I don’t know about you, but I get an avalanche of emails constantly, but one from a fellow wine blogger caught my eye about a wine tasting of J Vineyards wines. I remember fondly the first time that I tried J Vineyards Brut, as we were sitting at the bar at Bacco’s enjoying a couple of plates of Beef Carpaccio in the traditional manner. The bartender and beverage buyer at the time touted me on a glass of bubbly to go with our order, and I was amazed that it was from California. Bacco’s has the largest Italian wine list in the state and could rival almost any restaurant in the country. Here was this new winery making sparkling wine and we were having the fruits of their first bottling and it was perfect. Now my Bride gets rather impulsive at times and within the week she had bought a six-pack of this new wine that blew our socks off.

Most of the time when I get notices from this particular wine blogger about wine tastings, I am usually already committed to something else for the evening. We seem to be book so far in advance that I miss a great many wine tastings, so I guess I need a clone of myself. My Bride was booked for the evening, but I was free, so off I went to wine shop D.vine Fine Wines not far from the house.

J Vineyards originally only made their Brut offering for the first ten years and now they offer thirty-two different wines. The tasting began with two different sparkling wines. The J Vineyards Cuvee 20 NV is commemorating the twentieth anniversary of their sparkling wine. The wine is made from their Russian River Valley grapes which is part of the much larger Sonoma County. As we were told by the winemaker this wine is a blend of half Chardonnay and half Pinot Noir and then the math got a little fuzzy, because there is also a touch of Pinot Meunier. The fruit was harvested in 2013, bottled in 2014 and two years later the disgorgement to make the wine Brut, as you can assess this wine is made in the Methode Champenoise and they really want their product to be in the French manner, even to the point of including the Pinot Meunier. The second wine that we tasted and it really should have been the first, was the J Vineyards Brut Rosé NV. Once again, the fruit was all from the Russian River Valley and again with the fuzzy math, because this wine was made from sixty percent Pinot Noir and forty percent Chardonnay and a touch of Pinot Meunier. This wine spent three years on the lees before bottling and then at the time of the “Champagne Dosage” they added two percent Pinot Noir still wine for uniform color. What a great way to start the evening.