This is my first extensive trip report so apologies if I ramble but its also my first time out wine tasting since 2019. I got to spend 3 full days in Napa and one partial day in early February. This trip came together on short notice and was a mix of wineries I personally buy from and others my father in law had trade tastings setup for.
Day 1 - Our first stop was to Pride Mountain Vineyards. I was the driver this day and wasn’t able to take any pictures on the way up Spring Mountain Road. The scars from the Glass Fire are still heavy heading up the mountain. There were road crews installing new guard rails and what struck me most was they weren’t using wood posts to anchor the guard rail into the hillside. They were using only steel as the wood posts burnt in the fire. You can still see some of the old rail that hasn’t been discarded along side the road on the way up and down the hill. Needless to say it is very sobering to see this in person even 15-16 months after the fact. There are lots of trees that have been cut down and removed or still along side the road.
Pride Mountain is unique in that it sits in both Napa and Sonoma Counties. They have a sign that straddles the county line and the ground is marked Napa on one side and Sonoma on the other. They literally have to keep two sets of accounting books for each county and if I remember what our host Mark told us, they report to the feds and not to the state because of the complexities involved with liquor laws for the multi-county operation.
There will be some 20 reds from Pride. Its been almost 3 weeks from my trip there so going off my memory I recall them saying there will be a 20 Cab Franc but not sure what other reds they may bottle.
We tasted their 20 Chardonnay, 19 Vintner’s Select Merlot (I bought 3 bottles), 19 Syrah, 19 Merlot, 19 Cabernet, 18 Reserve Cabernet, 18 Claret & the Viognier dessert wine (bought a bottle).
The 18’ vintage from Pride is softer than 19. 19 cab was high in tannins but appears to have legs to last long term. 18’ reserve cab was lighter and softer. We typically buy the Cab Franc and Merlot each year from Pride. Good stop and our host Mark was fantastic with the tour
Stop 2 for us was at Spottswoode. I had a special request to have Beth Novak Milliken & Aron Weinkauf available to visit with us during our tasting. We toured the barrel rooms and talked about the 20 vintage as well as 21 vintage, both currently in barrel as we drank the 20 Sauvignon Blanc. Spottswoode says they harvested the 20 vintage days before the Glass Fire started. 20 is going to be a small vintage from them. They also stated due to the drought that 21 will also be a smaller vintage.
When we were done with the tour, we headed back our our tasting. We had a 2018 Lyndenhurst, 2018 Estate Cab and a bottle I brought to share, their first vintage; an 82’ Cab for their 40th anniversary. I have to say I was extremely nervous bringing a 40 year old bottle I purchased several years ago at auction and requesting time with Beth and Aron. We ended up with the rest of the wine making team as well. The 18 Lyndenhurst was drinking very well and is a solid 2nd wine from Spottswoode. The 18’ Estate Cab is an absolutely tremendous wine and is their 4th 100 point vintage in a 5 year span (15, 16, 18 and 19). The 2nd glass of the Estate Cab was MUCH better than the first and great evolution with air. This wine was floral and will need lots of years to fully mature.
We opened the 82 with a Durand, popped and poured and it was ready to go immediately. This is one of 2 vintages Spottswoode made with 100% cab (83 is the other). The wine is fully tertiary and a flawless bottle. It was neat to talk with Beth about the history of the winery and how her mom would hand write some of the older labels (zinfandel).
By the way Spottswoode should have their 19s release the first week of March. Based on what I heard, I anticipate a small price bump.
Stop 3 - Louis Martini. We tasted nothing exceptional here. We booked with them because they were nearby and they’re open late. Most of their wines we tasted were from sourced from Monte Rosso.
Day 2 - First stop, Beta-Jasud. I saw Rohit’s post https://wineimport.discoursehosting.net/t/soul-searching-in-napa-beta-jasud-roy-piper-detert-elyse-diamond-creek-favia-opus-gargiulo-among-others/176662/1 on his visit to see Ketan and made sure I got the skinny on the directions up here. Same as Day 1, the scars of the Glass Fire run deep going up Diamond Mountain Road. This is not what I would call a very well traveled road heading up, even less so once you pass the fork. When we turned into Ketan’s driveway, it was all gravel and as we turned around the hillside he had a frontloader widening the driveway. We had to wait for the frontloader to clear out before we made our way up the hill. This is not an easy drive if you have a car. I would recommend an SUV or truck if you are going to make this trip. These roads are also one car wide with two way traffic if you catch someone else on the road at the same time.
