St. Helena’s Barnett Vineyards has a new winemaker

I’ve just been catching up on wine news in the San Francisco Chronicle, and I see that one of my wine-tasting companions from yesteryear, David Tate, is the new winemaker of Barnett Vineyards, an esteemed small-lot producer in St. Helena’s Spring Mountain district, above Napa Valley. Well, since it’s in the Chronicle, it must be official.

Last time I saw David was February in San Francisco; he was working a ZAP Festival tasting table at Fort Mason. At the time, David worked for Ridge Vineyard’s Eric Baugher as Assistant Winemaker, but as he poured me a glass of Z List Geyserville zin, he mentioned, in low tones, that he’d soon be jumping ship to Barnett.

Because Ridge’s Montebello Ridge digs is fairly close to my home in the Silicon Valley, and because I lead tours along Montebello Ridge’s inspiring hiking trails, I would occasionally stop in to their tasting room for a post-hike chat n’ sip. (I still do.) But every time I did, I discovered that David had just skipped out. I had begun to sense that David would rather be anywhere but the tasting room. No doubt he was lurking on the premises where he knew he belonged, clambering among vast seas of wine barrels, thief in one hand, tasting glass in the other, cell phone turned off to preserve sanity.

But I learned a lot from him back when we used to gather for biweekly tastings. Heck, we all did. David is one of those people who abides by a deep expressive passion for wine, and it lights up his eyes to talk about the profession he loves so well. So well, in fact, that he has studied wine from the ground up in many far-flung locales around the globe, from France to Australia, Canada to New Zealand, and onward to California. David says so himself:

I am truly passionate about wine (from the vine to the glass), which leads to my love of traveling, meeting new people, studying new languages (onto French), reading (mostly international affairs) and restaurateuring (at all levels of dining).

I’m sure the folks at Ridge will miss him up there at the top of Montebello Road. But now David Tate has taken another step up his personal career ladder, and I know he will impart his own personal character to the single-vineyard and estate wines he will create for Barnett.

As for me, I expect to arrange a visit to Barnett Vineyards so that my tour guests can experience David’s fresh winemaking perspective. That’ll be next June, when the weather in Napa Valley ought to be perfect for five glorious days of mountain hiking trails, vineyard tours, and tasting, tasting, tasting.

~winehiker

Related posts:

• Sip n’ slurp Saturday
• Spring Mountain boutique winery welcomes Heidi Barrett as new winemaker
• Trip report: Nisene Marks State Park & Burrell School Vineyards

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.