What Did You Do The Night You Turned 21?

After our dinner at Quintessa, not to mention our long day of tasting and eating, our busses dropped us off at our resort and a few of us headed up to the bar for a night cap. Our group as a whole was varied and humorous, and this night one larger than life Texan (Ralph, Bottom) accompanied us into the Sommelier's Den to select our late evening's fare. He was as loud and boisterous as he was generous, and as we looked through the Reserve List, he chose some of the great rock crushers of Napa. I, meanwhile, struck a conversation with two young ladies celebrating their 21st birthdays with their mothers by visiting Napa to learn about wine. Always a sucker for educating neophytes on my passion for wine, we began tasting the wines that "the Big Guy" sent our way. Starting with three wines from winemaker Mark Herold, we began our foray: 2003 Bucella Cab (95 RP), 2003 Harris Estate Trevas Vineyard Cab, and 2003 Merus Cab (94 RP). This horizontal was merely a jumping off point for the ladies as they learned the intricacies of See, Swirl, Smell, Sip, and Savor. Their mothers watched as the eager learners began to open the door to fine tasting. We did not stop there. As Ralph got more interested in the list, we rolled out a 1999 Grace Cabernet, 1987 Phelps Eisele Vineyard Cab, and Oh I almost forgot... a 2002 Screaming Eagle (99 RP). For those of you unfamiliar, Screaming Eagle is arguably one of Napa's top cult wines, pricing out around one thousand bucks a bottle, and certainly nothing that I had ever had before. For the record, you could blind taste me today, and I could not tell the Screaming Eagle from any of the rest, but I had been drinking great wines for about 16 hours at that point. But, as the man says: "We do it for the stories we can tell". I do recall loving it, and I also know the girls knew by the end how much different that quality wines taste. So picture your 21st birthday, who you were with, and what you were drinking, and imagine the stories that Alex and Emily will be telling to their friends and children about the night they met "The Big Guy" and Da Mayor.