Adam F.
Yelp
This was one of many stops on my whirlwind wine tour of Napa/Sonoma a few weeks ago - I found it because it was listed on the Priority Wine Pass, but I made sure to visit because I saw they also make vermouth! As it turns out, not only do the make vermouth, they make three different *grappas*, too! Honestly, that was their saving grace, in my opinion - the tasting was normally $15 to taste 4 of their wines, and $25 to taste their other 4. Obviously I wanted to taste all 8, so with the BOGO from the wine pass, they still charged $25 to taste all 8 (shared with my wife). Honestly, I'd say all 8 were good, but agreed, none were stellar, especially for the prices. They were friendly enough, but if it'd just been a wine tasting, we would've left without buying anything, and would have felt like, while we enjoyed the tasting well enough, it certainly wasn't worth $25, let alone if I'd paid $25 and only tasted the 4.
On the other hand, if you pay for a tasting here, you can also taste an absolutely PHENOMENAL vermouth, and three equally phenomenal grappas (an unaged, a slightly-aged, and a super-aged, obviously in increasing order of expensiveness.) Honestly, I would probably have been happy if it'd been $25 to just taste those four, let alone $15 (if I'd just done the $15 tasting), so at *that* point, it becomes a much better (far less advertised) deal. I suppose they feel everyone who comes to Sonoma is just there mainly to taste wine, but seriously, I had a lot of great wine that trip, but zero other great vermouths or grappas (or indeed, any other vermouths or grappas at all). Super neat.
My only slight complaint, though not too big of one: if you only buy one bottle, 0% of your tasting is comped, you have to buy 2 bottles. And they have to be full bottles, the 375ml vermouth doesn't count. So I ended up being forced (yes, forced! :D) to buy about a hundred bucks worth of their products! Cause, *obviously* I was going to buy a bottle of vermouth, I just probably would have bought a 375ml, since vermouth doesn't last forever once you open it... but once the idea was put into my head that I could waive the tasting fee, I was *going* to waive the tasting fee, so $48 bottle of vermouth it was! So then I clearly had to buy a $45 bottle of grappa, too. (The grappa is great, but it wasn't $48 worth of great. Absolutely $23 worth of great, though!)
