CALIFORNIA CABERNETS

For many people, the wines made of Cabernet Sauvignon are "king."  
Its wines can be quite complex and they can be rather ordinary.  The character of Cabernet Sauvignon seems to be fairly consistent around the world, so perhaps it expresses its "terroir," (if you will) less dramatically than Pinot Noir.



Many people view "Cabernet Sauvignon" as a lovely meal-time beverage.  

California's Napa Valley is, as it turns out, a wonderful place to cultivate, make and sell Cabernet.

During the 1950s and 1960s, when there was but a handful of wineries in the Napa Valley, people wondered if California could produce Cabernet Sauvignon wine worthy of comparison with the wines of France's Bordeaux region.  But this question may have been answered decades earlier.

One of California's first "fine" Cabernets was grown in San Mateo County by a fellow named Emmett Rixford.  He brought cuttings from Château Margaux in Bordeaux and planted the La Questa vineyard in Woodside, producing some wines which were said to challenge the best of Bordeaux in those days. 


Back through the 1950s and early 1960s, Merlot did not exist in California.  Wineries in Napa such as Inglenook, Beaulieu Vineyards, Charles Krug and Louis Martini were "the" hot brands and any restaurant worth its salt had to have BV's Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Inglenook's "Cask" Cabernet, Louis Martini's Special Selection and Charles Krug's Vintage Selection (Red Stripe, as it was known).

Most every wine sold its wines for similar prices.  If Louis Martini's Cabernet was $3.75, Christian Brothers might be $3.50, BV was perhaps $4 for the regular and $5.75 for the Private Reserve and Inglenook's were within the same price range.

Souverain was a small winery near St. Helena and it was owned and operated by former Hillsborough resident, Lee Stewart.   Mayacamas was a fledgling Cabernet maker in the western hills.  Freemark Abbey was a hot, new winery in the early 1970s as were Chappellet and Cuvaison.  Stag's Leap Wine Cellars was about to launch its first vintage (the 1972) and Chateau Montelena was brand new as the '70s began.  

Some fellow named Robert Mondavi left his family's winery (Charles Krug) and aided by financing from a Washington State brewery, he launched his brand with the 1966 vintage.

Mondavi's family owned a winery out in Lodi and he was working in Napa at the Sunny St. Helena winery...when he heard the Charles Krug facility was up for sale, he somehow convinced his conservative father to buy the place.  Disagreements with his family caused him to leave and, with help from Washington State beer brewing interests, he was able to set up the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville in time for the 1966 vintage.

Mondavi became a "must have" wine in short order.  He aged his wines in French oak, rather than neutral redwood tanks or small American oak barrels.

He was a smart marketing man and conducted numerous blind-tastings with his Cabernet alongside the fancy wines from France's Bordeaux region.  If his wine was liked, great!  It sold for far less than those $20 and $30 Bordeaux such as Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild, Latour and Margaux.
If his wine did not fare well, c'est la vie! It cost a lot less than those famous French bottles.
So for Mondavi this was a "win-win" situation.

The cult winemaker in that era was Joe Heitz, who made distinctive Napa Cabernet Sauvignons, especially one from "Martha's Vineyard."

His wines were difficult to find and the somewhat cantankerous Heitz told my father "I'd have time to make more wine if I didn't have to field phone calls all day long from people such as you!"  (He used a more graphic term than people, according to my Pop.)

Years later, Mr. Heitz was a most gracious fellow when I'd see him.

We eventually were able to purchase Heitz' wines in the mid-1970s.  One of the finest wines we've ever tasted was a 1968 Heitz Napa Cabernet...it was one of those rare wines which was worthy of "the search."  And can you imagine?  Heitz had the nerve to ask $8 for his top bottling of Cabernet.  

In 2012 we opened my last bottle of 1968 Heitz Cellar "Napa" Cabernet Sauvignon.  It was in magnificent condition and absolutely perfect!  The wine had tremendous fruit and was silky smooth...a delightful remembrance of the past and the "early days" of California's current "Golden Age" of wine.

One notion Heitz had in making Cabernet was to avoid the typical secondary fermentation called a "malolactic," converting the tart Malic acid into smoother, rounder lactic acid.  He figured, quite astutely, that it was the acidity which gave a wine longevity, not (solely) tannin (as thought by many).

 

Freemark Abbey was a leading producer of Cabernets (and Chardonnays) in the early 1970s.  Their ring-leader was a fellow named Charles Carpy, who was a major proponent of preserving Napa for agricultural uses.

They hired a winemaker named Jerry Luper, who also had a hand in the first vintages at Al Brounstein's "Diamond Creek" winery as well as at Chateau Montelena before packing his bags and heading to Portugal.  

A Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bosché vineyard was the crown jewel in their line-up.  I can't imagine the wines they made in the early 1970s finding much of an appreciative audience in today's world of deep-colored, high alcohol, lavishly-oaked wines.  

