2016 Napa/Sonoma trip is in the books.
We had requested another tasting appointment at Phifer Pavitt on Sunday afternoon. I did not have cell phone service at the winery we were at prior to Phifer Pavitt, so when I finally got into range, I saw that I had multiple voicemails. Our guide Luke had come down with a sickness and would be unavailable to complete our tasting. No biggie...a minor inconvenience, but we can find somewhere else to go.
However, after calling him back, he indicated that the owner, Suzanne Phifer Pavitt was going to lead our tasting! How awesome. We loved the winery at our last visit and this was certainly going to be a great experience.
How our expectations were wrong!
Our two guests arrived shortly before we did and were standing outside with Suzanne as we drove up. When we greeted her and told her how we were sorry that we missed the phone calls and for the inconvenience, her response was, "It is an inconvenience." What?! She proceeded to inform us that the only reason she was there was because Luke had mentioned that we were, "big spenders". We were all taken back and leaving the winery crossed all of our minds.
We stuck it out though and went through the tasting. Like before, we tasted the two wines from Switchback Ridge and tasted three from Phifer Pavitt (since they just released the new Date Night cab).
During the tasting, Suzanne was very egotistic. For example, my wife and I passed our Intro to Sommelier course last year and are relatively knowledgeable about wine - so when our friends brought up that we were "Sommeliers" - while not quite true, she asked, "Are you ACTUAL sommeliers or did you just pass a test?" and that, "I just gave a speech to over 50 master sommeliers". Other things were said that made us all question why we decided to come to Phifer Pavitt in the first place.
Let's talk about the winery experience as a whole as it relates to value. The venue is amazing, a very Restoration Hardware looking place. You normally taste four wines for $50. No bites/food/anything else is provided. Tasting fees are waived with a purchase of three bottles.
A $50 tasting fee is pretty expensive - especially without a vineyard tour or any food pairings. A three bottle purchase for a waived fee per person is also on the high end compared to other Napa wineries. Now, you can buy three bottles of the Sav. Blanc for $90...so you're really only paying $40 for three bottles of wine - that's the best value to get while you're here.
As a whole, the wines of Phifer Pavitt are good. The $50 tasting fee can be worth it. If everything went well, I'd give a value of 7/10. However, having the owner of the winery treats guests like she did - it's unprofessional and wrong.
I reached out to Luke after we left Napa to inform him of how our tasting went - and likely what my review was going to say. His response was, "okay." He did not ask for reasons why it didn't go well or if he could do anything to fix it. - just the cherry on top of our experience (or lack thereof).
During our 2016 Napa/Sonoma trip, we visited 10 wineries: Hamel Family, Hendry, Viader, Phifer Pavitt, Twenty Rows, B Cellars, Robert Mondovi, Quintessa, Mumm, and Opus One. read more