Mar 26, 2008

Vina Robles

I decided to go to Vina Robles (www.vinarobles.com) because I kept hearing about this Swiss-owned huge, beautiful, new tasting room near Robert Hall on 46 East. Despite all that I’d heard in passing, when I finally made it out there I was floored. The tasting room is huge, beautiful, and very new.

The building that houses the tasting room is a sort-of U shaped, high-ceilinged, stone extravaganza with crazy glass-looking art covering the walls. The tasting room bar area is only half of the bottom of the U shape while the wing of the building that comes off the tasting room is full of very expensive and classy tasting room paraphernalia. And when I say “very expensive and classy” I mean Dean and Deluca cooking supplies alongside bookshelves of coffee table-type food and wine books. My personal favorite area of the shopping portion of the building is the table dedicated to all things Swiss. Need a Swiss watch? Head to Vina Robles. A Swiss Army Knife? Definitely at the Vina Robles tasting room.

So the tasting room is very grand and modern and it plus the souvenir area fills about half of the U shaped building. I asked the tasting room attendants if the rest of the building was the winery and I was told that the remaining portion of the building would be a restaurant that would accompany a non-existent, future bed-and-breakfast. So clearly Vina Robles has some large-scale plans for their 46 East property. But those plans do not appear to include an on-site winery. That seemed a bit strange because clearly the Swiss owner is pumping some serious money into the hospitality side of things at Vina Robles…but what about the wine-making side? At this point I have to admit, I can’t recall much about the wines because I was so overwhelmed by the ambiance but clearly they weren’t standing out as either crazy delicious or awful. The wines are passable and it will be interesting to see how this site progresses.

*All photos are taken from the Vina Robles website: www.vinarobles.com*

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