The winery changed hands and today it's owned by the Jackson Family, who own the Kendall Jackson brand and a bunch of other wineries.  Interestingly (or maybe not), there is no mention of the Jackson Family on the Freemark Abbey website as of December 2020, though they have owned the brand since 2006.  

The "dean" of Napa Valley winemakers was Andre Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyards in Rutherford.

This fellow had a remarkable influence on the California wine scene in the 1950s and beyond and his influence is still felt today.  Aside from making some stellar wines, he was instrumental in training other winemakers and offering consulting advice.   He was a true giant, despite being less than 5 feet tall!

We read, once upon a time, a quotation attributed to Mr. Tchelistcheff: "God created Cabernet Sauvignon, but the Devil created Pinot Noir."

BV Cabernets were matured in American oak and this was their "signature."  The current owners of Beaulieu have drastically changed the wines and today they use French cooperage.  Another change, which Tchelistcheff would have vetoed, is the high octane level of the wine.  Andre routinely advised his consulting client wineries to make wines of less than 14% alcohol.    These days the BV Private Reserve is often at, or close to, 15% alcohol.

They  still get high praise from "experts" who can taste a wine and immediately assign it a numerical point score on the mysthical Hundred Point Scale.

One of the young upstarts was Warren Winiarski, who founded Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.  
We were just about the first customer of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.  Winiarski was from the Midwest and arrived in California, working with Lee Stewart at Souverain in the mid-1960s and then at Robert Mondavi's new establishment in its first years.  Around 1970 he planted Cabernet in the Stag's Leap district (after planting Cabernet on Howell Mountain years earlier!).  

Warren had been affiliated, too, with a winery called Ivancie...located in Colorado!  Gerald Ivancie was a dentist in real life, but fancied the idea of making wine on a commercial scale in Colorado...and Mr. Winiarski offered consulting services and advice, if we recall correctly.

In the early days, I think the Stag's Leap Cabernet was $3.75 a bottle.  We called to place an order and whomever answered the phone informed us that the price had escalated to $4.25. We still ordered a couple of cases, even at that lofty price.  I quipped "I hope Warren will give me a ride in his new Mercedes" since the price of the wine had been raised.
About a half hour later our phone rang at the shop and it was Warren Winiarski, wanting to know how I knew he'd purchased a new car!

The Winiarski family sold the winery in 2007 to a partnership of Italy's Piero Antinori and Washington State's Ste. Michelle Wine Estates.

Another new label in the 1970s was that of the Wagner family.  Old Charlie Wagner and his son Chuck were grape growers in Rutherford and they launched their brand with the 1972 vintage.  That was a wet year and though it was not a highly-regarded vintage, both Caymus and Winiarski's Stag's Leap Wine Cellars offered us really nice wines from that vintage.

The Wagners had a fellow named Randy Dunn was their winemaker in the 1970s and Dunn, of course, remains a producer of "old school" Cabernets under his own banner.

Caymus made all sorts of wines in that era...Oeil de Perdrix was a pink wine made of Pinot Noir (yes, they grew Pinot in Rutherford!).  Caymus also made Zinfandel and, once upon a time, Merlot.  They bottled a sweet Riesling they purchased on the bulk market, (from Wente Bros.) as well! 

Man, they sure have lost their way these days, producing an inky, dark Cabernet Sauvignon with some residual sugar!  Many people in the trade claim the wine is fortified with a grape concentrate to give that dark color and slight sweetness.

Also making some top Cabernet in the 1970s was the Conn Creek winery.  

Villa Mount Eden, with Nils Venge as their winemaker, made exceptional 1978 and 1979 vintages...

The Franciscan winery opened in the early 1970s and after a change (or two) of ownership, one of its winemakers, Justin Meyer, went on to found Silver Oak.

Ridge Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains has been making stellar Cabernets for decades.
They had intended to explore Cabernet from different areas, but a lack of available fruit caused them to feature Zinfandels from numerous locales.
These days their "Monte Bello" Cabernet is considered a California "grand cru" red.
They did make a remarkable 1971 Eisele Vineyard Cabernet from Napa and this was a powerhouse bottle of wine.

Sonoma was home to some good wineries, too, but its history was more of producing good quality wines at reasonable prices.  

Savvy wine buyers knew Pedroncelli in Sonoma's Geyserville area to be a source of good wines along with Parducci, farther north in Mendocino's Ukiah.

Sonoma's Alexander Valley gained a measure of notoriety when a fellow named Tom Jordan started his winemaking enterprise.  The 1976 vintage was released at an unheard of price: $6.75 (if memory serves).  
The same fellow who was there in 1976 is still affiliated at Jordan today!  Rob Davis!

The Santa Clara valley was home to several notable wineries.  Martin Ray, of course.  
And the afore-mentioned Ridge.



Mario Gemello made some stellar wines in the 1960 vintage and through the early 1970s.
The late Mario Gemello in 2003, or so.

Well, today wineries such as Heitz offer entry level Cabernet for $65 and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars costs $85.  It took them 35 years to get to the fifty to sixty dollar level.  And yet, these days, the market is full of brands vying for shelf and wine-list space which cost $100 or more for Cabernets with little history and no track record.

