If you can have more fun in Napa(town) or find a busier spot on
a Friday night, then you are on some mighty powerful hallucinogenics.
The Bounty Hunter Wine Bar, corner First and Main, is THE happeningest
place in the valley Friday night.
The excitement comes in two waves; a crush from 6 to 8 pm as locals
collect to swap wine industry stories and from 10 to closing (often
as late as 2 am), when local restaurants and the opera house start
to empty out.
The wine bar is open other nights, too, but it’s Friday night,
at the end of the grape-picking, wine-racking, wine-bottling week
that draws the locals. They come in clusters, like grapes, and occupy
the small tables, then stand in corners and the place continues
to fill until its like a crowded car in the Tokyo subway at rush
hour. Forget standing room – you’re lifted off the floor
by contact with the bodies around you.
The big attraction Friday night is the guest winemaker program;
each week, a local winemaker – it might be a rising star like
Steve Reynolds of Reynolds Family Winery, or a recognized blue chip
professional like Ric Forman – is on hand to pour (for free!)
his or her latest offerings. It’s a sort of mini-celebrity
moment, as many of these local winemakers have been profiled in
the wine press (the kind you read, not the kind used to crush grapes),
lauded for their labels, deified for their drink.
The Bounty Hunter Wine Bar has a western motif… lots of leather,
cowboy hats, a bar stool crowned with a gorgeous western saddle,
which just about everyone wants to straddle… all selected
by the Bounty Hunter himself, Mark Pope, a former pharmaceutical
executive who landed in Napa Valley to sell drugs to fight bugs
but instead picked one up – the wine bug. “I just knew
I had to live here and get into the wine business,” says Mark,
who is enamored with the old west, having once owned a horse ranch.
Think of this wine bar as a “wine saloon.” For starters,
there are swinging doors at the front; yes, they only swing one
way (in), but by the time you leave, you won’t notice that
they don’t swing out.
Your eyes will initially be drawn to the exposed brick walls, which
adorned the 1888 neighborhood grocery store that first stood here.
But quickly, your eyes drift to the l-o-n-g wall of wines that Bounty
Hunter offers in its catalogue program: 250 labels, of which about
30 percent are international.
On any one night, some 25 to 30 wines are offered by the glass;
if you try something you like, and wish to buy a bottle to take
home, you get a 10 percent discount on the bottle as you’ve
already paid for a glass.
The deal works in reverse, too. Buy a bottle off the retail wall,
sit down at one of the small granite tables with your party and
pay $6 for Riedel glassware. Remember: you are not paying restaurant
prices for these wines; you are only paying wine retail and a modest
glass fee. And you’ve got a selection of 250 wines from which
to choose.
To accompany your wine, there is a small, but focused appetizer
menu; Hog Island oysters to go with that wickedly good chilled Sancerre
or with a glass of Elvenglade Vineyard Pinot Gris from Yamhill County,
Oregon; lamb prosciutto (with a plate of antipasti meats) commands
a Zin or Merlot. The tremendous platter of sashimi with a crunchy
rice cake and greens goes well with many of the white, by-the-glass
wines.
The Bounty Hunter Wine Bar redefines cool with a western motif and
is on a path to become Napa Valley’s answer to Paris’
famed Willi’s Wine Bar.
Open to 11 pm Tuesday and Wednesday, open Thursday, Friday and Saturday
until the last person leaves, which by law has to be no later than
2 am. Closed Sunday and Monday, though this may change seasonally,
so call ahead.
Bounty Hunter Wine Bar, 975 First at Main, Napa
(town). 707-255-0622. |
