Geoff Gatto, Director of Vineyard Operations, is our very own fountain of viticulture knowledge. We’ve been very lucky at the winery, as Geoff is always willing to patiently describe every development in our two estate vineyards located in Napa Valley. He even uses terms that do not require an advanced agricultural degree to translate these vineyard updates into easily digested tidbits. (With one exception, Geoff still has us stumped on how to define soil series vs. soil variations – but that is a story and maybe…lucky you…a blog, for another time).

Recently, Geoff walked us through the practice known as “field grafting” while out in our Dollarhide Estate Vineyard. Field grafting is a technique that requires great skill and precision, think of it as grapevine cardiovascular surgery, that can provide tremendous benefits in the vineyard. In its most ineloquent description, field grafting is a way to take a pre-existing root and slap on the bud of a different variety. If perfectly executed and maintained, the grapevine will produce the grape that has been grafted on, not what had been growing before.

Have we confused you with our attempts at describing this Frankenstein-like science? Perhaps it’s best to watch the video and let Geoff show you how it’s done.

All of us at St. Supéry Estate are pretty excited about #SauvBlanc Day coming up on May 17^th and a lot of our conversations around the winery have turned to our favorite food and Sauvignon Blanc pairings. Rumor has it Pam, one of our spectacular wine educators, has the best fish taco recipe that she serves with our Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc. Luckily, we were able to convince Pam to reveal her top notch fish taco recipe so we can share it with you too!

Pam’s Baja Style Fish Tacos

1 lb white fish (Halibut, Cod and Tilapia all work well)
½ - ¾ cup Krusteaz pancake batter
½ – ¾ cup Mexican beer
3 – 4 drops of your favorite hot sauce
½ cup mayo
Lime juice (4 limes)
Salt & pepper
Corn tortillas

Mix pancake batter, beer and hot sauce together. Let sit for a few minutes.

Prepare white sauce: mix together mayo, lime juice, salt and pepper. Set aside to top tacos.

Heat canola oil on medium high heat. While oil is heating, coat fish in the batter. Reduce heat to medium and fry fish to golden brown.

Heat corn tortillas on a griddle, fry pan or bbq. Top with fish and white sauce. Dress with shredded cabbage, cilantro and tomatoes if desired.

Serve with St. Supéry Napa Valley, Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc and enjoy!

Meet the Chef

Meet the Chef - Pam!

Name: Pam
Employee at St. Supéry Estate for 8 years
Favorite Current St. Supéry Estate Wine: 2009 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
Favorite non-St. Supéry Wine: Goldeneye Pinot Noir
Favorite meal to serve surprise dinner guests: Seafood tostada topped with any grilled fish, black beans, broccoli slaw, jicama, cilantro, salsa and a squeeze of lime.

We checked in with Geoff, our Director of Vineyard Operations, to get the latest vineyard news. He happily reported that the buds are breaking in St. Supéry’s Dollarhide and Rutherford Estate Vineyards.

Our hillside vineyards are alive with the (very quiet, really mostly silent) sounds of Cabernet Sauvignon pushing through. The Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Chardonnay that were pruned earlier are on their way as well. While there have been some early bloomers among our Muscat Canelli, Semillon, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc vines, Geoff expects to see the majority of these vines beginning to push out in the next week.

Bud break in our Rutherford Estate Vineyard will follow shortly with Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Merlot leading the pack and Cabernet Sauvignon trailing close behind.  This is great news for those of you looking to visit us in Napa Valley in April – finally, some green on the vines. Spring has arrived!

St. Supéry Estate’s winemaker, Michael Scholz, is leading two live online tastings this week on ToutSuite with the help of beverage culture icon and Mutineer Magazine president, Alan Kropf.

Thursday, March 21^st – 4 pm PST/7 pm EST

Saturday, March 23^rd – 1 pm PST/4 pm EST

Join Michael and Alan online as they taste through some of St. Supéry’s newest releases, including this handsome group of wines:

New Releases featured in the online tastings: 2012 St. Supery Napa Valley Estate Sauvignon Blanc, 2010 St. Supery Napa Valley, Rutherford Estate Vineyard Merlot, 2009 St. Supery Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, 2012 St. Supery Napa Valley Moscato

Perhaps you find yourself wondering, “What do you mean ‘join’ them online?” Well, We suggest purchasing the wines and setting up a tasting at home with your favorite wino (the good kind) friends. We built a tasting kit (pictured above) that includes all the materials you need to taste at home (except glasses, you need those – and maybe ask your friends to bring some too). We even threw in some snack suggestions so you can snack and sip while you watch. You can purchase the kit online, at the winery, or if you’d prefer to buy from a local retailer – look for the wines available in your area with the Grappos app.

