We love to have Michael Ballard here at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 sales@clevelandparkwine.com www.clevelandparkwine.com Tel: 202-363-4265 ). He was nice enough to volunteer to come and pour his SAVANNAH-CHANELLE Pinot Noirs from California almost three years ago back in early February 2006 I believe. He poured perhaps five single-vineyard Pinots back then.
It's now Saturday January 3rd, 2009 at 7:55 PM here at Cleveland Park as I write this, almost three years later . We have two SAVANNAH-CHANELLE wines currently in stock : the 2002 Armagh Vineyard Sonoma Coast, $36.49 and the 2003 Russian River Valley " Tina Marie Vineyards ", $57.99. We will talk to our local rep Chris Pigott of the Country Vintner to see what wines are currently available from Michael as we like to have a selection of his and his wife Kellie's wines. They are now specializing in really good California Pinot Noir and stopping making as much variety with the other grapes like Syrah and Zinfandel.
I like the more polished, reserved elegant style of the SAVANNAH-CHANELLE wines. For the most part I find them to be more refined and always balanced ; more European in style and almost always best when served with foods that they complement and never detract from. This is real winemaking in my humble opinion. I always want wines that taste good with food and do not fight with or displace it. The Pinot Noirs were excellent in this manner : all five different and displaying both the soil and the climate that the Pinot grapes were grown in. Just writing about them now is getting me excited to try some of the new vintages.
Michael, what's going on now? What's hot and exciting and that I cannot afford not to know about now at SAVANNAH-CHANELLE?
One little fact about Michael that I did not know until our Ardeo dinner together : Michael used to own a Virginia winery and sold it to buy CONGRESS SPRINGS winery. he likes making wines in California claiming that it is so much easier to produce/make good wine in California. He admires the hard efforts of everyone in Virginia where everything seems to conspire against them in making good wine. He will have to tell you more about this himself next time you see him. I'd like to hear more myself.
In case you do not know it but Kellie and Michael named the old CONGRESS SPRINGS winery half way up the Santa Cruz mountains after their two daughters Savannah and Chanelle. It's got a really nice ring to it, don't you think?
I have a real soft spot in my heart for the old CONGRESS SPRINGS winery because I used to buy their wines years ago when Dan Kravitz used to bring them to me first at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits and then later at Burka's Fine Wines. I sold their sparkling wines as well as their dry, non-sparkling reds and whites.
Those were great times, simpler wine times back in the 1980's. Things were simply less complicated and easier to navigate and perhaps as a result even easier to enjoy.
I went out to visit my father in San Leandro years ago and we went on a wonderful road-trip of the California wineries. One day we went south and stopped first at CONGRESS SPRINGS. I think that Dan Kravitz made the call out to the winery to have them receive us well : and really well we were received!
What I remember most after the tour of the winery and the tasting was having a lunch brought out to us just outside the winery on their beautiful green lawn looking out onto the valley below. What an impressive view, that alone was worth the price of admission! And on top of that it was s drop-dead gorgeous day and that afternoon things could not have looked brighter or more appealing. It was a great time with my father that we shared and so for that alone I will always be in debt to CONGRESS SPRINGS and now to SAVANNAH-CHANELLE.
I still have not met the two young girls for whom the winery was named after. I look forward to that someday. I have met Kellie and we together have tasted the SAVANNAH-CHANELLE wines here in the store as well as Ardeo the restaurant down at the end of the block. Chad was the manager then and he took expert care of us back then. Thanks Chad.
I will include more photos and more info about these fine wines soon. In the meantime here at the start to this young new 2009 I want to share these pictures of Michael at our February " Big-Theme " in-store Pinot Noir tasting from around the world. Michael was one of our featured guests being the only wine owner in attendance. As a result I placed him around our table at station number one. I'm glad that our friends Hal and Katie ( great teacher ) were able to attend this tasting.
We also had Neil Empson of EMPSON imports here with his wife, as well as Robert Whale of the Robert Whale cold-climate Aussie/Kiwi selections. This was quite the tasting. Look to my earlier blog here about Neil Empson at this same tasting.
Earlier Michael and I had just supported the Children's Hospital Wine-Auction and fundraiser. It was fun, we sat at the same table on this special evening. Michael donated his wines to be poured and I helped to get many of the wines donated to be auctioned off in both the live and silent auctions. That was fun and the first time that I met you Michael ; both of us involved in a really worthy cause - children and keeping them healthy.
Happy New Year to you Michael and Kellie and your two daughters. Come and see us here sometime soon. You are way-overdue for another visit as we need a fresh infusion of your wines that only you can bring to the table.
For more technical information go to : Saratoga, California 408-741-2934 www.savannahchanelle.com.
Cheers, TONY
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