We enjoyed three vintages plus a glass of overture (a blend of the blends). A less involved tasting is also available….but if you are able the pairing experience is really worth your time. Views from all angles of the mountains and vineyards are postcard worthy, and the guided tasting is informative and made even more enjoyable by accompanying curated bites. Touring the winery is fascinating and a bit awe inspiring, too. How many wineries make just one wine…but do so with such care and attention that each vintage is better than the last? Conditions with weather obviously impact production, but here there is such focus on creating the best blend possible each year and it shows in the glass. This winery set the bar high for the region when it was first created and it continues to push that bar higher. Now that I am old, I have, but I cannot,” he says.A visit to Napa Valley is not complete without a tasting and tour of Opus One. ![]() “My mom used to tell me: When you are young, you can, but you do not have. He has begun, at 72, to consider what paring things down might look like for his wine cellar and his life. In the 1990s, Alsono ventured into growing his own grapes and producing those wines (still sold at Le Chêne), though today he mostly sells his syrah, tempranillo, grenache, tannat, and mourvedre yields to producers like Angeleno Wine Company. ![]() “We don’t chase trends,” he says matter-of-factly, holding a bottle of wine that he made himself a decade ago. Today, the sprawling food menu still clings to those early French days, with options like trout almondine, shrimp Escoffier, calf liver, and a $52 filet mignon au poivre, served with bread and a soup or salad. He kept tasting and collecting his wines along the way. “I’m nobody, but I guess I’m somebody because of this place.”īy 1980 he had founded Le Chêne (French for “the oak”) inside of a decades-old roadside haunt that once served as a backdrop for 1971’s Duel, a made-for-TV movie that marked the beginning of Stephen Spielberg’s film career. It was a woman and a real estate venture in the 1970s that first drew Alonso up to the Santa Clarita Valley and away from the kitchen at La Serre, then one of the most prestigious French restaurants in Los Angeles. For decades he has been a man with a half-empty glass, ready for a new pour, another adventure. If Alonso has quietly curated what is likely the most affordable and deep wine cellar anywhere in Southern California, it hasn’t been because of pride or ego. It might take me a minute, but I’ll find it,” he says, chuckling. “Sometimes we don’t put things on the list for a year, or four or five, because they get lost. But just know that if you’re looking for that one particular bottle, Alonso himself may need to go down to the cellar to poke around for a bit. It’s all available to drink any night of the week, down a dusty road in the shadows of Vasquez Rocks. Just two examples: A 1997 Turley Wine Zinfandel lists for $130, roughly $5 above current retail prices, while a 1988 Domaine François Lamarche Echézeaux Grand Cru lists for $220, a more than 50 percent discount from the retail price listed on Wine-Searcher. It’s not a collection, it’s just inventory.”Ĭollapsed into a menu, that inventory spans 32 pages of some of the most well-respected wine labels that money can buy, domestically or internationally. People say ‘Oh what a collection you have’. “Sometimes I just buy because I want to try it, and then I put it on the list. ![]() Born in Spain and raised in the kitchens of France, Alonso has spent more than half of his life in this stone building that dates back to 1917, selling French classics and sipping fine wine. “The only way to become a connoisseur is to drink, so I bought and I bought,” says the ever-curious Alonso, sitting inside the white tablecloth dining room of his 43-year-old roadside French restaurant. Over the decades, Alonso has amassed a motherlode of wine out in the golden canyons beyond Santa Clarita, and he’s practically giving it away. It’s not that he’s losing his eyesight there simply is no discernible end to the space he’s trying to see - and this is only one of three wine cellars on Le Chêne’s property. Alonso squints, his felt hat folding up against the top of the doorway. Émilion, and countless other treasures tucked into boxes that occasionally date back to the 1960s. There are aging vintages of Opus One, rare 1989 bottles of Château Cheval Blanc St. Still visible on faded labels are dates and decades more familiar to an oldies rock station than in today’s modern, youthful wine movement. The ground is a mix of gravel and dirt, the ceiling is low enough to require sloped shoulders, and the walls are teetering with wooden shelves and dusty wine bottles. ![]() Juan Alonso peers into a dim, semi-subterranean space beneath his restaurant Le Chêne.
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