Atlantica - 01.06.2006, Side 38

AT L A N T I CA 37
Wine tasting at a posh winery might make you feel as though you’re
on par with Francis Ford Coppola and the legions of other absurdly
wealthy wine buffs. However, if a case of wine costing more than your
plane ticket and hotel accommodation leaves you searching for the back
exit to slink away unseen, then V. Sattui winery is more your speed.
“When you walk around V. Sattui you feel like, ‘Hey, I’m in Napa
Valley,’” says Bryan Kasper, who went to school near St. Helena, a small
town (pop. 5,100) situated in the middle of where Napa’s cabernet sau-
vignons, pinot noirs, merlots and zinfandels are produced.
V. Sattui is impossible to miss when driving down Hwy 29. The
winery stands out like a giant billboard alerting drivers to the largest
Chucky Cheese in the valley. It’s the polar opposite of Opus One. In fact,
if Opus One is caviar then V. Sattui is mayonnaise. Still, the winery is
alive with tourists picnicking beneath a branching oak tree, sipping wine
they’ve just tasted and munching on gourmet salami purchased at the
winery’s deli. Sparrows fly overhead. The reddest of roses bloom. The
winery is oddly romantic. And you don’t need to drive up in a Mercedes
to feel welcome.
“We love it here,” says Marie-Claude, a 25-year old graphic designer
from Quebec who is camping her way through California with a friend.
“If we didn’t have to return the rental car we would stay longer.”
Marie-Claude and her friend have toured many wineries in Napa. She
adored Sterling Vineyards for the view (you can ride a tram up a moun-
NAPA VALLEY a
tain) but “my favorite winery for tasting wine is V. Sattui,” she says.
“It all starts in the vineyards,” says Rick Rosenbrand, a large man
wearing a baseball cap over his floppy red hair, and dressed slovenly.
“Anybody can make a great wine. But it takes sound practice in the cel-
lar and top fruit.”
We’re in V. Sattui’s bottling room, and Rick’s leaning against a stack of
white boxes set on a pallet, next to a forklift. Tourists snap photos of the
empty green bottles bumping down the surprisingly tiny bottling line,
coming out the other end full of wine, covered by a label. I wonder if
this bottling room is just for show, a nod to the tourists.
“No, this is where we do it.” The machine’s capable of bottling “60
bottles per minute,” he says.
While he might look like the forklift driver, which is who I mistook
him for, the 45-year old was V. Sattui’s winemaker for over 20 years.
Now, he admits, he’s not sure what his title is.
I ask this local if Napa’s explosion from rural farmland to arguably
one of the world’s top wine-growing regions has had any negative
impact on the area. “This place was pretty quiet when I was growing
up. It was a nice place to live. Now, on the weekends, you have to queue
in traffic to get into St. Helena.” Then he pauses, “But you can’t argue
with the success.”
V. Sattui is one of Napa’s most successful wineries. It was voted Best
Winery in the Western US in the 2005 Critic’s Challenge. At the 2004
San Francisco is only about an hour away from Napa’s 390-plus wineries.
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