Nickel & Nickle Chardonnay BYOB at Captain Dave’s Destin

Nickel & Nickle Chardonnay BYOB at Captain Dave’s Destin (FL) Seafood Dinner

Visiting The Cove, our Destin (FL) vacation rental, we dined at Captain Dave’s On The Gulf restaurant, a local institution on the Emerald Coast, and a convenient short walk away. 

Captain Dave’s On The Gulf is the oldest seafood restaurant in Destin, family owned and operated since 1968. It offers beach front views from the spacious high ceiling dining room overlooking the gulf. 

They feature the usual appetizers, soups, salads and sides. Their speciality is American seafood cuisine infused with a ‘contemporary Gulf Coast twist’. - the local fresh catch seafood dishes - Flounder, Grouper, Mahi Mahi, Snapper and Refish as well as shrimp, lobster and salmon as well as steaks and chicken dishes. 

“Captain Dave’s Faves” signature dishes are artfully prepared with imaginative preparations featuring their signature homemade sauces such as their Parmesan Italian Cream Sauce. Our server, Dee, provided prompt attentive gracious and friendly service. 

Linda ordered from the starter menu the Coconut Shrimp as her entree.

Coconut Shrimp - Lightly sautéed and dusted with coconut with Dave’s homemade orange marmalade dipping sauce 

Pat R and I both ordered one of Dave’s Faves signature dishes - the Mahi Parmesan. 

Mahi Parmesan - Mahi Mahi broiled in Captain Dave’s homemade Parmesan Italian Cream sauce topped with Parmesan cheese - a plate size filet of Mahi basking in an incredibly delicious Parmesan butter cream sauce with shallots and scallions.

All entrees are served hush puppies, salad and choice of sides. 

Linda raved about the Coconut Shrimp and Pat and I both loved the Mahi Parmesan. 

The wine list is extremely limited with few selections or red and whites, featuring one crowd pleaser Jordan Chardonnay and two ultra-premium reds, Quintessa and Opus One Napa Cabernets. Thankfully, they accommodate BYOB service with aptly handled our Napa Chardonnay from our home eellar. 

https://www.captdavesonthegulf.com/

Nickel & Nickel Napa Valley Carneros Truchard Vineyard Chardonnay 2018

We brought from our home cellar, this 2018 release, the last bottle of the oldest vintage of our vertical holdings of several vintages of this label, as part of proper cellar inventory management.

This is from Nickel & Nickel, a subsidiary of the legendary ultra-premium producer Far Niente Winery and Vineyards. If you've visited Napa Valley, you passed their winery estate on St Helena Highway 29 in Oakville as you enter Napa Valley from the south. 

Nickel & Nickel was established by the partners of Far Niente in 1997 focused on producing single-vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from the appellation's most significant growing regions. Dedicated exclusively to producing 100 percent varietal, single-vineyard wines that best express the distinct personality of each vineyard, they expanded their portfolio to also produce single-vineyard Chardonnay, Merlot, and Syrah wines.

Nickel & Nickel focus on 100% varietal, single-vineyard designated wines, sourced from as many as seventeen different vineyards, primarily in Napa Valley, but now extended to include some sites in the Sonoma County Russian River Valley appellation. 

Their approach emphasizes selection of the very best vineyard locations and unique soil compositions required to make superior single-vineyard wines. Each Nickel & Nickel wine is a celebration of 'place' or terroir. It's amazing how such can reveal how vineyards only miles apart, but of the same grape varietal, yield wines of unique character and distinction.

This label release is 100% Chardonnay from the Truchard Vineyard located in the heart of Carneros AVA, prized for its rolling hills, sun exposure, and cool, breezy conditions that allow long, even ripening. Nickel & Nickel wines are produced from 14 select acres of this 270-acre vineyard, planted in 2007.

The Carneros region straddles the southernmost portions at the confluence of the Sonoma and Napa valleys, lying just north of the San Pablo Bay (an offshoot of the San Francisco Bay). There, southwestern exposure to the bay winds and fog, created when warm inland air meets cool sea air, keep temperatures relatively low, making this California wine region perfect for growing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. 

The growing season tends to be long in this cooler area, allowing for fully mature fruit at harvest. 

The vineyard is predominately a neutral, gravelly loam from the Felton soil series, with volcanic ash and rock which are well-drained soils formed from weathered sandstone and shale. 

Indeed many of our favorite and many memorable wines are from Carneros vineyards from some of the most heralded producers. 

Nickel & Nickel Napa Valley Carneros Truchard Vineyard Chardonnay 2018

 

This wine shows the classic style of Carneros Chardonnay."Winemaker Notes - The 2018 Truchard Chardonnay is a beautiful marriage of youthful vibrance and refined elegance. Gorgeous aromas of tropical fruits, citrus and wet stone leap from the glass with the very first swirl.’ 

