Corte Riva Vineyards

After reading Robert Parker’s great reviews of «Corte Riva», I have always wanted to try their wines. So I had their Merlot and a Cab for the first time yesterday. After living in Sonoma County for over 20 years I think I found my favorite reds. The wines had really really nice balance. When it first hits the palate, just the right amount of sugar, acidity, tannin, and alcohol. Then by the time it hits mid palate, you can taste the fruit, the oak, the spice. And the finish was amazing. The finish just made we want to take another sip immediately!
The word that keeps coming to my mind is «Balance». I am looking forward to trying more from Corte Riva.

Corte Riva is one of my favortie wineries. Their merlot is better than half the Cabernets in Napa; certainly the best wine for its price anywhere nearby. Spring Mountain holds a special place in my heart because of Pride, Paloma, B&H and several other great wines made there. My first experience with Corte Riva was when Romel Rivera, one of the owners, gave my group a private tour of the caves at Pride. We showed up there for a 2:00pm tasting and din’t leave until after 5:00pm. We had 8 people in our group, all of whom probably should’ve called SafeRide for the trip home. He must have tasted us through 18 wines, including all the reserves.
The Corte Riva Cab & Petite Sirah are both fantastic, but the merlot is the real star of the show. Locally, you have to pay about $ 50/​bottle, but Nieves ‘takes care’ of us when we buy a couple of cases from her direct twice every year. My advice is not to miss the tour if you don’t mind the 45-​minute drive from Napa-​proper.

Romel Rivera is an awesome winemaker. Besides making his own wine, he is the assistant winemaker at Pride Mountain Vineyard under the tutelage of renown winemaker king Bob Foley.
Romel’s wines are big, luscious, fruit forward, long lingering finishes, complex. The taste goes on and on. Powerful muscular wines. Best are his cabernet sauvignon, petite syrah, and merlots.
I am anxiously waiting for his first zinfandel. I know it is going to be an incredible hot big zin because I tasted the grapes when they were harvested. Loads of sweet fruit.
The other beauty of Romel’s wines is that they gets better with time. I enjoy them best when the bottle is aired for about two hours.

We met the assistant winemaker Romel Rivera at the Pride winery in St. Helena. Upon leaving the Pride tasting room some of our group memebers were starring at the wine cave and he happened to be outside. He offereed to take us for a tour of the cave and to do some tasting out of the barrels. During the tour we learned he was the head winemaker of Corte Riva vineyards. He has some of his supply in the Pride caves as well. He gave us about 6 tastes of the pride wines and openned a bottle of the Corte Riva 2004 Petite Syrah. We ended up taking 6 bottles home. I am not sure if they have a tasting room in Santa Rosa but if you do go to Pride vineyards try to get an appointment for the tour of the wine caves. It was the best experience I have ever had in wine country.