And so it came to pass that a heralded Napa Valley estate decided to end production on their famed late harvest dessert style wine made from the almost-unknown Scheurebe grape and replant to something else more … desirable let’s say. As it happened, Steve Matthiasson was approached about it and offered the fruit from the final vintage to make a ‘last hurrah’ type thing. Steve ended up not needing all the fruit off the vineyard to supply his own wine club needs so he then reached out to Jolie Laide with the proposition of taking the remainder, which they happily accepted. Jolie Laide ended up not needing all the fruit THEY were offered either, at which point Scott Schultz of JL called me. “Dude, want some Napa Valley Phelps Vineyard Scheurebe?!” Who WOULDN’T ROFL at that question?! With aromatic white grape proclivities that often resemble something from an episode of ‘Hoarders,’ there’s no way I could say no. Well, here we are, a year later and she’s in bottle and released to the world from all three producers now. And wouldn’t you know it…Phelps seems to have liked the results of these producers enough to go on and keep the vines in the ground and carry on working with it, albeit perhaps in a different manner now. Long story short, even though they didn’t end up ripping it out and replanting, we still can’t get it again. Oh well, perhaps our enthusiasm for the vineyard and the wine results helped in some way to save this lil plot. For the wine nerds among us, Scheurebe is a cross between Riesling and an “unknown wild vine,” which makes total sense in the glass. There is nobility here, however, there’s an unmistakable sauvage note…almost musky in a way. Noble and dishonorable, simultaneously. This is gonna sound loco, but I often think this wine smells like a traditional Thanksgiving plate at your gram’s house. A Pot-pourri of spices/fruits/marshmallow/meaty-ness. Faint sagey sausage stuffing, almost

- Ruth Lewandowski