“The same tropical and citrus notes follow on the palate, with pear, peach blossoms, and a touch of spice to round out the flavor profile. This wine is weighty, with an oily-textured component that is inherent to the vineyard. A harmonious mix of acidity and volume, this wine is full and fresh.”

This label was rated 92 points by Wilfred Wong of Wine.com.

Pale golden straw colored, medium bodied, not as big or full as some other releases of this label (2022), bright vibrant tart lemon citrus, pear and apple notes with sprites of mineral, with hints of buttery toasted oak on a lingering bright acidic finish. 

RM 90 points.  

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=3397173

https://nickelandnickel.farniente.com/

https://twitter.com/NickelandNickel

https://www.captdavesonthegulf.com/

Note - Captain Dave’s site photos courtesy the restaurant. 

Signorella Hope's Cuvee at Marco's Kitchen

Signorella Hope's Cuvee at Marco's Kitchen La Grange (IL) Dinner

Friday night datenight, we dined at chic Marco's Kitchen in nearby suburban LaGrange (IL). Expecting to order seafood I took BYOB from our cellar a ultra-premium Napa Chardonnay. 

Marco's is a stylish, chic, trendy casual and comfortable dining experience with imaginatively crafted and artfully presented food, a basic but sufficient carefully selected winelist including WBTG offerings, with a reasonable BYOB policy, and professional friendly attentive service. The broad menu offers a selection of seafood dishes as well as duck, lamb, pork and beef entrees, with a range of salads and starter dishes.

We ordered from the menu the Chicken Liver, Shitake Mushroom Cognac Mousse Pate that was delicious, the highlight of the evening for me from our previous dining experience there last winter. To accompany this, I ordered from the WBTG selection (Wines By the Glass) the Böen California Pinot Noir from Joseph Wagner (son of) of Caymus fame, which was an ideal pairing.

Linda loved the Gezpacho with shrimp as her salad course. I ordered the Cous Cous & Orange Arugula Salad with dried mango, cucumber, orange, tomatos and pomegranate ginger vinagrette (above).

For our dinner entree we shared the Pan-Seared Mahi Mahi and Gulf Shrimp with Basmati Rice, Coconut Lime and Basil Broth with Crushed Macademias and blanched asparagus. 

 
The salad and seafood dishes were perfectly accented, paired with the Signorello Napa Chardonnay.

Signorello Hope's Cuvee Napa Valley Chardonnay 2016

As posted in an earlier blogposts, we discovered and acquired (the then current release vintage of) this wine during our visit to the Estate on Silverado Trail in Southeastern Napa Valley during our Napa Valley Wine Experience in 2013. At that time I wrote about this label: "I am predominantly a red wine drinker and while I enjoy an occasional glass of white, most often with appropriate food, I don't normally get excited about a white wine. This chardonnay was the exception,  memorable and special."

(Former) Signorello Estate overlooking vineyards
and valley floor.

The Signorello winery sits at the very southern end of Napa Valley and has 43 acres of vineyards, including some of the oldest Chardonnay vines in all of Napa Valley - fruit from 37-year-old vines goes into his Hope’s Cuvée.

The magnificent Estate was destroyed in the fires that engulfed much of sections of Sonoma and Napa in 2017. Fires came down the foothills to the property that sat up the hill back from the highway.

The fire reached the winery and completely destroyed the hospitality center that also housed offices, a wine lab and a family residence upstairs. The adjacent  crush pad and stainless steel tanks survived intact along with the barrel cellar and equally if not most importantly, the vines of the adjacent vineyards. 

In the wake of the destruction from Napa Valley’s October 2017 Atlas Peak Fire, Ray Signorello vowed to rebuild. We're relieved to read about the Phoenix of Signorella Estate, rising from the ashes, literally, and being rebuilt, even grander and larger than before. Signorello said he viewed the tragedy as an opportunity to do something new and exciting and is rebuilding with a larger fermentation facility, wine caves and a stunning expanded hospitality center.

The winery has kept almost all of its team employed as an interim step toward returning to normalcy and they have been operating out of a modular building was brought in to serve as a temporary hospitality center.

The adjacent Darioush property nearby the sits at the valley floor closer to the highway and similarly situated properties were untouched.

Signorello "Hope's Cuvée" Napa Valley Chardonnay 2016

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate gave the 2015 release 98 points and said, "The best Chardonnay I have ever tasted from Ray Signorello has to be the 2015 Chardonnay Hope’s Cuvée." Vinous gave it 91 points.

This Hope's Cuvée Chardonnay was full bodied but nicely balanced and polished for very pleasant drinking. It is bursting with flavorful fruit with layers of peach and poached pear giving way to hints of honey, almond, nutmeg, vanilla and creamy soft spicy oak. There is very pleasant full mouth-feel with rich texture on the palate with a long lingering finish of sweet mellow oak.

Golden colored, full bodied, rich and concentrated caramelized citrus, honeysuckle, white peach, pear and melon notes with a touch of almond and brioche.

RM 92 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2806461

https://www.signorelloestate.com/

https://www.marcoskitchen.com/