When we finally pulled into the gravel lot in the middle of the Jasud Estate vineyard, we were met by Ketan and 1 other (I think his name is Wade). They had bread and cheeses for us with a glass of their Moon Mountain chardonnay. We walked around the vineyard talking about how he started, his struggles to get to where he is now, losing 40% of his vines in the Glass Fire and then showing us his baby vines and explaining his farming techniques and why this project is going to be different.
Ketan has 60,000 wood posts staked with vines on his rolling Diamond Mountain estate vineyard.
I attached several pictures and even with these posted I don’t think the pictures can capture what Ketan has started for himself. The vineyard has some drastic elevation changes from the upper portion of the vineyard that comes downhill, wraps around the center portion of the vineyard up against a tree line that shades certain sections and then curls around the mountain facing down toward the valley.
As we’re discussing his vineyard what immediately comes to mind for me is the fact that he will very likely have different micro-climates within the vineyard. Ketan smiles and explains that hopefully that will eventually happen but the vines are too young for him to be able to experiment with that just yet. He feels that over time he will absolutely be able to put together bottlings of different sections of his vineyard.
The vines are all 100% cabernet, own rooted and dry farmed. Ketan is not going to setup a trellis system like you see with the cabernet vines on the valley floor. In his words, he wants the terroir to speak for itself and not be the same ripe sensation that you get from most Napa vineyards. He explained how grapes can be at the top of the vine in full sun and another cluster can be covered by leaves and that gives you different characteristics and what he wants to bring is old school Napa cab back and not the same ol same ol.
We got back to the tasting area, and by the way let me explain this in clear detail. This is all outdoors. There is no tasting facility. There is no bathroom. There is a porta potty if you need to go. He has a picnic table they used for the vineyard workers and I was keen to spot his BBQ setup with a blackstone and I want to say a smoker as well. They fired up the blackstone for taco’s for lunch during our tasting. Ketan is actively in the vineyard and hard to get a hold of via email. I would call the tasting setup less than ideal in its current format. If you want a classic Napa setup for tasting, this is not for you. Given the weather we had, it was beautiful and we had no issues being outdoors. In fact, had we not had Rivers-Marie booked afterwards we would have stayed up there with Ketan all day. He was extremely gracious with his time, pouring his wines and explaining his philosophies and just BS’ing in general.
They had waiting for us in a Yeti cooler 5 reds to try, all Beta label. 12, 17 and 18 Monticello, 18 Vare and 18 Maus. Here are my notes: 12 Monticello, drinking damn damn good. We got up there at 10:30 AM and left right before 1 PM, we actually were about 10 minutes late for Rivers-Marie. They opened these wines in the early AM prior to our visit to try and get some air into the bottles. 17 Monticello, different profile than what I was expecting after starting with the 12. Very good drinking but this is one to lay down. Let me also be the first to note that I like to age ALL of my cabs 10+ years. 18 Monticello had brighter fruit than the 17 did, this may be a vintage variation. The 17 Vare showed excellent character. This is another one to lay down and get some age on so it can expand on its profile. The surprise for us on our stop was the 18 Maus. This is a vineyard close to Monticello on the Sonoma side of Veeder. This was actually the best drinking wine out of the bunch. My exact notes I wrote on my iPhone say, “Buy the ever living shit out of this wine.”
Ketan is trying to get a micro-winery permit for his vineyard to have a better tasting setup. He’s poured an undeniable fortune into what will be Jasud Estate. I love his story starting from scratch and after spending close to 3 hours with him, he has a customer as long as I am able to purchase and buy wine.
Stop 2: Rivers-Marie. Fortunately for us, RM is fairly close to Jasud Estate once you get down the mountain. We had Emily waiting for us with 5 glasses of wine. The tasting room is right off 29 and is still brand new. I remember seeing it under construction on one of my last Napa trips in late 2019 so I am going to guess this opened during Covid.
We started with the 20 Bearwallow Chardonnay (1 in our group took some home). We had a glass of Aston Estate pinot noir, 19 Panek (very soft, needs time to evolve), 19 Herb Lamb (way too young for me) and 19 Calistoga (amazing drinking young, I bought a few bottles).
Will popped in during our tasting to say hello and was kind enough to open up 2 additional bottles. 1 happened to be a TRB 100 pointer (we took 1 bottle home) and another was one of Will’s William and Mary. The William and Mary is VERY nice.
Herb Lamb will be a few years before they are able to produce more wine. There will be no 2020 Cabs from Rivers-Marie. 21 is looking very strong vintage wise.
Unfortunately being a few minutes late we had to rush out as they had another group after us. It was great to finally visit Rivers-Marie, to meet Will and Frank and get to drink the wines.
Stop 3 - St. Supery. We drank a mixture of 16-19 Dollarhide and Rutherford cabs. The tasting was outdoors. Nothing grabbed me during this tasting but the wines are still nice. Hard to compare wines after drinking Beta and Rivers Marie.
