One of Napa Valley’s Pinot Noir oases: Failla

Many people who love Pinot Noir may find themselves coming up a little “short” during a tasting tour of Napa Valley.  But with careful planning, it is possible to work around this limitation and imbibe in some of the best Pinots that California’s North Coast has to offer.

Of course visiting Carneros is a given.  This section of Napa is a perfect place for Pinot, but it’s at the south end of the valley and often takes you out of your way.  Fortunately you can avoid this complication by knowing which wineries have opted to “import” fruit from other “Pinot Places” further north, like Sonoma’s Russian River Valley appellation, to produce their wine.

One of the better known wineries that brings in Pinot from elsewhere is Joseph Phelps.  Theirs are produced over at Freestone near Sebastopol and their wines are bottled and shipped to Napa where they are available to taste and buy at the winery.  These are excellent and always getting better.

However, another winery, simply called Failla, trucks Pinot fruit from the Sonoma Coast into their Napa winery and produces it locally.  A different approach, but that way, their wines are produced consistently by a single winemaker, Ehren Jorden.  And sporting quality levels up there with the best, this is definitely a well considered Napa tasting stop.

In fact, if you want to devote a day to piecing together a complete tasting flight in Napa, Failla is the perfect choice for the beginning of the red wines.  But if you like Chardonnay & Viognier, Failla is a natural for a first tasting stop (their Viognier fruit is carted in from Alban Vineyards in Edna Valley).  It goes like this:  Round 1 Chardonnay, round 2 Viogner, and round 3 through “4 or 5” Pinot Noir.  Yep, that’s a great beginning to the perfect day and they will make you feel right at home in their “living room” turned tasting room.

Of course Failla’s Pinots are anything from ordinary.  Each has a distinctive character derived from the best of the Russian River Valley and other Sonoma Coast appellations.  Since so many of their wines are produced in small quantities, the exact ones they are pouring at any given time is hard to predict.  This makes for interesting surprises.  So remember, if you like what you’ve tasted, it’s cash and carry, always a sure thing.

Failla is reservations only, so call ahead for and park beside the yellow house; that’s where the fun begins at this Pinot oasis.

Article by Tom Peiffer, Phoenix Wine Shopping Examiner at Examiner.com

View more of Tom’s articles on Examiner.com by visiting his writer’s page.