We've seen the advent of "cult wines" over the past couple of decades.  Names such as Bryant, Colgin, Harlan and Bond fetch hundreds of dollars.  Seeing this trend, many people have started wine brands in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle.

*****

A sales rep brought in a perfectly standard bottle of Napa Cabernet, asking $75 a bottle.  I pegged it as being "worth" $20.  "What makes this worth $75?" I asked.  The fellow showed me a map of famous vineyards and since all the neighbor's wines cost big bucks, their wine had to cost a similar small fortune.

When I asked another gentleman "Precisely what brand of crack are they smoking at your winery to think this young vines, simple Cabernet could possibly warrant your asking nearly $200 for a bottle?" he told me "That's a good price for a cult Cabernet!"
Too much Kool-Aid, in my curmudgeonly view.

*****
More recently a fellow who had purchased a famous vineyard made a name for himself by producing some lovely wines.  The price escalated from maybe $40 or $50 at the outset to $300-$350 when he sold the vineyard and winery.  The new owners of that place immediately increased the price of the wine to $500 a bottle.
So the fellow launched a new wine brand and I'd seen it in the catalogue of a prominent wine distributor.  I asked if we could taste the Sauvignon Blanc and the Cabernet Sauvignon.
I pegged the white wine as being worth maybe $25-30 but it was priced at $50-$55 retail.
The Cabernet was perfectly nice, but I didn't find it to be worth anywhere near its price tag.  I thought $50 was about right for the wine and maybe $100 if consumers bought in to the story of how this guy made some famous Cabernet once-upon-a-time.
I asked the sales rep to keep quiet about the pricing and allow the Weimax crew to taste without being biased or prejudiced.
They said the Sauvignon Blanc was maybe a $25 bottle, so they were surprised to learn it was twice that.
Then they tasted the Cabernet.  All of them identified the Cabernet as a $50-$60 wine.
"Well, you're close," said the sales rep.  "Try Three-Hundred & Sixty Dollars!"
So you see, sometimes it mostly about the story, the singing and dancing and the smoke & mirrors.

*****


Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, Cabernet wines were somewhere in the range of 12 to 13% alcohol.
Many wines were aged three to five years before being released.

Today, in search of greater acclaim from various wine critics, winemakers pick grapes at ever higher levels of sugar and ripeness.  You won't find many California Cabernets with less than 14% alcohol these days.

While people may have been more patient in the 1950s and 1960s, today it's a world of instant gratification and wine drinking has changed.
Many people used to enjoy wine as a meal-time beverage and as an accompaniment to food.  In today's world, many consumers drink wine on its own, nearly as a cocktail beverage.
This explains, to some degree, the change in winemaking and wine styles.


The winemaking has changed with respect to Cabernet.  Years ago it was normal to make Cabernet Sauvignon without blending any other varieties.  Today, many producers add Merlot to "soften" their Cabernets.  There are other winemakers who blend in other Bordeaux varieties, such as Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. 

One winemaker, years ago, told me his best wine was 100% Cabernet.  "I blend Merlot into our regular wine, but mainly to give the marketing people something to talk about." he said.

Looking back to the wines made in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in Napa, we find most were aged in large wooden tanks.  The notion of adding oak chips to flavor the wine was certainly foreign to winemakers of that era.  Wines were often aged in redwood tanks or relatively neutral cooperage for a few years and then a few more years in bottle before the wine reached the market.

Today many people give their wines 12-18 months in smaller cooperage (it matures faster in 60 gallon barrels than in a 2,000 gallon vat).  Many replace a percentage of barrels each year in order to insure a certain amount of oak is showing in the wines' bouquet and flavor.   And the wines are pushed into the market after 2 or 3 years, whereas into the 1960s and 1970s, most Cabernets arrived in shops when they were about 5 years old!

While many winemakers produce big, deeply-colored, aggressively tannic wines, there is not guarantee that a wine of such style will "age well."  The wine must have an appropriate amount of fruit (grape character) to go along with the tannin.  Even more important is the level of acidity in the wine.  Low acid/high tannin wines, in our experience, often do not age particularly gracefully. 

We have had the pleasure of opening old bottles of California Cabernets which we are fairly certain we not outrageously tannic when the wines were young.  I am thinking of bottles of Louis Martini Cabernets from the mid-to-late 1940s which, at 50 years of age, were still vibrant in color and fresh in "fruit."  I also recall a Simi Cabernet of elderly stature (probably from the mid 1960s or so) which we shared with a group of visiting Alto Adige (Italian) food and wine fanciers: the wine was fruity, berryish and thoroughly delicious despite never having been hugely tannic or excessively oaky.  

The late Mario Gemello also made exceptional Santa Clara County Cabernet Sauvignon.   His 1960 is legendary!  And still fabulous (the bottle in the photo above was opened, and consumed with enthusiasm, in January 2001...we had one in August of 2010 alongside 1966 Lafite and 1967 Latour...the Gemello was the best of the three).  That wine was aged in wood for nearly a decade!!!

