Joseph Phelps Winery

This is part 3 of the Napa Valley Adventures series. Other posts in this series: Ad Hoc and Bottega Ristorante

Imagine having a chance to play winemaker for an afternoon.

A chance to sit in your own "wine lab" and experiment, tasting individual flavor components from single origin wines, and then mixing them according to your preference.

Better yet, imagine you were using the same components used to make the winery's own very special, very expensive signature wine.

The Joseph Phelps Winery in Napa Valley holds many different kinds of interesting wine classes and workshops. The inner chemist in me was drawn to this "Make Your Own Insignia Blend" class because it looked so much more interesting than a basic tour. Better yet, we would be able to taste elements of the wine that we'd never be able to taste anywhere else.

The class is held inside their main tasting room. As soon as you enter, you see that each place setting already contains six glasses full of small amounts of red wine.

These are the individual components of the Insignia, the signature wine that Joseph Phelps Winery makes. From left to right, we tasted the following components, each from a single vineyard:

2008 Merlot
Oak Knoll District
Napa Valley

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
St. Helena Ranch
St. Helena (Napa Valley)

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
Suscol Ranch
Napa Valley

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
Las Rocas & Barboza Ranches
Stags Leap District (Napa Valley)

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
Banca Dorada Ranch
Rutherford (Napa Valley)

2008 Petit Verdot
St. Helena Ranch
St. Helena (Napa Valley)

The individual components are never sold to the public. Instead, they are blended together to make the signature Joseph Phelps Insignia, which contains 89% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Petit Verdot, and 4% Merlot. Of course, we don't know the secret combination of the the ratios of the different Cabernet Sauvignons!

It was definitely interesting to taste the individual components. The Merlot definitely has the deepest fruit, while the Petit verdot is the complete opposite - almost harsh and acidic in a way. The different Cabernet Sauvignons tasted much more similar (it is the same grape after all, just different terrior from each of the regions), yet you could definitely taste the differences between the different regions.

It's pretty incredible how the mere soil from plots that are only a few miles apart can make such a difference.

After tasting all the wines, the real fun part began! Based on our own preferences, we tried blending our own wine. Each person was given a pipet that could hold 10mL of wine.
We then mouth pipetted various amounts into a glass and blended them to see how they would taste. For fun, Bryan first tried making a wine that was equal parts of each component. He quickly conceded that it wasn't that great.

Similarly, my random blends were OK, but didn't taste that amazing either.

Finally, they poured us a sample of the actual Insignia wine. Not surprisingly, it tasted a lot better than any of the blends we had tried making. Of course, it benefited from the fact that it had been kept at the perfect temperature and served in the perfect glass. Still, I think we've decided to keep our day jobs for now and not become winemakers!

Overall, we had tons of fun at the wine making seminar. It's just a bit different from a normal winery tour + tasting that you'd get.

Furthermore, on top of tasting all the components, you do get to taste several other Joseph Phelps wines. So it's sort of like a normal tour + tasting but with a fun and unusual twist.

Afterward, you get to hang out on the patio overlooking this gorgeous view for as long as you like.