Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tobacco Road Cellars To Introduce Four New Wines In Stylish-Red Carpet Event


August 18, 2009 (RALEIGH, NC) – Tobacco Road Cellars, a boutique Napa Valley winery owned by Jason Earnest and Dusty Field of Raleigh, North Carolina, will introduce four new Cabernets during a stylish red-carpet celebration and silent auction to be held Thursday, October 8, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the RBC Plaza pool deck high above downtown Raleigh.

The event is entitled “Bacchanalle: A Cultural Intervention.” According to Tobacco Road Cellars co-owners Jason Earnest and Dusty Field, the evening will include tastings of the new wines, catered dining that will pair the wines with haut cuisine, music, VIP suites for the winery’s Regency Club members, and lavish decorations.

The evening’s silent auction will offers such items as an original handpainted surfboard by Raleigh artist Clark Hipolito of ArtCo Surf that will be signed by the Carolina Hurricanes, other signed items by such sports luminaries as the Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward, Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and various wine packages from Tobacco Road Cellars. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Frankie Lemmon Center School & Development Center in Raleigh.

Clark Hipolito has also created an original work of art for one of the Cabernets’ labels and will be unveiling his new series “Cultural Intervention” during the event.

Earnest calls Bacchanalle “an alchemist experience blending visual art, high design, fine wine and extraordinary personalities.”

The Cabernets Tobacco Road Cellars will introduced during the Bacchanalle event are “Vitality,” “Tradition,” “07 V” (honoring former NCSU basketball coach Jim Valvano with a portion of the proceeds supporting the Jimmy V Foundation), and the Private Reserve.

Earnest describes “Vitality” as a “deep, mid-red with violet hues with great blue fruit and black berry aromas, lifted raspberry and black cherry with dark, brooding notes of fig, coffee and spice. It’s an excellent mid-weight palate entry with dense fruit weight supported by heaps of fine-grained oak and fruit tannin. The wine has fruit-forward style that’s very well backed up by layers of deep, softly drying tannin.”

“Tradition” offers “sweet, ripe, black berry with a warm alcohol lift of spice and nutmeg,” he said. “It has rich, mouth-filling black fruit flavors with solid, blocky tannins. Very firm finish, drying but sweet at the same time. The Palate lingers and shows lots of classy French oak palate weight. Firmer acid helps lift the tannic finish, which will soften nicely over the next three to five years.”

Of the Private Reserve, Earnest notes, “This is a very solid, deep, dark red/black wine with purple hues. It offers aromatics of black fruit, chocolate, mocha and berries that draw you into the wine. It has a lovely solid entry with gobs of firm tannin. Its rich fruit weight is a class above other wines and supported by an amalgam of French oak flavors of vanilla, toasty oak and spice. It has a huge palate that just keeps going and going. Big blocky tannins appear a little proud at present, but given time it will soften into a true classic Napa Cabernet for those patient enough to wait.”

And the ’07 V is “supple, fleshy and very defined as berry fruits lead into a classy, sexy, fine-grained tannin finish that lingers on and on,” he said. “The French oak is evident but not obtrusive -- quite elegant and fine boned but overall very classy and seductive. It’s delicious!”

Tickets for the Bacchnalle event are $100 and only 250 will be sold. An after-party will also be held at Solas restaurant and lounge on Glenwood South for ticketed guests only. To order tickets go to http://www.bacchanalle.com/ or call 888.770.3635.

For more information on Tobacco Road Cellars, visit http://www.tobaccoroadcellars.com/.


About Tobacco Road Cellars

Award-winning Tobacco Road Cellars was conceived when two North Carolina-based entrepreneurs and wine enthusiasts, Jason Earnest and Dusty Field, went to Napa Valley to create a wine to give as holiday gifts. The results were so successful that they decided to create their own boutique winery committed to producing world-class wines from California grapes. The partners now have several years of bottlings and have been endorsed by Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrary.com, who called Tobacco Road Cellars’ 2005 Private Reserve “stupid good.” The winery’s 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon received the 2008 Gold Medal in the International Wine Competition held in Riverside, California. For more information visit http://www.tobaccoroadcellars.com/.