Yes, winemaking has changed.

Our shop caters more to people who "drink" wine as opposed to those who "collect" wine.  We do, of course, have many deluxe bottles in the shop.  But we appreciate having good quality and sensible pricing.  These days there's a lot of "Fool's Gold" in the wine market.  

If you've got lots of cash, buy what you like.  If you're looking for value, come see us.

Cabernet Best Buys

 

Winemaker John Hart

 

HART'S DESIRE 2018 "CLARET" $19.99
HART'S DESIRE 2016 Alexander Valley CABERNET SAUVIGNON  $25.99

John Hart married a woman named Desiree, so he pretty much had no choice in naming the winery!

 

 

 

He's been making a delightful "Claret" for us over the past few years and the just-arrived 2018 is exceptional.  It's a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.  All Sonoma fruit.   The wine has a nice touch of wood (the proverbial "kiss" of oak) and the tannin level is such that drinking it now is a pleasure.

 

 

It's a medium-full bodied red.  Not huge, over-the-top, but balanced and refined.  And sensibly-priced.

His Alexander Valley Cabernet is marvelous and decidedly "Old World" in style.  It's immediately drinkable and is a far cry from the inky-black, fruit bomb style popular these days.  We suggested this to a customer who was hosting a dinner party...her guests went crazy for the wine and asked her to host another meal with Hart's Desire Cabernet!

 

 

ALEXANDER VALLEY VINEYARDS
2018 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon   SOLD OUT

The Wetzel family has been farming in Sonoma's Alexander Valley for nearly 60 years.  

Harry & Maggie Wetzel bought the old homestead property which had been occupied by Cyrus Alexander for whom the Alexander Valley is named.  They raised cattle and had some fruit trees, along with a magnificent garden.

 

 

 

 

 

Back in those days, there was a modest amount of viticultural activity in that nearby valley called Napa.  Perhaps a dozen wineries were over yonder and just a handful in their neighborhood.  A bit of land was then planted to grapes as, why not?  

We bought our first wines from them with the 1975 vintage!  Young Hank Wetzel was making the family wine and he did a damned good job.
We recall good vintages of Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and, of course, Cabernet Sauvignon.

The 2017 Cabernet has 12% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and a drop each of Malbec and Petit Verdot.  Twenty-five percent new oak (both French and American) gives a mildly woodsy spice note to the wine.  

 

 

 

 

Young Hank Wetzel in 2017 at a little 90th Anniversary fest for the Pedroncelli family.

Though many of their neighbors ask serious money for a bottle of Cabernet, the Wetzel's still sell wine for a price which allows one to drink well, even if you didn't part with a fifty-dollar bill.  

 

Here's a line up of their Cabernets with the various labels they've used since the start...

If you're looking for a good twenty-back Cabernet and you possess the palate of an adult wine drinker, consider getting a bottle of this.

MARIO PERELLI MINETTI
2017  Napa CABERNET (reg $30) SALE $21.99

The late Uncle Mario lived a few blocks from the shop and he was an amazing character.  His family ran the California wine business shortly after Prohibition and he was a lawyer in real life.  But wine was in his blood and he always liked the business.  He'd been making wine (or hired winemakers to produce, vinify and bottle, some wine for him.  Then he'd go store to store and restaurant to restaurant, offering them a rather good quality wine at a down-to-earth price.  

 

Uncle Mario was an old-timer and he was embarrassed if he had to raise the price of his wine by even 50-cents a bottle.  He was always amazed when some brand new winery would release its first wine, unknown and relatively un-tested and yet they'd be brazen enough to ask $50, $100, or $200 for a single bottle.

"Who buys those wines?" he wondered.

Mario's wine, though, came from good Napa Valley vineyards.  It never had a lot of wood showing.  "I want to taste the grapes," he'd say.

Mario lived to be well past one hundred years of age and he did pretty well up until the last year, or so.  He'd credit the wine as having bestowed upon him some measure of youth and vitality.

For years the wine came from Napa Valley fruit.  Mario's grandson, conscious of keeping the wine associated with the words "good value," told us he didn't think he'd be able to keep the price at a reasonable level if he made wine from Napa fruit.  One day Andrew brought in a couple of samples of Cabernets and asked us to offer an opinion on the wines.  We had a decided preference and the best wine was, surprisingly, from Sonoma County grapes!  

The new vintage returns to the Napa appellation.  Medium-bodied.

We are sad to learn that Andrew Perelli-Minetti will be ceasing production and sales.  
The 2017 vintage will be the last, at least for the time being.

SUMMERS
2020 Sonoma- Napa CABERNET "Andriana's Cuvée"  SALE  $19.99

Napa Cabernet at a reasonable price is not easy to find.  Most Napa wineries ask $50 for their entry level bottling.

Summers is a small estate in Calistoga and they actually have more respect for a $50 bill than most vintners.  As a result, you can almost buy two bottles of their Andriana's Cuvee Cabernet with a fifty.  It's 90% Sonoma fruit and 10% from Napa.


