As the Monterey Peninsula is to California golf, the Napa Valley is to California wine. It’s the ne plus ultra, the grand cru, as the French would say. Though, thanks in no small measure to Napa, oenophiles have long since stopped kowtowing to all things Gallic. For those who find wine and golf life’s greatest pairing, Mayacama — a real estate community in Santa Rosa with a highly ranked private golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus — offers a glass that isn’t just full but overflowing.
Wine has been central to Mayacama since its 1999 debut. Indeed, the club has a Vintner Membership specifically for winery owners.
“They provide the club with approximately a barrel equivalent of wine per year at essentially cost,” says Jonathan Wilhelm, Mayacama’s managing partner, “and we pass along those savings onto the members by way of pricing.”
The fabled wine Rory McIlroy uncorked to celebrate his Masters win
For many members, per Wilhelm, the wine is on par with the golf as the reason to join Mayacama. To understand the centrality of wine as an amenity, consider the fact that there are more wine lockers in the voluminous Wine Cave than there are golf lockers on property — and about 75 percent of alcohol sales are vino.
“This might be the only club I know of where it’s 90 degrees outside and members are choosing a red wine versus a gin and tonic,” Wilhelm says.
Today, more than three dozen of the world’s most highly regarded winemakers comprise Mayacama’s vintner members. The Wine Cave affords access to some of the best of the best anywhere, far-flung as well as local, with more than 500 selections: Cabernet to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir to Zinfandel. Its events range from an annual “all-vintner pour,” which brings the club’s winemakers together for a large culinary and golf experience, to intimate vintner and guest chef dinners; the first Friday of every month brings with it a complimentary tasting featuring Mayacama’s vintner member wines as well as other local producers that the club finds interesting.
Says Wilhelm, “Sharing wine with friends and members creates a communion of sorts that allows [all of us] to interact in a very personal way.”
To call it a cave seems not quite right when the mood lighting is perfect and one could eat off its floors. Perhaps “Wine Spa” felt a bit over the top.
It contains more than 500 different wines. “We sometimes joke that we’re either a golf club with a wine problem,” Wilhelm says, “or a wine club with a golf problem!”
Nicklaus’ layout, rated among the best in the Golden State, gracefully wends through the idyllic valley, with impressive oak trees often defining and defending the holes.
Even the wine barrels at Mayacama say “vintage.”
READY FOR MORE ADVENTURES? LISTEN ALONG WITH GOLF’S JOSH SENS AND SIMON HOLT AND OUR COURSE RATERS (PSST… THEY’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE) ON THE GAME’S NEWEST PODCAST, “DESTINATION GOLF.”