The origin of the word Bacchanalle:

Bacchanalle – pronounced bak-uh-ney-lee-uh – was coined by the Tobacco Road Cellars owners and Raleigh interior designer Clark Hipolito. It incorporates the root word bacchanalia that, in Greco-Roman religion, refers to any of the several festivals of Bacchus, or Dionysus, the wine god. And it mixes with the word, “Biennale”, which is Italian for "every other year" and can be used to describe any event that happens every two years. It is commonly used within the art world to describe an international manifestation of contemporary art -- for example, the Biennale de Paris, which was created in 1959 by AndrĂ© Malraux. The term is most commonly used in the context of major repeating art exhibitions. According to Jason Earnest of Tobacco Road Cellars, it also refers to Hipolito’s visual style for his design projects: “faux paint effects, banquet-hall tapestries and lighting, large furnishings, etc.”

Thursday, August 13, 2009

2007 California Pinot Noir is Unparalleled


In the September 30th issue of Wine Spectator Magazine, the cover story is on the best ever California Pinot Noir. The surge in quality for the over the last decade in California is a reflection of so many new wineries as well as emerging growing regions such as Anderson Valley, Santa Lucia Highlands and Santa Rita Hills. The 2007 vintage has been so well received due to the purity of ripe fruit flavors, finesse and complexity in aromatics. The flavor profile of many of the 2007 vintage display a range of flavors from wilted rose to wild raspberry, cherry and blueberry to more mineral and spice. Everything just fell into place with this vintage and the two most important factors were the perfect weather and low yields. The weather wasn't too hot and not too cold which allowed us to get the fruit as ripe as we wanted without pushing the sugar levels too high. The article claims that the 2008 vintage won't be nearly as good due to the frost damaged vineyards which is a benefit to how we make wine at Tobacco Road Cellars. One of our properties in the Russian River Valley was hit pretty hard by frost in the 2008 vintage and our vigorous vineyard management and planning saved our Pinot Noir that year by moving the entire production to three vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands. Our wines are tasting truly amazing in barrel right now and we believe will stand up quite nicely to the 2007 Russian River Pinot Noir that we made.



James Laube of Spectator makes a point to say that Sonoma is the place to begin when looking at what California Pinot Noir is all about, especially the Russian River Valley. One of his highly rated Pinot Noirs comes from Kosta Browne and Amber Ridge Vineyard in the Russian River Valley. He scored the wine an impressive 94 points and priced at $72. This makes us extremely happy to know that we are delivering mid 90's scoring wines for $49 to our customers and restaurants. Most recently the Pinot Noir has been picked up by such restaurants as Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse in Charlotte, NC and Dolce Vita Wine Shop in Greenville, NC. We greatly appreciate the continued support and look forward to continuing to make world class wine for each of you in the future.




Give us a call at the winery, 888.770.3635 if you would like to know more about our 2007 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley or any of our wines.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Coach K and Grant Hill Visit the Winery in Napa Valley


We had the fortunate opportunity to host Coach K, his family, Grant Hill, Michael Stewart and several Duke University supporters at Tobacco Road Cellars in Napa Valley this week. We greatly appreciate the interest Coach K has taken in our wines and story...We take great pride in our pursuit of making the perfect wine and look forward to creating a history of Tradition like Coach K has done at Duke University. We started this winery to share our wines with family and friends and obviously with the name Tobacco Road Cellars, had inspiration from several key people in the North Carolina area. The history of Tradition and reputation for excellence that Coach K has built with the Duke Basketball program over the years and the long time rivalry between Duke and University of North Carolina is a staple in the Triangle area of NC..."Tobacco Road". For us there was no better name of our winery than Tobacco Road Cellars and it has been a goal from day 1 to have Coach K as a supporter of our wines and our mission to share these wines with everyone we can. We set up lunch at Taylors in St. Helena and had the group of 25 over for burgers, fries and Tobacco Road's finest. That's how we like to do it...Black Tie and big fancy dinners are sometimes a lot of fun...but we would rather relax outside with a bacon cheeseburger and a bottle of Private Reserve. We brought the 07 Syrah, 07 Pinot, 06 Tradition and Reserve as well as a special treat...barrel samples of our entire 2007 vintage of Cabernet...Vitality, Tradtion, V and Private Reserve. We had a great afternoon and look forward to sharing our wines with everyone again soon. Coach K and Grant Hill were a major inspiration for us and hopefully we greatly appreciated them taking the time to come learn more about what we're doing at Tobacco Road on the west coast.