This vintner has been a bit of a fixture here at the shop for the past 10 years.  People appreciate paying a fair price and getting an honestly made bottle of wine.  

Jim and Beth Summers bought a vineyard in Knights Valley, north of Calistoga, in 1987.  Merlot and Muscat.  They began to make their own wine with the 1992 vintage.  In 1996 they acquired a parcel near Chateau Montelena on Tubbs Lane.  That's when things got out of hand...

We've routinely had their entry level Cabernet in the shop, along with Merlot and their dynamite bottling of Charbono (which is no longer being made).

The Andriana's Cabernet comes from several vineyard sites near the winery, including their own Andriana's Vineyard.  The wine and was matured in French oak (50% new wood, too!).  The fruit takes center stage, showing dark berries and a bit of cassis.  There's a touch of wood in the back and the tannin level is such that the wine is very drinkable right now, unless you're a fan of White Zinfandel or sweet, fruity Muscat wines...

 

The Late, Famous Barolo Winemaker Luciano Sandrone
Hanging Out With the late Napa Charbono Specialist Jim Summers.


A Recent Vintage at Summers...

 

 

GOLDSCHMIDT 2020 "FIDELITY RED"  SALE $17.99

Here's a terrific, showy "Bordeaux Blend" with Merlot, Cabernet and Petit Verdot...nice touch of oak...ready to drink as it's vinified to be drinkable in its youth.

It's made by Nick Goldschmidt who has several labels of his own...
He's been affiliated with numerous brands over the years, with a number of years at Sonoma's Simi winery being one claim to fame.

We've tasted various bottles of Goldschmidt's wines and find them all to be pretty good.  More remarkable is the wines in the affordable range offer damned good bang-for-the-buck,



Winemaker Nick Goldschmidt

 

Other suggestions: 

Consider some marvelous Spanish wines:     Pago Florentino at $24.99.  Rioja can be had for $12-$25...there are also some really good reds from the southwest part of France...Madiran wines give these California Cabernets a run for the money and they're $21.99.

Bordeaux is another great place to start exploring.  We have reasonably priced, delicious Bordeaux wines from $13.99 to $50.

Deluxe CABERNETS

 

ALTAMURA VINEYARDS & WINERY

This family enterprise started out in the mid-1980s with a lonely little stone building on the Silverado Trail.  Chardonnay was an early release, but given their penchant for aging wines in oak, reds have been the highlights here.   


Frank Altamura was born & raised in the Napa Valley and got a job "toiling in the vineyards" at Sterling in the mid-to-late 1970s.  He used to work at Caymus and so he's partial  to oak.

 

The winery site they had in the 1980s was along the Silverado Trail, but they sold it and today that place is the home of the Darioush winery.  The winery makes Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon.  The vineyards are in the southeastern part of Napa Valley in an area, appropriately, called "Wooden Valley."  Production remains small and the wines have a good following thanks to nice fruit and balance in the wines.  
The current and recent vintages show less strong oak and more Cabernet.

Our late colleague Bob Gorman was a big fan of Altamura Cabernet.  Bob "grew up" on wines from Louis Martini, BV and Inglenook back in the 1960s.
He wrote a book in the 1970s called Gorman on California Premium Wine, a nice snapshot of the fledgling California wine world back then.
He would go forage for mushrooms around Northern California and he stopped in at Altamura on his way (some years ago) and there are photos below.

 

The 2016 is very good...really "classic" Napa Cabernet aromas.  The wine was matured in small oak, with 70% of the barrels being brand new.  And yet the wood is rather well-integrated here.   We like the dark fruit notes and the mildly cedary tones from the barrels.  This is delicious right now, especially with grilled meats and it will do well with another 5 to 15 years of cellaring.

The Altamura family owns a Napa Valley pizzeria...Ciccio in Yountville, so if you're hungry, you might swing by and check it out.

Currently offered:   2016 Napa Cabernet   SALE $109.99

Bob Gorman's photo of Altamura's vineyards.


Bob's photo inside the Altamura Winery...

BEAULIEU VINEYARD

Located in Rutherford, in the heart of "Cabernet Country," the BV winery has made an impressive comeback in recent years.  I'll bet, however, they'd claim they never left.  Yet for those looking for serious quality Napa Valley Cabernets, this winery went into the doldrums from about 1975 or so until the 1994 vintage.
Two historical figures play prominent roles here:  the founder, a Frenchman named Georges de Latour and a Russian gentleman named Andre Tchelistcheff. 

Georges de Latour was from the Perigord region in France and came to California in the 1880s in search of gold.  He lost what money he had attempting to find gold in the Sierra Foothills.  He had a background in chemistry, however, and traveled from winery to winery buying sediment and the tartrates which precipitated out during the aging process.  This he made into cream of tartar which was destined for baking powder.   His business was headquartered in Sonoma near the Dry Creek Valley.  In 1899 he purchased a property located immediately north of the very prestigious (at that time) Inglenook winery in Rutherford.  He returned to his native France for vine cuttings and opened a small winery. 

