Clos du Val
Ten dollars gets you a glass on the patio at Hirondelle House, refundable against a bottle. Above that, $125 buys aged library wines in the cellar.
Why go
Clos du Val pours Thursday through Monday out of Hirondelle House, in cabanas, on the patio, or down in the cellar.1 The house works to a Bordeaux-inspired philosophy and says its wines are built to age, which is what the library flight is there to demonstrate.1 Yettalil is the estate blend.1 Its tasting walks you from a cabana out to a barrel of a vintage nobody has bottled yet, $100.1 The family keeps a good story on the page: founder John Goelet commissioned the cartoonist Ronald Searle in the early eighties to draw the wine world, to bring joy and laughter to the world of wine.
1
Order this / avoid
- Order: a glass on the garden patio. The $10 reservation fee comes back against wine and walk-ins sometimes get in.1
- Order: the library tasting at $125 if you want the aging claim tested rather than described.1
- Avoid: bringing a dog indoors. Leashed pets stay outside, and everyone has to be 21.1
Good to know
- Hours: Thursday to Monday. Walk-ins depend on availability and reservations are encouraged.1
- Groups: anything large goes through hospitality@closduval.com rather than the booking page.1
- The address to use: closduval.com/pages/visit. The shorter /visit path is dead.
- Hygiene: not established. No inspection instrument for this county is on file here.
Verdict
could-visit — Ten dollars, refundable against a bottle, buys you a seat on the garden patio with a glass in your hand, and in Stags Leap that is close to a public service. Above it the ladder is honest: $75 for a hosted current-release flight, $100 to taste Yettalil in a cabana and then a barrel in the cellar, $125 for aged library wines. The family tells one good story on its own page, about John Goelet hiring Ronald Searle to draw the wine business in the early eighties so nobody would take it too seriously. Nothing bylined about the wine has been read, so the rung reflects the visit rather than the bottle.