September Wine Month Guest Blog by Treven Tilbury

Today's guest blog is by our friend Treven Tilbury. Treven is a Partner at the Law Firm of Downey Brand and is also quite the cook. His eight or more course meals are legendary among his friends. Personally, I never turn down an invitation when "Chef Trev" is cooking and if you ever get the chance to attend one of his dinners, you will now know what to wine to bring!

2005 Gemstone Proprietary Red

James Laube, a noted expert on Napa Valley wines, described the 2005 Gemstone:

"An absolutely gorgeous wine is the blend of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Merlot, and 3% Petit Verdot, the 2005 Proprietary Red. Pure, vivid notes of black currants, crushed rocks, acacia flowers, and some subtle barrique smells are followed by a wine with hints of hot stones and a gravelly character. The wine has superb intensity, beautiful purity, and full-bodied power, but uncanny elegance and symmetry. This wine needs 2-3 years of bottle age, and should drink well for 25 years."

I don't know what crushed rocks taste like, whether I should want my wine to taste like acacia flowers, or what "barrique smells" are. What I do know is that the first time I tasted Gemstone, I was blown away. I had heard about the wine and the stories about how difficult it was to find because of the limited production and high demand.

Usually I chalk up such rumors to clever marketing, and a feeding frenzy by rare-wine collectors to obtain the most scarce offerings out there. In this case, I could not have been more wrong. For a friend's birthday, I offered to cook some steaks, and my friend's step father brought a bottle of Gemstone.

As soon as I watched it poured into the glass, I could tell it was something different. It was dark -- almost inky. The smell -- what oenephiles would call the "nose" -- was different. To me, most wines smell like, well, wine. This was different; it was complex in a way I typically am unable to discern. The flavors were even more complex, as even I could detect different flavors in the wine. I'm still not certain what they were, but they were there.

But the real magic came when the wine accompanied a slice of medium-rare prime beef. Delicious.