In 1915 he bought the stone cellars of the Seneca Ewer winery across the road and that remains the main home of BV. 

Prohibition didn't shut down the winery, as de Latour was a producer of altar wines for the Catholic Church.  When Repeal finally came along, de Latour had stocks of well-aged wines and was ready to supply a thirsty market. 
Claude Rains portrayed Georges de Latour in a movie called "This Earth is Mine," based on a book written by Alice Tisdale Hobart.  I understand the situations were changed somewhat to avoid legal wranglings.

De Latour and his son-in-law, the Marquis de Pins, visited the Institute National Agronomique in Paris in search of an enologist to replace the retiring Professor Leon Bonnet.  They met a research enologist named Andre Tchelistcheff who accepted their offer of a position in the Napa Valley. 
Tchelistcheff felt Cabernet Sauvignon had the greatest potential and wanted to concentrate on making a wine to challenge the best of Bordeaux.  But the owners of BV felt they had to have a complete "line" of wines and made everything including Napa "Burgundy," "Chablis", "Muscat de Frontignan" and other fortified dessert wines. 

The first BV "Georges de Latour Private Reserve" Cabernet Sauvignon was from the 1936 vintage. 

I have a very old copy of Leon Adams "The Wines of America" in which he writes of the initial Private Reserve:
"It was the 1936 vintage and was priced at a dollar and a half.  (At this writing, the ten year old Private Reserve brings fourteen dollars a bottle in the few stores that have any in stock.  The three year old can be bought at the Beaulieu tasting room in Rutherford for $5.25 but there is a limit of two bottles per buyer."

I think I still may have a bottle or two of that $5.25 Private Reserve with our ancient orange price sticker on it!

The winery was sold by the Marquise de Pins in 1969 to the large Heublein company. Tchelistcheff remained as winemaker, though he retired in 1973 or 1974.  His protégé, Dick Peterson made the 1974 vintage and left shortly thereafter to be the head honcho at the new "The Monterey Vineyard" in Monterey County, California. 

The winery, in our view, went into a tailspin through the late 1970s and all through the 1980s.  It seems, to our taste-buds, the winemaking was being hampered by the bean counters as less-than-stellar fruit and barrels were being used to make, not surprisingly, less-than-stellar wines. 

We were shocked when a BV Private Reserve 1994 won a blind-tasting here.  We were delighted, however, to see the return of "an old friend."   This, to us, marks a renaissance at BV.

The shackles had been removed, it would seem, and BV could, once again, take its place as a source of excellent quality wines.  BV Reserve Cabernets have won blind-tastings here with their 1995 and 1996 vintages. But that is now in the rearview mirror.
The winery is also making tiny amounts of special bottlings of Cabernets and other experimental varieties.  We hope the string of successes continues!



BV (or its parent company, Treasury) makes a modest quality "Coastal" Cabernet which has yet to attract our attention.  It had the BV logo on it some years ago.  Today they simply call it "Coastal Wine Estates."  (And yet we'll bet the fruit comes from the Central Valley and not the coastal regions of California.)

 

Their regular bottling of Napa Cabernet was called "Rutherford," though some in Napa are amused that the wine is NOT made exclusively from Rutherford-grown fruit.  Actually, the word isn't really "amused."  They're not at all happy about this. 
But these days there is a down-scale "Napa Valley" Cabernet.


BV Private Reserves had been entirely Cabernet Sauvignon.  Now they have some other Bordeaux varieties...the 2017, for example, has 3% of Petit Verdot.  The 2018 has 3% Petit Verdot and 4% Malbec.

The major change effected some years ago by their then-director of winemaking, Joel Aiken, is BV's Reserves are no longer exclusively matured in American oak.  The latest Reserves have been matured in French oak instead of their signature American cooperage.   These days they have a famous French winemaking consultant adding his input and the wines are big, full-throttle, fasten-your-seat-belt versions of Private Reserve.
Would the legendary Andre Tchelistcheff recognize today's wine?  Possibly.  But he'd likely not be thrilled with the high-octane aspect of the current Private Reserve wines.  

Another wrinkle in the BV fabric has been the introduction of a Bordeaux-styled blend.  You could call it a "Meritage" wine, but that would cost a premium, so BV came up with their own proprietary name, "Tapestry."  
This wine has been BV's "Bordeaux-styled" blend.  They've worked to market the wine at the $50 price level, a bit ambitious, in our view.  We had to discontinue the wine because, frankly, it's not worthy of its price tag...it's a good $30 wine with a $50+ price tag.






These days the wine is high octane and no longer matured in American oak.  They're going to power and authority and, we suspect, a high numerical score from one of those "experts" who can pick a tall guy out of a short crowd.  

 

 

 

My Letter From Andre.

Currently in stock:  

2017 B7 Private Reserve SALE $129.99

 

BERINGER

This winery was founded by the German-born Beringer brothers, who came to the U.S. in the 1870s from Mainz.  Jacob and Frederick built the "Rhine House" and had a cave or two excavated for wine production.  Jacob went to work for Charles Krug across the street until their own digs were dug and ready for wine-making.

