2009 ParCFD Excursion

Clos LaChance Winery

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
12:15 p.m.—6:00 p.m.

The ParCFD 2009 committee has planned an excursion to the Clos LaChance Winery in San Martin, Calif. The group will board buses at 12:15p.m. Lunch will be served on the Grand Terrace at the winery. After lunch, we have planned an interesting and educational day of wine tasting for you. Each session will last approximately 1 hour, with a 30-minute break between sessions to reset the rooms—you will attend two of the sessions described below. After the two sessions, the full group will have an opportunity to enjoy the winery grounds while continuing to taste selected Clos LaChance wines. You will receive tickets for two sessions when you check in at the conference site.

Track 1

Wine Essence Seminar
photo of grapes at Clos LaChance Vineyards This seminar will focus on teaching the student first how to taste wine utilizing basic wine tasting techniques like sight, smell, and taste. Once the group learns that aspect, they will begin to taste a total of four wines, learning how the olfactory works and how to describe some of the common fruit/non-fruit characteristics utilizing the prepped essences which will feature items like citrus fruits, apples, dried fruits, herbs, spices, butter, etc. We will taste a classic Chardonnay featuring the influence of oak vs. a non-oaked chardonnay and then we will taste a Pinot Noir and a Cabernet from which the guests will learn the difference of light tannins vs. heavy tannins.

Wine Roulette “Guess The Varietal”
When guests arrive, they will be greeted by the instructor and broken up into teams. Each team will be presented a sheet with several wines, both white and red, and basic descriptors commonly found in those wines. The objective of this session is teambuilding. Each team needs to work together to decide what wine they are tasting, matching it to their sheet. There will be jokers on the sheet to confuse students, but only to force them to think out the descriptors on their worksheet. The winning team is determined by the one with the most correct matches.

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Track 2

Wine Blending Table
Photo of vineyards in december at Clos LaChance Winery This session will teach people how to taste and blend like a winemaker. In winemaking, wine is made not only to satisfy their palates, but the palates of the drinking market. This group will be broken up into teams, each will have a joint blending table where they will work together to create a blend to represent their group. Upon completion, they will blindly recreate the blends and pour to all guests in this session. By majority vote, the winning wine that appeals to the masses wins.

Wine Tour & Tasting
This session will start with a brief story of the Murphy family and their rise to winemaking fame. We will then take a short stroll into our Mulberry Grove where our Sommelier will explain the growing practices we utilize to maintain high-quality fruit, as well as a brief summary of our sustainability techniques. We will then walk into production where our guests will get a visual of how our great wines are produced—from viewing the press and tanks—to the techniques we implore from gravity flow to punch-downs and pump-overs and their applications. After this, our Sommelier will guide the group into the barrel room where some of our nicely aged wines will be extracted for tasting to describe the importance of barrel aging and its influences. We will then finish in the Tasting Room with a tasting of five finished wines.