Summers Estate Wines in Calistoga is a delightful, friendly winery to visit and we highly recommend it! Be sure to try the Charbono and the 2007 Diamond Mountain Cab. Summers Estate Wines has one of the friendliest, most helpful and informative wine educators in the Valley, named Graham. They also have some very good wines, quite reasonably priced for Napa Valley and you may taste six of them for only $10 or have the fee waived with each bottle of wine you purchase. (They are also in the Napa Neighbor Program.) Since any red wine drinker would want to leave with at least one bottle of the Charbono, that means a free tasting for at least one person.
We started our tasting off with the very nice Summers 2008 Reserve Chardonnay at $22. This was aged in French Oak for ten months. It has no malolactic conversion and was a dry chardonnay with some apple on the palate and a distinct touch of oak. Summers is famous for their Charbono and we tasted the Summers 2008 Charbono which sells for $28. This is an Italian varietal that is not very common in California. It was plum colored, full bodied, with soft tannins, mostly blackberry with a nice finish. Very nice and an interesting varietal. We also really liked the Summers 2008 Estate Zinfandel, at $34, with its cherry nose and soft tannins. This had a nice mouth feel and was not as jammy as some Zinfandels. Although we are both Petite Sirah fans, we tend to like more substance, tannin and pepper than we found in the pleasant, fruity Summers 2007 Petite Sirah. It was decent, but not in the style I like. The Summers 2007 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon at $45 was decent enough, well balanced with mostly cherry on the palate. Much more to my liking, however, was the excellent Summers 2007 Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon at $70. Dry with very good tannins, it was an interesting, complex mountain wine with blackberry and some minerality. It should pair well with steak, although I enjoyed it on its own. Although neither of us are very fond of most sweet wines, we both liked the Summers 2008 Knights Valley Petite Sirah Port Style Wine at $36. Other visitors to the winery were raving about it. My favorite of all, though, was the 2007 Diamond Mountain Cab.
Calistoga, CA 94515
(707) 942-5508
(707) 942-5508
(707) 942-5508
(707) 942-5508
Visited 11/23/2011
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