Day 3 - First stop, Robert Craig up on Howell Mountain. I have to note that going across the valley to Howell Mountain and seeing the scars of the Glass Fire going up Deer Park Road is just so heartbreaking. Barren hills and cut trees just like I described going up Spring Mountain Road.
We were hosted by Scott who had chardonnay waiting for us on arrival. It was cool and windy for our AM tasting. We got to drink through the 17 Spring Mountain, 17 Diamond Mountain, 17 Estate Merlot, 16 Howell Mountain, 16 The Stick and 15 Robert’s Block (sorry Elton
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). The 15 Roberts Block is just epic wine. May have taken 2 of these home. 17 Spring Mountain is drinking very well. 16 Howell Mountain also drinking good. We got to barrel sample the 21 Howell Mountain. So far so good. They feel that the 21’ vintage will be similar to the 13 vintage.
It sounds like they will not have a Diamond Mountain bottling after the 19 vintage. The lease was not renewed and unsure if they will find another source.
Stop 2 - O’Shaughnessy. Same as the other mountain wineries, lots of fire scars surrounding the property and sobering to see what these folks had to live through and rebuild from in 2020.
Bob was our host for our stop and we started with one of Sean Capiaux’s pinots he makes for his own label. We toured through the caves and their library.
We got to taste the 18 Napa Valley, 18 Howell Mountain, 18 Veeder and 18 Merlot. The Napa Valley is in a good spot. The 18 Veeder is extremely powerful and needs time to lay down but is going to be a VERY good bottle of wine in time. The 18 Howell Mountain had us perplexed. It did not have the typical Howell Mountain profile. My father in law commented after we left that he thought it was flat or watered down. I do not want this comment to be controversial or accusatory but the wine just tasted off to us and is not what we are accustomed to tasting from O’Shaughnessy. We finished with the 18 Merlot. I really like this wine from O’Shaughnessy and think it will be solid with lots of years sideways.
Our last stop on Day 3 was at Neal Family Vineyards. I was actually really thrilled to be at our 9th stop in 3 days and had only purchased maybe 8 bottles of wine up to this point. That discipline to not over purchase was shattered at Neal.
We toured through the caves, the wine making area and their bottling line before settling in for tasting. They were fortunate to have the fire not burn through their property. The fires came within 30 feet.
We drank the 16 Napa Valley (I bought 3), 17 Rutherford Dust, 16 Howell Mountain (I bought 3) and their second label One and Only 14. The 16s were very impressive. I have liked Mark Neal’s wines and have not been a huge buyer and probably should have been. As we were talking with our host, he gave us access to their library and I ended up leaving Neal with 7 magnums out of Mark’s library dating back to 2002. The library is open for business if you can get them to part with the bottles.
Day 4, Last stop for me Chappellet.
Pritchard Hill is beautiful. The pictures do not do this place justice. They have a beautiful estate winery. We toured with Christian who took us for a walk through the big barn and back into the vineyard drinking chardonnay, Apple Lane pinot noir and then returning to our tasting spot amongst the barrels to drink the 18 Cab Franc (no price change for 19, great promise but needs lots of time), 18 Signature Cab (still too young to drink) and the 19 Hideaway Vineyard (WOW! Buy this wine if you get the chance).
I asked several questions as there was a thread recently about the price increase for the 19 Signature. There will be price bump for the 19. They have not released it winery direct yet but it has been sent to their distribution channels. They cited cost of business, materials, gas cost increases as they own all of their equipment, wages, etc. Not all bottlings are going up in price. Signature Cab, Las Piedras and Pritchard Hill will see price increases.
There will not be a 20 Pritchard Hill release. I do not remember what they said about 20 Signature Cab and I don’t want to misquote what we were told.
For the Mountain Cuvee, this is their largest bottling. They make 20,000 cases annually. The signature cab is around 8,000 cases annually. The Mountain Cuvee was renamed between 08-10 to Cervantes and then reverted back to Mountain Cuvee as it had already established itself and the name change was confusing. The Cervantes name was for the surveyor who surveyed Pritchard Hill way back when. His maps are used on the Hideaway Vineyard label. Mountain Cuvee is a restaurant and distribution bottling only.
They source cab from Wells Ranch (part of their estate on Pritchard Hill named after one of Molly’s sisters), Stagecoach and Atlas Peak fruit as well as young Prithcard Hill
That is a wrap on my Napa trip report. I was blown away by Beta and Ketan’s hospitality. I am really looking forward to that release next week. Spottswoode continues to crank out great Napa cabs. The price increases will make this tough to continue buying in quantity but this is great juice. I hope these pictures uploaded correctly.