 

The family ran the place until about 1970 when it sold the winery and tremendous acreage to a Swiss firm called Nestlé.  Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beringer was probably most famed for a rather modest red wine called "Barenblut" (Bear's Blood!) which was a curious blend of Grignolino and Pinot Noir.  Bears must have thin blood!  The winery also put out a fortified wine of Malvasia Bianca for which they were rather well-regarded... 

Nestlé set about improving the winery and hired a guy named Robert Pecota as a 'big wig' along with a fellow named Myron Nightingale as its winemaker.  They made all sorts of wines, from Grey Riesling to Fumé Blanc to Cabernet Sauvignon.  A second label was created called "Los Hermanos," the nickname given the Beringer brothers by their Spanish neighbor, Señor Tiburcio Parrott.    The Los Hermanos label featured jug wines and single-serving bottles which came complete with plastic cup!  

The winery plodded along for many years, never really competing seriously in the realm of connoisseur wines until about the early 1980s.  We recall being stunned to taste a 1984 Reserve Cabernet that was seriously better than the ordinary plonk Beringer had been known for making.  The winery continued on an upward spiral with winemaker Ed Sbragia at the helm.  

The Nestlé folks, with a seller's market easily in view, surprised many industry folks by divesting itself of the Beringer winery and its various brands (Chateau Souverain was the Sonoma "sister" and "Napa Ridge" was a secondary label).  Today Beringer is part of the old "Beringer Blass" empire which morphed into Treasury Wine Estates.  This enterprise owns Penfolds, Beaulieu Vineyards, Chateau St. Jean, Etude, Stags' Leap and many more.
You might see "Beringer Brothers" or "Beringer Vineyards" wines from this company.

But they sold off part of the Beringer name and another company, The Wine Group, sells wines called "Beringer Founders" wines.  
Good luck!

 

This property makes a range of wines, from marginal "plonk" to deluxe, top-drawer Cabernets.  

Owning substantial property in neighboring Sonoma County, Beringer's standard bottling of Cabernet wears the Knights Valley designation. 

It's been a number of years since we've had a current vintage of Beringer's Reserve Cabernet in the shop.  The basic wines are perfectly standard and the Reserves are wines which seem to have fallen by the wayside.  As the winery is apparently run by the accounting and marketing gangs, the focus seems to be on cheaper wines and more mass-marketing efforts.  
They're using the Beringer name on all sorts of products, including fruit-flavored wine spritzers along with Sangria.  

As a result, the brand is one more geared to be found in large chain stores which may, or may not, feature wine.

We wish them well.  

Currently in stock:  Sold Out

BUEHLER VINEYARDS

The Buehler family had resided in Hillsborough a few decades ago and John Senior bought a little get-away place up in the Napa Valley.  

John Junior took a liking to the Napa Valley lifestyle, such as it was in the 1970s...
(Napa was far more 'rural' then than it is today...not as many wineries in those days and people were making and selling "wine," while today many think they're art dealers or trophy vendors.)

Buehler made some nice wines, but they mostly sold fruit to other vintners.  At one point they hired a young fledgling winemaker named Heidi Peterson to make the Buehler wines.  

Heidi's daddy was a guy named Richard Peterson, the right hand man to BV's famed Andre Tchelistcheff.  She was Buehler's winemaker until 1988, or so.  The winery had become well-known for good, solid wines and they sold them at reasonable prices.

Over the years they've built this little enterprise into a nice family business and today John Junior's kids are involved, too.   The whole place is close to Lake Hennessey, a bit south of Howell Mountain...six miles of winding roads east of St. Helena.

We've periodically featured a Cabernet from Buehler...the distribution company they are with has more important fish to fry so they don't often show us the wines.  In fact, in late 2020 we purchased a bottle of Buehler's 2017 "Napa Valley" Cabernet to include in a blind tasting and, lo and behold, the wine was terrific!

It's 100% Cabernet Sauvignon and the wine was matured in both French and American oak cooperage.   It's quite enjoyable in its youth and may cellar nicely for a few years.  The wine is medium+ bodied and the tannins are modest.


We're offering this at a special price, too, so stop by and grab a bottle to put on tonight's diner table...or you'll be hearing Ben Stein droning on and on:  "Buehler?  Buehler??"

Currently in stock:  2017 BUEHLER Napa Valley CABERNET SAUVIGNON  Sale $29.99

An old Buehler label.

BURGESS CELLARS
2011 Burgess Cabernet  Sold Out

This modest winery is located in an old stone cellar on the road towards Angwin and Pope Valley in the eastern hills of the Napa Valley.  It was the original Souverain winery when Souverain was a small, artisan producer back in the 1960s.  Lee Stewart sold the Souverain name to Pillsbury (I don't think they made that much dough in the wine biz) and the facility was acquired by former airline pilot Tom Burgess.   Bill Sorensen was the winemaker for Burgess' first vintage and he was still there as winemaker into the 2010s!  Today the winemaker is a young lady named Kelly Woods and she's been affiliated with Bryant, Seavey and Sequoia Grove.

