Hestan Wines Highlight Festive Spring Dinner

We celebrate Spring with four premium wines.

“Spring Into Fun” was the theme of our recent wine dinner, which featured wines from Hestan Vineyards paired with gourmet small plates. Hestan is a picturesque Napa estate named for owners Helen and Stanley Cheng whose passion for fine wine and love for Napa Valley's charm led them to purchase the former cattle ranch in 1996. Stanley pioneered hard-anodized cookware in the 1970s, so we saluted this wine with a culinary tour de force. 

The evening began with some Premier Cru Champagne with panko-coated cauliflower florets and chimichurri two ways. Our daughter Rachel provided the amuse-bouche as well as the dessert. Delicious!

Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears in puff pastry appetizer were paired with the 2022 Hestan Sauvignon Blanc. This complex wine gets six months of aging in stainless steel and neutral oak. It has aromas of white blossoms and flavors of pear, honeysuckle, and lemon.

The 2020 Hestan Chardonnay comes from the San Francisco AVA. Appropriately enough our next dish was accompanied by homemade sourdough bread made with a starter from San Francisco. The garden salad was dressed with tarragon vinaigrette and the bread was served with truffle oil. This Chardonnay has ample oak and offers notes of apricot, vanilla, and toast.

The stunning 2019 Vincent Christopher Pinot Noir was our next wine offering. It is a single-vineyard wine from Sonoma Coast made with Dijon clones 113 and 828. The label was created for the Hestan line of Pinot Noir and is named for the Hestans’ two sons. Our dish was served with seared snapper and fruit salsa made with apple, strawberry,
and basil. We tip our hats to winemaker Jeff Gaffner for creating a beautiful mélange of cranberry, black cherry, cedar, and herbal tones. I would have enjoyed sipping this all night.

The 2019 Hestan Grenache, served with grilled skirt steak and Mojo sauce, surprised our guests. They didn't expect the intensity and rich flavors. The wine is made with whole-cluster fermentation and is aged 15 months in neutral oak.  It was an ideal match with the wine displaying pure raspberry flavors, plum, and herbal notes. 

Hestan Vineyards delivered a premium wine experience that delighted our dinner party guests.

Vintage Sonoma County Pinot Noir An Elegant Experience

Sonoma County wine shines in these two bottles of Pinot Noir.

A Tale Of Two Regions

There’s nothing like Pinot Noir to accompany a meal, sip by itself, or just to ward off the wintertime blues. We recently opened two bottles of single-vineyard Sonoma County Pinot Noir from two regions – one we know well and one that’s new to us.

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Russian River Valley is one of our favorite wine regions and the Pinot Noir from there is extraordinary. When we last visited Sonoma a few years ago, we stopped at Balletto and tasting their wonderful range of wines.

Sonoma’s Russian River Valley earned AVA status in 1983, and comprises 15,000 vineyard acres. By far, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel top the charts in this region. The heart-shaped AVA doesn’t follow the path of the Russian River exactly, but reflects a sweet spot that’s cool, but not too cold.

Balletto Vineyards started as a vegetable farm in 1977. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s additional land was purchased and by 1994 it was the largest vegetable farm in Northern California – producing more than two million cases of vegetables per year at its peak.

After weathering several storms and foreseeing California’s growing water shortage, John and Terri Balletto made the decision to convert to grape growing. Wine grapes are less water-dependent than other crops. We’re quite glad they made the change. Today Balletto produces 20,000 to 25,000 cases of premium wine.

Rugged And Remote

The Fort Ross-Seaview AVA was carved out of the larger Sonoma Coast AVA in 2011. It is remote and rugged and few of its wineries are open to the public. It does produce some of Sonoma County’s most sought after Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Although just a few miles from the chilly Pacific, its 500 vineyard acres bask in warm sunlight and it is above the damp belt of fog that often covers the Russian River Valley.

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Wayfarer Vineyard was founded by acclaimed Napa winemaker Jason Pahlmeyer. After vintage upon vintage of powerful red wines, he became enchanted with Pinot Noir and the wines of Burgundy. Helen Turley, who made wines for Pahlmeyer, learned that Wayfarer, an organic farm on the remote Sonoma Coast was for sale. Pahlmeyer purchased it, completed planting in 2002, and released his first Wayfarer wine in 2014 (earlier wines were labeled Pahlmeyer).

Honestly, the price tag for Wayfarer Pinot is a bit above my usual range. I acquired it through Underground Cellars, where you make a purchase without knowing the specific bottles you will receive until after you make the purchase. (Although you will see the large listing of bottles from which your bottles will be selected.) I was really pleased when I learned I bought this beauty.

Balletto 2014 Pinot Noir Burnside Road Vineyard

Bright cherry flavors enhanced with lavender and violets. This is a medium-weight Pinot with spicy accents and a delicate finish. Pleasing oak lead into the finish.We were very pleased with the condition and this single-vineyard wine could have aged even more. It’s become even more beautiful than when we tasted it at the winery in 2018. There were 630 cases produced.

Wayfarer 2012 Pinot Noir Wayfarer Vineyard

We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were sipping history. This bottle is from the first vintage of Wayfarer Pinot Noir. It includes Jason Pahlmeyer’s signature on the label (just printed, not signed). This is a blend of the vineyard’s 12 clones. It offers black cherry and light oak with elegant fresh red berries. Dazzling from the first sip, it’s a lovely ride through the mid-palate, and right on to the end. The acidity keeps it vibrant and the minerality gives it an exotic allure.

Korbin Kameron 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma Valley

From time to time I’ve mentioned Underground Cellars in this blog. I’ve done it for good reason, it’s a fun way to score bargains on wine.

The way Underground Cellar works is pretty unique. They create offers, which you can purchase per bottle at a minimum price. For example, mine was called something like Unique Reds, and the bottles that could possibly be included are listed on the site.

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Here’s what’s different than most wine retail sites, you can buy as many bottles at the minimum price, but almost every other bottle is an upgrade. The minimum bottle price of the wine deal was $28. The other bottles I received were priced at $30, $33, $36, $60, $69, and $86. That’s quite a score.

The Korbin Kameron 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon from Sonoma Valley featured here was $60. The other wines in the shipment were two other Cabs, two Pinot Noir, one Grenache, and a Cab Franc.

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The system isn’t perfect. One 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon that was part of the shipment never arrived. After waiting for several weeks I contacted them and they agreed to send a 2008 bottle from a winery I really like. However, the bottle has “jumped the shark,” and was completely ruined.

The Korbin Kameron is a delightful Cabernet.  On the nose, there is earth and oak. For us, the beautiful part of the wine was a caramel tone to the midpalate. There are layers of sour cherry and leather. The tannins are smooth with a long finish.

The grapes are from Moonridge Vineyard and it has a not-overblown ABV of 13.8. This is a producer I will keep my eyes open for – and for Undergrounds Cellars deals as well!