In their pursuit of a worldwide reputation and more dollars per bottle, some Napa Valley vintners are moving away from the vagueness of “reserve” bottlings and taking a more European route by naming wines for the vineyards in which their grapes grew.
Until recently, many vinters labeled their most sought-after Napa cabernets “reserve,” and a few producers gave such bottlings proprietary names like Insignia. Now single-vineyard wines appear more frequently, raising the questions of what vintners are trying to achieve, and which of these offerings are the best.
Unlike Italy or Spain, the United States has no legal meaning for the term “reserve” on a wine label. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it leaves winemakers the freedom to pursue quality however they see fit. But what makes a wine reserve quality? Is it scarcity? Is it a wine from select grapes in the finest vineyards or is it merely the most intense wine a producer makes? Such vagueness has kept many wineries from using the word on their labels.
That was Joseph Phelps’ thinking in 1974, when he created the name Insignia for his finest red wine. Today, Insignia is usually made with at least 90 percent cabernet sauvignon from two Napa districts. Craig Williams, winemaker at Phelps, calls it “a wine of the highest quality.”
Williams also makes a cabernet for Phelps entirely from grapes grown in the Backus Vineyard in Napa’s Oakville District. Williams says the Backus cabernet is “more muscular” than Insignia, which is blended for earlier drinking.
In Williams’ mind, Backus is a “unique site, one that owes its quality to its location, aspect and soil,” and wine from here deserves to be singled out as a single-vineyard wine. He believes that more of these site-specific wines are on the horizon: “In time, we will sort out those sites that bring quality.”
Andy Beckstoffer has been hunting for those sites for 30 years. The largest independent grape grower in the valley with more than 1,800 acres planted, Beckstoffer firmly believes that single-vineyard wines are superior to reserve wines or others blended from several sites.
A single vineyard will display a specific personality, Beckstoffer says, whether it is ultra-ripe fruit or a lean and acidic character. Wineries usually blend wines from separate vineyards to achieve a harmonious finished wine with no rough edges. Beckstoffer would rather celebrate and promote the unique, “charming” characteristics of a single vineyard.
Beckstoffer points to monetary evidence that his attitude is the way of the future. “Go see what the high prices are and what sells,” he says. “More and more, they are wines that talk about a sense of place, talk about something specific. Now today if you look at the Napa Valley, the highest-priced wines are going to be reserves. But that’s today. Tomorrow, they’re going to be single-site expressions.”
More moderate in his approach to the matter is Bernard Portet at Clos du Val Winery in Napa’s Stags Leap District. He makes a reserve cabernet as well as two single-vineyard cabernets. For Portet, the reserve is the top of the line. But he has ventured into single-vineyard territory for the first time with two 1997 cabernets.
Portet, whose father was technical director of Chateau Lafite Rothschild in Bordeaux, produces wines that are French in style, making them more subdued than many from this region.
He sets no rules as to what grapes go into the reserve each year. After tasting separate lots of wines, the ones that are the most powerful–more “Californian,” as he puts it–find their way into the reserve, which also is aged longer than the winery’s regular Napa cabernet. It is priced much higher too–$75 per bottle compared to $27 for the regular offering.
One of Clos du Val’s single-vineyard cabernets comes from a vineyard just north of the winery in the Stags Leap District, and the other from a site in Rutherford (owned, incidentally, by Beckstoffer). Both are $48. Although the two clearly represent their sites’ differences–the Rutherford is more intense–both wines display Clos du Val’s house style, which Portet describes as elegant and complex with a long finish.
Although Portet believes that both these vineyards merit separate bottlings, he stresses the importance of choosiness. Owners of young vineyards have asked him to buy their fruit and label the resulting wine as being from that specific vineyard. Portet has turned some of these growers away, thinking the quality is not there. “In the future,” Portet says, “there will be some vineyard-designated wines that should have been blended.”
