Since I've been travelling a lot for work, I haven't been visiting the boards, but I thought I'd drop a brief description of a nice tasting up in Napa on May 14th.

It was the official release party (chairty dinner) for the 2002 Neal Single Vineyard Designates.

So, to be brief, it was a great event and I had the great opportunity to try all the wines found in the six pack. Also, the vineyard owners for the Second Chance, One Lane Bridge and Wykoff vineyard were there. So it was nice to be able to talk to them too.

Bottom line: These are excellent wines. I'm very glad I purchased a six pack and I think anyone who owns these wines will be happy they bought them.

Of all six bottles, I was most impressed with the way the one lane bridge and the wykoff bottles were drinking, but the other four were awesome too. Obviously, they're all so young.

I didn't really go there to take formal notes, so I'm just going off memory. The dinner was excellent. It was nice to meet Mark. I talked with Pyang (from the boards), who was pouring some of the wines.

Other notes of interest:
During diner Pyang plopped down a magnum of 1985 Heitz Marth's Vineyard in front of me!

Towards the end of dinner they cracked open and poured several bottles of the 1997 Bryant Family!

Then we finished off with a few late harvests with some age on them.

Overall it was a great evening. Too bad we had to drive back down to Palo Alto that night, but I had to leave on a trip the next morning.

I'm definitely looking forward to opening some of that Neal wine---but not anytime soon.

-J