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4 reviews for New Clairvaux Vineyard
4 reviews in English
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Review from Lindsey M.
Sacramento, CA
9/26/2010
I took my boyfriend to the 4th annual lobster feed at New Clairvaux Winery. The event took place in the winery's above ground cellar originally built by Leland Stanford back in the 1890's. The room had a vaulted brick ceiling, which is held up by massive timber columns.
While they were serving the appetizers, they had a wine consultant of Corti Brothers come up and talked about the wines they were serving and offered wine tasting classes. They served Albarino, Petite Syrah, New Tempranillo, and Barbara. My favorite was the Petite Syrah.
To prepare the food, huge vats were filled with corn, Italian sausage, artichokes, lobster, shrimp and much more. The concoction was boiled together, cooked, and poured across the table's right in front of us.
It was a "No holds Barred" fight to the finish.......... NO forks, NO napkins...... bibs, and shell crackers were the only weapons. This event is not for the faint of heart, there were shrimp, and lobster juice flying everywhere. No one was spared. So much fun!
At the end of our feasting, they gave us hot towels to clean up. Next, they proceeded to pour their reserve port, and we happily ate it with a Chocolate "Its It". -
Review from Wendy B.
8/29/2011 1 Check-in Here
The location of this winery is in a very old brick building on monastery property and monks can still be seen doing chores around. The winery itself is not run by monks. The land itself has an interesting history starting around 1850's when vineyards were planted (unsuccessfully) and includes ownership by Leland Stanford. In the 1950s, after several changes of ownership and land usage, it was purchased for the monastery and vineyards were re-planted. It is a charming, dusty, quaint location, and fun place to visit. After reading reviews about some of the events hosted by this winery, it would definitely be a great experience.
Since I am not the wine drinker, I can only say that Mr. B enjoyed several of their wines, bought their library wine, an 07 Syrah, which was a gold medal winner and the syrah cab blend. Actually he stated he was not going to share the syrah cab blend with our daughter, and it should only be opened on a very special occasion. I said, get two. Hint....still waiting for grandchildren...and then you may get lucky, Annie!Listed in: My European Roots (rah rah…, Mr. B is a Winer
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Review from Katie T.
2/20/2008
New Clairvaux was everything I hoped it would be.
After tasting an amazing wine made by Nicholini Vineyard in St Helena last year, I did some research into their wine maker and found that she'd moved to New Clairvaux. Later I saw Tom's review of the Vineyard here, and had been meaning to go since.
So over the long weekend, on the way back from my parent's house, P and I stopped in. The monastery itself is simple but beautiful, with lots of old trees and even older buildings. The wine making facilities are all run by a large stretch of solar panels.
We started in the tasting room. The staff is divided between thirty-something white guys who live in Chico, and older monks. Both were friendly and P got in a long discussion with one of the monks about his work on pesticides and how the monks are apparently getting sprayed (this was actually kind of sad). After we'd tasted everything in the tasting room, we were ushered off by the wine maker, Amy, to tour the barrel room.
This was really the highlight of the vineyard. We were able to taste five wines from the barrel, ask tons of questions about the wines and the monastery, an ended up buying some futures at a discount (we get sucked into things like this...give me lots of good wine and I'd buy anything).
I really enjoyed myself, and loved the wines, but I'll agree with Tom that these might not be for everyone. They do seem to have a good variety of wines, some more approachable to a mass audience than others, but overall the single varietal, vineyard wines are different than most of what you'd find elsewhere in California. -
Review from Misty M.
Corning, CA
6/14/2011
Since I began living in the area, this has become on of my favorite places. The staff are nice and knowledgable and the wines are great! The 2008 Barbera has won my heart! Great prices as well!!! Also, the monks make an olive oil that is yummy!!!
