Weekend Wine Expedition Stop 4; Murphy Vineyards
After my brief nap (Cabernet at 9:30 AM will do that to you), I came to, and we grabbed some much needed breakfast and coffee. We then proceeded down to the Southern end of the Silverado Trail, taking in the scenery along the way. I was looking forward to meeting up with our friend Kevin Murphy.
Kevin is the son in the father son team at Murphy Vineyards. His father, Peter, is a seasoned vineyard man, with 30 years of farming and vineyard management experience. His passion for wine is apparently in his blood, as Kevin has followed in his dad’s footsteps, and certainly knows his way between the vines.
In addition to putting out a small line of hand-crafted wines, this father/son team pictured above continues to run a successful vineyard management business. Driving through the Napa valley, one quickly realizes that there are A LOT of individual vineyards and properties- and of course someone has to take care of them. The Murphy’s apparently take care of quite a few of them, and when I called up Kevin to tell him that I was in town, he suggested we meet in one such vineyard, where he was tending to the vines. We turned off of Silverado Trail and carefully navigated the Wine Expedition RV onto the property.
Kevin greeted us amongst the Merlot, and he and I took a walk (I probably shouldn’t have been wearing sandals), and he showed us some of the vineyard work that he and his crew were doing. Training the vines to grow upward and ridding them of unwanted leaves and stems seemed to be the task of the day. Then we got to the end of the row where a bottle of wine was waiting for us…
Murphy Vineyards is known for their Napa Valley Cabernet, but they also have been putting together some nice wines from the Sierra Foothills, including a Cab Franc, a Syrah and a Bordeaux-Rhone blend. And their latest offering, which I sampled right there in the vines, is a Meritage that contains Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa and Cabernet Franc from the Sierra Foothills. It had a nice robust nose, and intense, bright cherry fruit flavors on the palate. The blend favors the Cab Franc, and I think that’s where the intense fruit comes from. And I have to say, there’s something very cool about sipping a glass of wine as you stroll through the vines- it’s kinda like eating a shrimp cocktail on the edge of a pier overlooking the ocean.
In this case, there were no waves crashing below us- just fertile, brown soil between my toes and my sandals and the warm sun shining down on us. I shook Kevin’s hand and let him get back to work. We guided the WE-mobile back on the highway and drove back up into Napa, looking for our next stop…
