A Trip to a Napa Winery on the Silverado Trail

Earlier in the year I got the opportunity to drag the wife to be on a short trip around Napa, would have liked it to be a longer trip, but we did have lot of things planned that we wanted to do, so as you do, I bought several bottles home with me. The first winery we visited was the Black Stallion winery, which is situated on the Silverado Trail, in the Oak Knoll district which is the southern growing region in the Napa valley.

The 32 acres site originally housed an equestrian centre, the Silverado Horseman's Centre, hence the name Black Stallion, after several years of construction they opened there doors in 2007, the original indoor track now houses the wine making production, but if you look around closely you can still see remnants of the original horse stalls. At present they only produce in very small case lots, and unfortunately only available through the tasting room and there online store, which they are only able to ship within the US, however, I thought they are definitely worth mentioning in case you get to go to Napa and get the opportunity to visit them.

The two wines that we brought back with us were their 2008 Shiraz which we purchased; they only produce 510 cases of this wine, just to show you how limited there production is, and the 2009 Pinot Grigio from Monterey, which we’d been given.

On pouring the ‘08 Shiraz, it had a deep almost opaque ruby colour, with very pronounced aromas of dark fruit and spice, which was just amazing. On the palate you instantly got the flavours of dark cherries and black currants, then came through the sweet spices of clove cinnamon and a touch of black pepper, after that in the background you could also find the flavours of cocoa and violets coming through. This Shiraz was, if you hadn’t guessed absolutely stunning, it had great complexity and length of flavours that just came at you wave after wave, combined with a touch of acidity to make your mouth water and juicy tannins, the wine maker really had crafted a well balanced and beautifully drinking wine.

For the ‘09 Pinot Grigio, they only produced 610 cases of this particular wine, in the glass it had a pale apple white colour, with delicate aromas of peach, grapefruit and slightly florally characteristics. On the palate it was much more pear and grapefruit, with a hint of honey thrown in, than the peach aromas you got on the nose, with a good amount of acidity it was a well balanced and enjoyable wine, which would be great chilled on a really hot day.

As I’ve already said, these wines are not available in the UK, but if you are heading out to California then I would highly recommend a stop off at the winery, it was beautiful place, with a great winery and some fantastic wines for you to try!