Good Morning!

3rd stop on our day trip in Napa was Crocker & Starr. I met Pam Starr the winemaker about a year and a half ago at a Women for Winesense event in Napa and tasted her wines and I have had Crocker & Starr on my must visit list ever since the first sip. Pam has a very causal energy but as soon as she started to speak about her wines, I swear she had a beautiful blue and white aura…not like the weird Touched by an Angel thing…but like you can feel her passion and her wines were so elegant and rich I was in love with both reds she was serving that day.

I called ahead to see if we could schedule a tour and spoke with Marcy and we could walk the vineyards and enjoy many wines in a private tasting room, so that is exactly what we did. It is winter in Napa and kinda a grayish day, but the brilliant mustard is in full bloom. If you are not familiar with the mustard plant, it’s the bright yellow wild plants growing in between the vines from late January until about bud-break in the spring.

I had read up on the Crocker & Starr brand and I knew that the land was originally the site of the Dowdell Brandy Distillery and the distillery was closed when prohibition hit. But now they use that site for the Casali or House of Celebration. All their wines are estate grown and they are sustainable and organic and they have over 100 acres. Charlie Crocker bought the land in the early 1970’s and in 1997 Pam Starr and Charlie became partners and have been making some of the most balanced wines I have ever had.

We arrived and we were ready for fun and Marcy had wine waiting for us to enjoy on the porch and she gave us a quick history before the tour and of course being women, we had to all visit the little girls’ room and while I was inside, I was able to say hi to Pam Starr…this was a thrill for me, I kinda doubt she was as excited, but I had been tasting all morning, so my enthusiasm was even more elevated than my normal.

After the vineyard tour we headed to the private tasting room and it looks like a banquet room from a castle (it’s quite nice). We started tasting and each wine was bright, pure and elegant. I keep using the word elegant with the wines of Crocker & Starr…when I looked back at all my tasting notes, I used the word elegant and balanced 14 times..I really enjoyed these wines and one of my pals ended up joining the wine club to have wines shipped back to Texas. I ended up buying 2008 Cab and 2008 Cab Franc, I wanted to buy some Sauvignon Blanc but for some reason I forgot…D’oh!!! I mean their 2005 Sauvignon Blanc was rated in the top 100 wines that year…I need to go online and have them send me some STAT!

If you are looking for a beautiful tasting experience without the packed tasting bar and if you like a more intimate tasting of truly fantastic wines…Make a point to set up an appointment and spend an hour with the folks at Crocker & Starr.

I hope you are loving the day we had in Napa as much as I have…Tomorrow, I wanna talk about our afternoon snack at what used to be Taylor’s refresher and the Merryvale winery…

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi