! He is the same person I knew from his weblog and emails : Non-pretentious, easy going and eager to learn...

B. and me step into Jack's car (Jack from forkandbottle), who spent time with us too, and whom we met the day before (a first meeting too, after having known each other online for a year or so). We follow Alder's car on the beautiful and quiet back country to Farella's vineyards. The winery looks provencal, with its tiny windows, thick walls and roughcast exterior.
The estate was started by tom's father, Frank Farella in 1985 and Tom joined for good in 1991. He had his training at UC Davis, worked at Preston Vineyards from 1983 to 1989 and also spent time (1989) in France, in Burgundy. When he worked at Domaine Jacques Prieur there, he had a very different perspective from the UC Davis teachings, this was more like rusticity and tradition. UC Davis is very scientific, which is very good for chemistry and oenology (by the way, Fresno State U. is better for vineyard management) and he felt he had to find his place between these two worlds.

and I am often amused at the loss of temper some of them show for example when writing about french wines (but bullying must be so fun)...







Vineland's vineyards here have the highest elevation compared with other estates around. Total surface of the estate : 75 acres of which 45 in vineyards, the rest in woods. Average production : 45-55 000 cases.

you can get a great bottle of wine (your own wine!) for a cost (including the cask/year cost) of 8 dollars or lower, when common prices for quality wines start at 30-40 dollars around here...
in Ottawa heading to Bernard's basement winery. Ottawa by the way is one of the towns with the highest ratio of amateur winemakers, partly due to the fact that wine lovers want to circumvent the limitations of the retail/import monopoly in Ontario, 



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