My Bride likes to have company over for dinner, even if they are not related to us.  She always gets a little hyper, she knows how to cook for her family, and she definitely knows how to cook for me, after that it gets a bit dicey, maybe I exaggerate.  My part of the formula is easy, I just have to pick out some wine.  A winery that had previously sent me some wine, asked if I would be interested in a new sample, and since I knew that they had read my caveat on “samples” I felt secure enough to say yes, so we would start with a bottle of Le Garenne Chenin Blanc Vouvray Loire Valley 2020 (and I am also looking forward to the Chocolate Rabbit that they enclosed with the wine on Easter Day).  As for the second wine, I went into our cellar and looked for something interesting that I had more than one bottle left and that was Cain Concept Napa Valley 1996.  I might add, that our friends for the evening are not really into wine, but they do appreciate what we serve.

For appetizers, my Bride did not go crazy, but we had a Cranberry cheese, and we also had a Duck and Chicken Liver Pâté on simple water crackers.  We started with a bottle of Le Garenne Chenin Blanc Vouvray Loire Valley 2020.  This wine is crafted by Jean-Marc Gilet and he now represents the tenth generation of winemakers in Vouvray.  In 2001, he took over responsibility for the twenty-seven-hectare estate La Rouletiere, and he is into organic farming.  Vouvray is one of the oldest and most respected appellations of France, planted back in the Middle Ages and awarded its appellation in 1936.  Chenin Blanc (or locally Pineau de la Loire) is basically the grape of the region, and the appellation covers the various styles of sweet, dry, still. and sparkling wines from eight villages around the medieval town of Vouvray on the northern banks of the Loire River.  The vineyards all enjoy free-draining topsoil, above deep tuffeau (porous limestone created during the Prehistoric age of the earth.  The wine has a pretty golden-yellow color and offered notes of limes, green apples, with traces of honey, bananas, spices, and chalk.  On the palette, this wine was off-dry with medium body and high acidity and offered tones of green apples, citrus fruits (with a soupcon of grapefruit), spices and a nice medium finish of limes and chalk (terroir).

We moved into the dining room for dinner, and began with a Caesar Salad, followed by Roast Beef, with sides of Armenian Pilaf and Sautéed Fennel and Onions.  Since the meal was during Lent, my Bride went to a baker and got an assortment of cookies, so that the heathen would be pleased, as the heathen only gives up, what is missing in the house during Lent.  I was looking forward to the Cain Vineyard and Winery Cain Concept Napa Valley 1996 and I opened the bottle, just prior to our guests arriving and since the wine was thirty-years old, I used my Durand, but the cork was firm and solid.  In 1997 the wine’s label was changed and since then it is Cain Concept “The Benchland” and it is a project to show what Cain Five would be, if it was not a mountain wine.  Cain began in 1980 when Jerry and Joyce Cain purchased 550 acres of the McCormick Ranch on Spring Mountain, where it was a sheep farm.  It is the top of Spring Mountain AVA and adjacent to the Sonoma border.  The first release was 1985. While Cain Vineyard is located at the crest of the Mayacamas Range overlooking Napa Valley, Cain Concept (The Benchland) is at the foot of the mountain side from Yountville to Oakville to Rutherford to St. Helena.  The fruit is harvested from the following vineyards: Beckstoffer, Cain, Claes, Kenefick, Stagecoach and York Creek.  The winery, heritage barn and housing on the property, as well as the 2019 and 2020 wines in the cellar, were entirely destroyed in 2020 by the Glass Fire, one of several wildfires that ripped through parts of Napa Valley.  This vintage was a blend of seventy-eight percent Cabernet Sauvignon, seventeen percent Merlot and five percent Cabernet Franc.  This wine like Cain Five requires over three years of production, before it is released.  The wine was still a deep-inky colored wine with a bright red rim, and no foxing or aging in the color.  The nose was still strong and offered notes of black and red fruits, scented with violets and traces of tobacco and spices.  On the palate, at the age of thirty, there was still fruit, but not as dominate, with tones of cassis, blended with mature tannins, still balanced and with a lingering finish of terroir.  I guess I should open the other bottle of this wine, and enjoy it, later this year.