Wine clubs have advantages, especially if you live near a winery, enjoy drinking wine, and like to support an industry that is seeing some dramatic shifts in consumer preferences for alcoholic beverages. Membership tiers differ according to how many bottles of wine you order and the frequency of delivery and include member perks like guided vineyard tours, winery tastings, new vintage release previews, and members-only events. Some wine clubs hit the road with wine pairing dinners for their members, hosted by a winemaker at special event spaces or restaurants across the country.
This spring, Ehlers Estate from Napa Valley’s St. Helena invited me to celebrate the release of its Sylviane Estate Blanc white wine with winemaker Adam Castro. NYC metro-area club members and I enjoyed wine, wine pairings, and lots of good times at Peasant, where Chef Marc Forgione prepared succulent baby roast pig. Scoring chat time with Adam between sips of wine made me think that “wine clubbing” might be the way to go, and thus this article came to be.
But first, some history about Napa Valley’s Ehlers Estate. It’s an organically farmed, 42-acre vineyard dating back to 1886, whose small lot world-class wines are made from Bordeaux grape varietals. The winery changed owners several times before it was bought in the 1900s by a French couple, Jean and Sylviane Leducq, looking for a vineyard they could style after a traditional Bordeaux chateau. Over several years, the vines were replanted with select clones and rootstock. As Ehlers Estate’s Head Winemaker, Adam Castro channels the owners’ winemaking philosophy, sustainability, and authenticity. The loamy soil and geophysical orientation at Ehlers provide exceptional growing conditions in Napa Valley, a key characteristic in Adam’s personal wine preferences. But let Adam take it from here.
What was the inspiration for Sylviane Estate Blanc?
The inspiration for Sylviane was primarily the site, which has the capacity to produce a white wine of exceptional quality, provided everything fell into place at the right time. Sylviane Leducq was a woman of incredible taste and personality, and after her husband passed, she forged ahead with the vision of the winery. Like any wine-lover, I know that many of the world’s greatest wines are not red, but white and I focused on making a white wine—87% Sauvignon Blanc, 13% Sémillon—with length (a long finish) and layering, as opposed to an immediate impact from the first sip, and a delicate, meaningful body. For me, Sylvanie’s aroma is nuanced with citrus blossoms, jasmine green tea, and sea spray. In the mouth, it’s a delicate balance of minerality leading to stone fruits, Bosc pear, lemon zest, and beeswax.
Is your personal taste profile for wine European-Bordeaux style wines?“I have a diverse background spanning New Zealand, Chile, Australia, and France, which brings a wealth of international experience to the winery. I have journeyed and cycled through several iterations of taste and disposition. I often joke that I think I might have become a worse taster over time in that I no longer start from a deductive approach, looking for the things that I don’t like, but instead default to an additive approach in identifying the features that I do like. I am like anyone else, my tastes evolve and change over time, as I age!
A few years ago, you organized a comparison tasting at NYC’s Gotham Bar and Grill where you highlighted the familiarity between Bordeaux wines and Ehlers Estate.
The premise of that tasting was to highlight the familiarity between wines that share a match of variety and generic soil composition, but not continents, as opposed to the typical better-or-worse competition, in a blind one-on-one format. We sampled Chateau Lafleur, Belair Monange, Pichon Baron, and the results were better than I could ever have hoped for, underscoring the importance of understanding the sensory impact of soil on wine and joining these two components properly to form a compelling outcome.”
Do you keep an open palate about wine?
Yes, I consume almost everything I can get my hands on!
Do you ever have a cocktail, and if you do, what is it?
My go-to is a Boulevardier, and historically, I gravitate towards whiskey-based cocktails, but recently I have been very interested in Amaro, a bittersweet Italian herbal liqueur that adds depth to some cocktails like a Negroni and a Black Manhattan.
What would be a memorable dinner for you?
For me it’s about what fits, that the food and drink integrate with the external conditions of season, location and individuals in a way that I become almost unaware of them, they form natural points within an orchestration that occasionally rise up to grab my attention for precisely the right time and reason and without consciously knowing even inspire new thoughts, feelings and threads to pull on, but only with rare exception become themselves the cornerstone of the experience.
Current release Ehlers Estate wines include its flagship 1886 Cabernet Sauvignon, J. Leducq Cabernet Sauvignon, Portrait Red Blend, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Sylviane Estate Blanc.
