My visit to Anomaly Winery was my first and another recommendation from the team at Prima Wines. The winery is located in St. Helena and is tucked away between neighboring vineyards owned by “Beckstoffer” and a few other great names.

We arrived at Steve Goldfarb’s home who is the owner of Anomaly and walked his property which includes some of his estate vineyard holdings as well as his winemaking facility and private tasting room.

Steve and his wife Linda moved to the Napa Valley in 1997 not to make wine but to enjoy the Napa Valley lifestyle. The one acre property they purchased had a very small vineyard (.13 acres of planted grapes) and before he knew it the wine bug bit and they started on a plan to plant new vines and make great wine.

Steve has since purchased a total of 11.4 acres with 8.15 planted with Cabernet, Cab Franc and Petit Verdot. The purchases has allowed him to expand his production to just under 1,000 cases a year.

We journeyed into the winery caves and sat down at a long wooden table to taste the 2004 Anomaly and I was glad I was sitting down. Wow..a Cabernet just the way I love them filled with great fruit, elegance and hints of exotic aromas. The wine was ultra smooth with a hint of tannin on the finish which will resolve with a few years of age. Many would enjoy the wine today but in this case, the elegance of this wine demands a few more years of aging to show its full potential.

This wine is a winner and I rated the wine 94 points! The wine is packaged in a beautiful bottle with the image of a coyote howling into the night on the label. The image was inspired by their long-time family member “Indee” a loving husky-shepherd who passed away when the winery first opened. Indee liked to howl at the moon at night.

On this trip to Napa there were three outstanding wines out of the dozens that we tasted; “2006 Antithesis”, 2005 Hall Diamond Mountain Cabernet and 2004 Anomaly Cabernet. I strongly recommend that you sign up for Anomaly mailing list.

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