They've made good wines over the years,  but have never really managed to capture the attention of wine critics or wine geeks.  They don't sing and dance and so marketing has not been a major strength.  Further, Burgess is not one of those wineries which ask astronomical prices so customers "will know they're getting a good bottle of wine."  

Over the years, we've found their wines to be good, solid Cabernets.  Every so often, we've had one of their "library" releases as the winery holds back a portion of each vintage for additional aging.

It had been a few years since I've bought a bottle and, on a lark, I purchased a bottle of Burgess' 2004 Napa Cabernet in early 2009.

Wow!  What a pleasant surprise!  We've been avid fans ever since.

The wine comes from their Howell Mountain area vineyards, but the elevation is actually below that of the "official" Howell Mountain appellation, so it's "merely" Napa Valley on the label.  We understand this comes from two vineyard sites.

The 2011 vintage is regarded as "challenging" in Napa.  That's a polite way of saying "poor" or "bad."  But, in fact, we've tasted quite a few good 2011s from Napa.  So, as we have long said "Burn your vintage chart."  
Parenthetically, we opened a few different 1998s recently, another supposedly awful vintage.  
Those bottles were brilliant.
Burn your vintage chart.

The Burgess 2011 demonstrates good grape growing and savvy winemaking.

It's 98% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Petit Verdot.  You'll find it to be below 14% alcohol, too, another plus in our view.  The wine is medium-full bodied, not a big, ponderous fruit bomb.  You can easily enjoy it now or stash a few bottles to open in a few years.

Given what some vintners ask for a bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet, this is a gem!  It's a real pleasure to get to know, once again, some "old friends."

 

You might not be able to discern this, but "Carneros" was not, in 1972, much of a wine region.  On this map, it's rather an afterthought...and it's spelled "Caneros" as it was called "Kah-ner-oce."
And, as you can see, there were not many wineries in the Napa Valley back in those days.
Stag's Leap and Stags Leap were not on the map yet, though 1972 was the first vintage for both.  It was also the first harvest for Clos du Val.

Tasting at Burgess in December of 2015.

 

CAKEBREAD CELLARS
2017  Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon SALE  $79.99

Jack Cakebread was running his family's automobile repair shop in Oakland in the 1960s and early 1970s.  He had a mild interest in photography and his wife Dolores presented him with a gift certificate for a class with the famed photographer, Ansel Adams.

Mr. Adams had been slated to shoot photos for a wine book to be written by Los Angeles lawyer and wine geek, Nathan Chroman.  But Adams asked young Jack Cakebread to take the assignment.

 

The book, The Treasury of American Wines, is a marvelous 1970s look at the world of California wines, though a few other wineries from other areas are also profiled.  We found the book to be a terrific guide at the time and it's still interesting to read and reminisce about the wines of the 1970s.  

Chroman, by the way, had been a free-lance writer for the LA Times, posting a weekly wine column.  He was paid to consult with the Southern California restaurant called Scandia, as well as running the Los Angeles County Fair Wine Judging.  Chroman was prominently featured in a Los Angeles Times article about wine journalism and ethics.  The article was even handed but mentioned how some of Chroman's conduct might be viewed as him having a conflict of interest and being unethical.  The Times management, reading about this fellow in the printed pages of their own journal, ended up severing ties with their then-powerful wine guru.

Jack Cakebread, while in Napa taking pictures for the Chroman book, stopped by the ranch of some friends before heading home to Oakland.  He told the ranchers to call him if they ever wanted to sell their property.  Some hours later when he arrived home, he got a call from his friends saying they would sell him their property as long as they could live there as long as they wanted.  
We understand Cakebread used the money he had been paid for Chroman's book to come up with a down payment on the ranch.  

And that property is where the Cakebread winery is situated today!

Parenthetically, Cakebread's neighbors at the Turnbull winery, have a large collection of photography, many pieces hanging in their gallery are by Ansel Adams!

 

For years the Cabernets from this property have been merely big and burly.   We've seen a definite (in our opinion: improvement) refinement in the wines in the last vintages and today they're making wines even fussy folks such as ourselves even consider to drink!  

I just don't like paying so much for them...but a lot of people find the wines to be priced fairly and pop for a bottle.  


The 2017 is a fairly-full bodied wine, typical of Cakebread's work.  Lots of dark, purple fruit notes.  A touch of a cocoa tone.  Oak is not a major component, though a bit more than half of the barrels are new.  French oak only.  About 4% Cab Franc are used and about 9% Merlot makes its way into the blend, along with 4% Petit Verdot.  The vineyards range from the cool Carneros in southern Napa up to the warm climes of Calistoga in the northern part of the valley.  

The wine shows a bit more complexity than you'd find in a Cakebread Cabernet of a decade ago, or so.  The Cakebread team, it seems, has an improved protocol for making this wine.   Another factor is their use of a wider variety of clones, grape varieties and vineyard sources.

The 2017 is young now, but a few more years in bottle will repay your being patient.

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