Materra | Cunat Family Vineyards — Attraction in Napa Valley AVA

We are members of the Materra-Cunat wine club aka "The Dean's List" -- so it goes without saying their wines are wonderful, especially their Petite Sirah, Cabernets (here's looking at you Vine1!) and we just love, love, love the Yoshino Rose. The Petite Sirah in particular is what brought us to Materra for the first time about a year and a half ago and we found their entire portfolio to be quite enjoyable and worthy of our time and money.

We visited for our third time this past weekend and our wine educator was Darren. Darren was one of the best we've had at any of the many wineries we are members at - close to 30 now! His wine knowledge is excellent and he is very passionate about his work with Materra. He was the biggest reason this was truly our most enjoyable visit so far and we can't wait to taste with him again.

We also had the pleasant surprise of Miki, one of the owners of Materra, stopping by our table to say hello. She was so kind and generous with her time and even gave us an impromptu tour of their soon to be opening new tasting room. It really made our day and capped one of our best tasting...

We met Brian Cunat at a wine event in Omaha and decided to visit the winery during the nine days we just spent in Napa/Sonoma. We have made four previous trips to the area and visiting Materra was one of our best winery experiences. We were among the first guests to their new tasting room, which is spectacular! We had a great tour of the winery prior to our tasting and our host, Miguel, was engaging, fun, and very knowledgeable.

There were several standouts for us in the tasting:

-Yoshino Rose. This is a 100% Malbec based Rose done in a style to match well with Japanese foods. We are taking a bottle to our favorite sushi restaurant to have them add it to their menu.

-Viognier. This was one of the best Viogniers we have had...certainly deserving of it's 93 point rating.

-Shinkan Chardonnay. A lightly oaked chard that had a very crisp fruit touch to the palate without the heavy butter notes of traditionally oaked chards.

-Right Bank. A lovely Merlot with a blend of Cab Franc and Sauvignon.

This was our first visit to Materra and it won't...

We don't have enough great things to say about our experience at Materra! We showed up as absolute last minute guests and were treated so well despite having no reservations and showing up 45 minutes before Materra was set to close. We called from the road to see if we could get one last tasting in for the day and not only were told yes (even with a 5 month old baby in tow!) but were greeted at the front door by Darren holding two white wine pours in his hands to give us as we walked in. WOW! Darren sat with us and talked us through several wines and met us where we were in terms of our wine knowledge :) He sat with us past closing time and never made us feel rushed or obliged to buy a single thing. My partner and I both felt like he would treat his patrons the same whether they were buying one bottle of wine or a hundred. We loved Materra's whites, but we loved the people working there even more. (It is also a beautiful building with...