Eve’s Wine 101: Explaining The NPA

Organized by Jennifer and Kevin Kelley, the Natural Process Alliance (NPA) is dedicated to responsible farming, minimalistic winemaking and transparency for consumers by using stainless steel refillable bottles to bring white wine to restaurants. Which led to my three questions: Why stainless steel, why only local, and any reds on the horizon? Hi Eve, Thank you so much for your interest in the NPA wines. We decided to choose stainless steel as our packaging because it is more durable than other packaging materials like glass. Our concept behind the NPA is to make wines that reflect where they came from in their purest form. In doing so we wanted to leave the smallest footprint possible both in the vineyard and the surrounding areas. That is why we wanted to package the wine in a container that we could reuse over and over. Thus, all the wines are brought only to local restaurants in the reusable Klean Kanteens. 

The restaurants pour through the wine and then we pick up the empty canisters while dropping off another round of full canisters. We bring the empty canisters back to the winery, clean them and prep them for the next delivery.  

It is important to us that we avoid carting the wine over long distances to further reduce our burden on the environment hich is why we only make the wine available to those restaurants within 100 mile of the winery. Furthermore, the premise behind the NPA wines is to have the freshest wine possible delivered to our customers and making deliveries over a long distance can have an impact on the wine. 

As far as reds go, we do have one red that is just now making it’s first appearance. It comes from the Sun Hawk vineyard. There is a great slide show of this vineyard on Facebook.com/theNPA. It is a biodynamic vineyard in mendocino that also farms olives and lavender. We pull a red wine blend of syrah, grenache, mourvedre, viognier, rousanne, marsanne, and a pinch of cabernet. The 2009 crush is our first using it and it is the first production year for this vineyard. We are really excited about it!

I hope that these answers have been helpful and really do appreciate your interest and support. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to ask. 

Sincerely,

Jennifer

http://thenpa.tv  

Highlights from the SCV Wine Calendar: 

The annual Open That Bottle Night (OTBN) is this Saturday 2/27.  The idea is to not wait for a special occasion to open a special bottle.  Of course you can have it at home or, get out for one! 

Salt Creek Grille’s Happy Hour has been extended so that you can get $4 wine by the glass and great appetizers now starting at 2 until 6:30 Mon-Fri. 

Tonight, 2/26, Inferno is playing classic rock at Wine 661 and The Helen LaPrairie Band is playing at Valencia Wine Co. 

Grape of the Night: Merlot is on Monday 3/8 at Valencia Wine Company at 7pm.  Buy a bottle, share it, learn with others, yes, it’s that simple. 

Sabor Cocina Mexicana has Brunch from 10-2 on Sundays. 

Save the DateS: Tobin James Wine Pairing Dinner on 3/11 at All Corked Up 661-799-7979.  And the Betty Ferguson Foundation’s annual Vine 2 Wine will be held in a private home on 4/11/10.  Waldo will always be there, will you? http://bettyferguson.org