Punk Dog Wine produces affordable wines meant to be enjoyed and consumed at the time of purchase. With statistics being thrown around about how most wine is consumed within an hour or two of purchase, this makes a lot of sense! In addition, they focus on non-traditional red varietal blends. Their first vintage was in 2001. It is always refreshing to find a winery that is not named after the owners' last name and this winery certainly satisfies that! It is named after owner Eric & Lisa Gordon's strong but small dog (named Sophie) who they affectionately call the "mischievous mascot". This dog was bred for cattle and sheep herding, it has a lot of energy, and its nickname at times is "punk" hence the name for their winery. Based upon the chosen name, their wines are all about having fun; the owner is the winemaker and as he says, "take your fun seriously". Case in point: one year the owner-winemaker was not able to secure high quality fruit and as a result did not make any commercial wine. The quality of fruit is of the utmost importance in wine-making and he did not want to compromise the quality of his wine. Punk Dog focuses on two wines each year, Sophie's Riddle and Sophie's Romp and each wine is completely different from the other.
Eric's background is in Biology and he has worked in both Alaska and Florida. It was during a trip to the Napa Valley on vacation where he was bitten with the wine bug like so many people are. Unlike most people who come to the Napa Valley for vacation and then return to their daily lives, Eric packed up everything and moved out here! When you have the passion you can find work in the industry and Eric soon found himself working at various area wineries. He has worked with some of the best in the business including Kirk and Nils Venge, Philippe Melka and Marco DiGuilio.
All their production is done in a small warehouse in a business park in South Napa. Their fruit is sourced from high quality area vineyards. We tried their 2004 Sophie's Romp from a barrel sample towards the end of its aging. It is a three varietal blend (Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Merlot). This wine sees three years in oak before it is bottled and the extra year really helps the wine come together. The nose has cedar aromas with hints of oak and big fruit flavors. It is a very dark wine with great structure. This wine is "big" with well-managed tannins and it is neat to let it open up and to see how the flavors change over time. Sophie's Riddle is definitely a lighter wine - with a blend that you rarely see from the Napa area. Try to solve the riddle of this blend, which appears on the bottle's label. The blends often change each year depending on available fruit sources. The winemaker/owner and his wife also used to run a Napa wine lounge called Stave which aside from the Copia Wine Center (now closed), contained Napa's only enomatic automatic wine dispensers. Punk dog has a mailing list which you can signup for online. Visit: www.punkdogwines.com
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Open to Public: Private
Appointments: No
Regular Tours: No
Hours: N/A
Phone: 738-6711
Address: Napa
 Winery Website
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