Once you’re set up with your wine and streaming the tasting, get to tweeting and chatting! Not sure what to say? Check out our tips on chiming in here.

Really. It’s that easy. Think of it as your instant access to St. Supéry Estate, our Awesome Aussie winemaker, and the Napa Valley!

Prefer to join us at the winery where the wine is poured for you and you get to meet our super knowledgeable winemaking & vineyard experts Brooke and Geoff? Watch the live video feed, taste the wines, and tweet along from the winery on Thursday and Saturday for $20 (complimentary to Wine Club members & Napa locals). Be sure to call 1.800.231.9116 to reserve your spot – seats are limited!

Does it get any better than that? Scott Tracy, our in-house sommelier and food & wine pairing guru developed this shortbread cookie recipe to pair perfectly with our 2009 Napa Valley Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. On cookie and wine taste testing day at the winery, the approval of this delicious combination was unanimous.

Try the recipe at home for a treat for your sweet.

Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Cookies

It’s official!

St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery is now certified both Napa Green Winery and Napa Green Land. Our Environmental Engineer, Joey Giordano, led the charge to raise our winery’s sustainability practices to meet and exceed the very high standards of the Napa Green certification. These standards, established by the Napa Valley Vintners, focus on building environmentally sound, sustainable practices that meet and exceed more than twenty local, state and federal land or production “best practices.” Certification in both the Napa Green Winery and Napa Green Land programs must be conducted by a third party. Through Joey’s leadership and hard work, St. Supéry Estate has joined the small group of industry leaders (less than 40 wineries) that are certified as a Napa Green Winery.

For more than a year, Joey worked to maximize the sustainability of the winery’s business practices by focusing on reducing energy, water and resources waste. Every fluorescent light fixture was switched to a more energy efficient variety. Every single incandescent light bulb and exit sign was replaced with LED fixtures and low flow fixtures were installed on every water faucet. St. Supéry Estate upped the existing recycling program to recover even more CRV recyclables and implemented the recycling of natural corks. St. Supéry Estate also implemented a new Environmental Purchasing Policy to ensure that all equipment and supplies we purchase are more eco-friendly. In addition to ALL of this, St. Supéry participated in “Spare the Air” programs and Joey worked tirelessly to get us onboard with carpooling to the winery in Rutherford. Joey’s work doesn’t end here though, as he is now dedicated to continuously improving our sustainable business and vineyard practices to not only meet, but ideally exceed, the re-certification standards of the Napa Green program.

St. Supéry Estate is proud to display our Napa Green Winery and Napa Green Land logos to mark these certifications. Be on the lookout for them on future wine labels.

‘Tis the season of holiday cocktail parties, large family gatherings, and cozy nights at home with loved ones. This also means, ‘tis the season of copious amounts of delicious food and superb wine pairings. And who couldn’t use a quick and foolproof, but still dazzling, recipe to bring to the table (if you will…) this time of year?

One of our favorite pairs was created by Scott Tracy, Guest Experience Manager, at St. Supéry Estate. Scott created an entirely new series of experiences, our Interactive Wine Classes, for guests at St. Supéry Estate. This treat, paired perfectly with our Napa Valley Estate Moscato, comes from Scott’s Wine & Cheese Pairing.

The recipe is as easy as this, lay out the ingredients, stack ‘em up, pour a glass of St. Supéry Napa Valley Estate Moscato. Snack and sip!

• Carr’s Whole Wheat Cracker
• Peach Preserve (1/2 teaspoon)
• St. Agur Blue Cheese* (3/4 inch square block)
• Organic Red Pear (thinly sliced)

* St. Agur is a cow’s milk French double cream cheese and may not be common in all markets, though cheese shops will most likely carry it. If you can’t find St. Agur Blue Cheese, look for other cow’s milk blue cheeses such as Bleu d’Auvergne, Fourme d’Amber, Gorgonzola or Maytag Blue. Sheep’s or goat’s milk cheeses are likely to be less rich.

