Welcome to our newest series, The Somm Set. Each month we’ll be sitting down with a guest sommelier and uncovering their guilty pleasures, cellar staples, and everything in between! Follow as they hand-select their favorites from our warehouse, giving you the inside scoop on cellar must-haves!

This month on The Somm Set, we’re excited to feature Andrea Robinson, Master Sommelier. Join us as we explore everything from her passion for wine, favorite wine and food pairing, and her newest endeavors.

Italian Adventures & Lessons
Sweet Home, California & More!
Love of Champagne & Bordeaux
Read Our Interview With Andrea Robinson
The Somm Set Home
 

This week from Andrea Robinson:

This offer teems with selections that, along with authenticity and quality, have major sentimental value for me. Some of the selections are perennial anchors to wine lists I’ve written or worked with since I first set foot on the floor as an Assistant Cellar Master at Windows on the World. Others are newer discoveries since I began to work with the travel side of wine and hospitality – Delta Air Lines, Norwegian Cruise Line, and large multi-brand hotel companies. As travel and our comfort zones start to open up again, these wines and the great people and places behind them are on my mind. And there are also a few of my Napa neighbors who’ve become personal friends, whose wines I’d love regardless, but it’s always great to support products with awesome people behind them.

Starting there, check out the wines of Regusci, which really over-deliver. Their historic Stag’s Leap District property with stone barn winery (which became a dairy during Prohibition), bought by immigrant Gaetano Regusci from his employer, is a marquee Napa property. Third generation Jim Regusci is one of Napa’s premier vineyard managers. Our kids play ball together, and when spring comes, and I’ve run out of time to set out a garden, Laura gives me tons of plants and advice.

Heading up to Rutherford, we hit some of the estate vineyards of Rich and Leslie Frank, whose labor of love to preserve and restore the historic Hans Kornell Champagne Cellars (formerly the Larkmeade winery before that) is so appreciated by us locals. They are ex-Hollywood-ers who left Tinseltown to really commit to their Napa winery and have become really good friends. I love to point visitors there as well because the wines are great and diverse, and the place and storytelling are unique in the valley.

At Windows on the World, we were proud to list the world’s classics and to introduce them broadly to the American public through our famous wine school that counted more than 10,000 graduates in its time. JJ Prum and Dr. Loosen from Germany, Antinori from Italy, Chapoutier, and d’Angerville from France were just a few of our anchor tenants that I loved to cellar and sell. I wish I could do more than suggest and actually serve these to you for the nostalgia. It’s was always fun before COVID to occasionally have a Piero Antinori sighting here in Napa when visiting his Antica property on Atlas Peak.

Calera has always been another Windows on the World stalwart that I’ve had the pleasure to also serve multiple times on Delta flights. Several years ago, the founder and former owner Josh Jensen, a long-time friend, proposed to come up to Napa and take us to the French Laundry as a thank you for the Delta business. I said, wow, that would be great, but we’d prefer to cook for you at our place. Best. Decision. Ever. Josh brought an insane lineup of DRC Burgundies that he’d been collecting for years. I found out a few weeks later that he was quietly celebrating a satisfying succession plan for the winery – acquisition by the Duckhorn Portfolio. All of the wines, even the basic Central Coast bottlings, age beautifully. That’s true for every wine in this offering, so check them out!

Check out all the wines mentioned below!