Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 52

Breakthrough Wines

Classicists present
Napa Valley cabernet
sauvignon without
excess or artifice.
Grown well, it can live
for decades, though
it may not have the
"wow" factor of often
short-lived cult wines.

WINE & SPIRITS

Arriving at the Robert Mondavi Winery, on the west side
of Highway 29 in Oakville, there's a sense of quietness
to the property despite the constant stream of visitors who pass under the Mission-style arch and peer
into the rows of vines. The view to the south and west
is all prime benchland, and it may be the winery's
most remarkable asset-440 acres of the historic To
Kalon vineyard.
It had been almost ten years since I last saw Geneviève Janssens, Mondavi's director of winemaking.
Still, she greeted me warmly, with a kiss to each cheek
and a heartfelt smile that made my visit feel like a
homecoming. I knew this property well, having spent
the 2007 harvest in the lab, running analyses, pulling samples and sneaking out to the To Kalon Vineyard whenever possible. I'd gotten to know how the
old vines interact with the gravelly clay-loam soil and
appreciated the reverence with which Janssens's team
tends to their future.
Janssens uses fruit from those vines to make wines
that might not have the knock-you-over-the-head
"wow" factor of her neighbors' cabernets, but hers
will last at least ten years (or longer) in bottle, thanks
to lower alcohol and higher acidity. Back in the cellar,
she poured me her 2015 To Kalon Reserve. You know
that feeling when a certain smell or a few notes of a
song snap you back to a time and place? A second
or two with that 2015 brought me instantly back to
a 1998 Mondavi Reserve I tasted in 2007. Both wines
shared a sense of delicacy and brightness, with red
fruit and lilac aromas, and a silky freshness in the
balance of tannins and acidity. Classic, direct and a
stark contrast to the languishing 1997 cult beasts of
the aforementioned tasting.
I had a similar reaction visiting Heitz Cellars, tasting wine from another classic Oakville bench vineyard-though the Heitz Martha's Vineyard Cabernet is distinctive in a completely different way. It
shares the same bright line of acidity, here with aromas marked by eucalyptus and mint, and flavors of
black currant and raspberry leaf. Joe Heitz made his
first vintage of Martha's Vineyard Cabernet in 1966,
becoming a pioneer for the movement of single-vineyard bottlings of cabernet in California. At the time,
the May family was farming 12 acres in Oakville, and
has since expanded to 34 acres (the vineyard, like
many in the valley in the 1990s, was afflicted by phylloxera and replanted). May's small-berried cabernet
vines grow on an alluvial fan flanked by towering
eucalyptus trees, just west of Highway 29 in Oakville.
Joe Heitz passed winemaking duties on to his son,
David, in the late 1970s, who later trained Brittany
Sherwood, the current winemaker. Though the family recently sold their interest in the winery, Sherwood remains committed to maintaining Heitz's
style-fermentation in stainless steel, a year in large,
neutral American oak casks followed by three years
in French oak barriques. The wines do not undergo

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malolactic fermentation-an unusual omission in
red winemaking-which helps account for their
sense of freshness as they age. The May family still
owns and farms the vines for this wine, the vineyard
a scant six-minute drive from To Kalon. Though the
eucalyptus trees have some impact on the scent, Martha's Vineyard cabernet shares similarities to Robert
Mondavi's Reserve: both present cabernet without
excess or artifice, allowing the site to show through.
My first experience with Diamond Creek's wines was a
taste of the 2007 Gravelly Meadow. Standing in the cellar at Spago, Chris Miller handed me a glass of a mystery wine. I'd expected something European, but it
was clearly Napa cabernet sauvignon in its deep ruby
color and full-throated tannins. Even so, the sleekness of its brambly fruit and woodsy structure rattled
some of my preconceived notions of how Napa Valley
cabernet "should" look and taste.
The Diamond Creek wines came into existence at
least 30 years ahead of their time, thanks to the radical and single-minded vision of Al Brounstein. In
the 1960s, cabernet sauvignon had not taken hold
as the King of Napa Valley, and wineries and vineyards were largely contained on the valley floor. In
1967, a 47-year-old Brounstein arrived in Napa Valley,
semiretired from his career in pharmaceutical sales;
he was armed with a healthy obsession for all things
French and the conviction that cabernet's true potential could be found in the hills.
That same year, Brounstein purchased 80 wild
acres along Diamond Creek, and with the help of
20-year-old Sergio Canchola, proceeded to clear
a portion of the land on Diamond Mountain. In
doing so, he discovered three distinct sites that would
become Diamond Creek's estate vineyards.
Brounstein's stepson, Phil Ross, showed me
around the vineyards, including Red Rock Terrace,
seven acres of dusty red soil laced with iron that face
north towards Volcanic Hill, a stark contrast of fluffy
white-grey volcanic ash (its eight acres are remnants
of an eruption at Mt. Konocti eight million years
ago). A short walk around the bend brought us to
Gravelly Meadow, five acres of vines nestled into the
stony soils of an ancient riverbed. The scent of the
air at Gravelly Meadow is brambly and dusty, with
the creek bringing a fresh, wet leafiness to contrast
the grit and earth of the sun-warmed soil. Though
I'd not been here before, I recognized the scent. It
smells exactly like the 2007 I had fallen in love with
at Spago. In fact, I could find traces of each of the
Diamond Creek wines just by standing in the middle
of their respective vineyards.
I later sat down with Boots Brounstein, Al's feisty
widow, who recalled how once, when asked why he
didn't just blend his fruit into one wine, Brounstein
quipped that he would "maybe" blend his vineyards
when Domaine de la Romanée-Conti blended theirs.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018