The Upstairs Team, St. Supéry Estate’s canned food drive champions – from left, Megan, Marilyn, Bryan, and Nayeli (Michelle not pictured but equally important to the winning)

This November, we challenged our employees to form teams and compete to bring in the most non-perishable food items benefitting the Napa Valley Food Bank. With a weekly prize on the line, we were floored to see the generosity of our employees as donations piled up in our barrels. (We also learned people will do almost anything for a pizza lunch). This year, St. Supéry employees brought in more than 2,000 non-perishable goods that will help feed the hungry in Napa Valley. Our winningest of winning teams, The Upstairs Team (guess what part of the building all their desks are located in) was responsible for more than 1,000 of those items, conquering their competitors and earning their prizes fair and square week after week. It was a fantastic month of generosity from our employees and we are proud of everything we were able to give to the Napa Valley Food Bank this Holiday season.

Now we want to offer this opportunity to help the Napa Valley Food Bank to you. St. Supéry Estate will have a barrel in our tasting room available for your non-perishable goods. Each person who brings in 6 non-perishable food items is invited to enhance the tasting of their choice with two complimentary tastings of our single vineyard wines. This offer is good through December 21st and is a great reason to combine a visit to our newly renovated tasting room with an enhanced wine tasting and charitable giving.

A list of items accepted by the Napa Valley Food Bank can be found on our events page.

Geoff Gatto and his team have been harvesting St. Supéry’s estate grapes since 10:00 PM on August 27. Most of our harvesting is done at night and in the cool morning hours here in Napa Valley. Our vineyard team gets to sleep sometime in the mid afternoon (sometimes) and start again that evening. It’s a busy time of year for them – they look forward to catching up on their Zzzzs sometime in November.

Here’s what Geoff says: “We are bringing in the last of the Dollarhide Moscato fruit this Saturday morning, which will complete the white wine grape harvest of 2012 for St. Supéry. Sauvignon Blanc was finished earlier this week. Moderate weather led to even, balanced ripening and very good flavors in our white wine fruit. We picked the first parcels of Cabernet Sauvignon at Dollarhide on Wednesday, September 26. We will start picking Merlot at our Rutherford Estate Vineyard early next week. Continued optimal weather conditions promise great flavors from the reds as well.”

Vintage 2012 looks stellar so far! Visit our newly renovated winery this harvest season to catch all the Crush and winemaking action.

Harvest Update from St. Supery Estate’s Geoff Gatto, Director of Vineyard Operations

All of us at St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery are honored to be recognized by Wine & Spirits Magazine as one of their Top 100 Wineries of 2012. That means that out of the more than 10,000 domestic and international wines the Wine & Spirits Magazine’s panel and critics have tasted over the course of the year, St. Supéry Estate’s entire range of wines stood out as top quality wines.

When winemaker Michael Scholz returned to his position as winemaker in 2009, he brought with him a tremendous amount of knowledge gained from an 8 year sabbatical where he honed his winemaking techniques in a number of different wine growing regions. He combined his expansion in knowledge with his previous history with the Rutherford and Dollarhide vineyards to lead the charge to make the very best wines possible and to continue to improve them year after year. His first step was to make substantial improvements in our cellar, culminating with the completion of our new small lot “winery within the winery”’ prior to the 2010 harvest. His extraordinary attention to detail in the vineyard and in his winemaking is resulting in wines that we believe are the best we have made to date. This recognition from Wine & Spirits is a wonderful reflection of the hard work and focus on quality our vineyard and winemaking teams have employed over the last several years.

It is an honor to be recognized by Wine & Spirits editor, Joshua Greene, and his team who also awarded three of our estate wines 90+ scores in 2012. This year has been a great one, so far, for St. Supery Estate’s wines and wine critics’ opinions. See additional 90+ point scores on a range of our wines below:

Napa Valley Estate Wines:
2011 Napa Valley Estate Moscato
Wine & Spirits: 92 points

2007 Napa Valley Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Wine Enthusiast: 90 points, “Editor’s Choice,” “Top 30 Napa Cabs under $30”

Bordeaux-style Blends:
2007 Napa Valley Estate Élu
Wine Enthusiast: 93 points
Quarterly Review of Wines: 93 points

Single Vineyard Designates:
2010 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc
Wine & Spirits: 93 points, “Year’s Best,” “Terroir Top 100”
Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine: 90 points
Snooth: 92 points, “Best of the New Sauvignon Blanc Releases”

2009 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Petit Verdot
Wine Enthusiast: 90 points

2009 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Malbec
Wine Enthusiast: 92 points

2007 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
Wine Enthusiast: 92 points
Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine: 91 points

2009 Dollarhide Estate Vineyard Elevation
Wine Enthusiast: 92 points

2009 Rutherford Estate Vineyard Merlot
Wine Review Online: 94 points

2008 Rutherford Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
Wine & Spirits: 92 points
Wine Enthusiast: 95 points

To purchase our 90 point wines, click here.