Christmas Eve Wine

For us, it's become a tradition -- on Christmas Eve, we count our blessings and we eat beef. That might not be your choice, but it is what we have come to do. As it will be for everybody else, Christmas will be a bit different this year for us. It's been a strange year and the memories of houses overloaded with people will just not be a common occurrence this year. All that said, with our beef, we will still have wine. And, we must choose our wine wisely and well.

So, what do we know about beef? We know that it is red (sort of) and fatty, and usually somewhat salty. And, the ways that most people prepare it, it usually has even more salt and pepper, and sometimes some char (earthy notes) and sometimes some smoke. We need a wine that can handle all that.

For us, there are several choices. We could go to the Piemonte and have an aged Barolo. We could be in the southern Rhone and drink Chateauneuf du Pape loaded with white pepper and quite tannic to cut through the marbling in the beef while taming the saltiness. We have lots of choices. But, sometimes, we choose to go to Napa.

And within Napa Valley, we're heading north and very slightly west on Highway 29 from the town of Napa. Looking on either side of us, all we see are vineyards and wineries ... and certainly in any year but 2020, lots of cars on the road. This is a wine taster's paradise. While it's not what most people do, you could actually walk between wineries and visit many in day. And, as some people do, you can bike between wineries and hit a whole bunch.

Continuing our ride, we pass the French Laundry on our right. That storied restaurant has certainly made the news a lot lately. And, then we enter Oakville. On our left, we see an expansive vineyard, carefully maintained and seemingly guarded. We learn that the land there as well as the grapes that grow on it are among the most expensive in the US and outside of a few places in France among the most expensive grapes in the world.

The vineyard here is known as To Kalon or To-Kalon or at one time, Tokalon. There have been legal battles over it. Mondavi has a trademark, but Andy Beckstoffer claimed that the Mondavi claims to the land were far too expansive, so the vineyard area owned by Beckstoffer can also call itself To Kalon. There are technical differences in the refernces, but that's for the courts.

But, the land and the grapes. The land and the grapes are spectactular. What Andy Beckstoffer did on the advice of a winemaker and wine consultant was to plant Cabernet Sauvignon and only Cabernet Sauvignon. He planted a number of clones, but no other grapes. And, to quote another winemaker of an ultra-high end winery that sources some of its grapes from To Kalon: “I'm always looking for an excuse to drop the vineyard—it's so expensive! But it’s an amazing vineyard, and even the weakest sections produce some phenomenal wine. In poorer vintages you still get the opportunity to make great wine; lesser vineyards may give you great fruit in a year like 2012 or 2013, but not 2011. You get amazing concentration and density—almost like mountain fruit—but it has the roundness and big, rich character of valley floor. The raw material is insane!”

These are wines that last nearly forever. They are big and bold enough to handle the finest and richest steak, but rounded and smooth enough to be approachable young. The finishes on these wines often exceed one minute (meaning that from the time you swallow the wine until the taste and flavor ceases to evolve, more than one minute has passed). The flavors tend to be quite dark, yet nuanced. In short, they make steak so much better.

I'd love to drink a few of these wines per week. And, while I'm at it, I'd love to have Jeff Bezos' net worth. But neither is so.

So, for now, I'll stick to having this wine on special occasions only.