Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019 - 30

Top 100 Wineries

Corison
CALIFORNIA | NAPA VALLEY
Cathy Corison captures the simple grace and unpretentious
beauty of St. Helena cabernet.

Col Solare
WASHINGTON
In its assiduous varietal exploration of its property, Col Solare is
turning out wines that are benchmarks for Red Mountain.

CATHY CORISON

IN 1995, CHATEAU STE. MICHELLE, a pioneer in
Washington State wine culture since 1934, partnered with the Antinori family, a force in Tuscan
wine culture since 1385. Ste. Michelle has been
adept at choosing winery partners for its joint
ventures (like Eroica, the riesling project with
Mosel producer Ernst Loosen) but Col Solare
is very much a Red Mountain enterprise. Darel
Allwine is the day-to-day winemaker, while
the Antinori family's chief consultant, Renzo
Cotarella, still flies out twice a year to help with
blending and other strategic decisions; Bob Betz
also serves as consultant. For many years the
winery focused on one wine, but in 2009 it began
rolling out component bottlings from its 29-acre
vineyard, including those that don't reach the
final blend, like the remarkable syrah that is the
winery's top-scoring wine this year. It's testament to a vineyard that's clearly maturing, and a
winery that's come into its own. -P.J.C.

2015 St. Helena Napa Valley Kronos Vineyard
Cabernet Sauvignon ($185, 94 points) To farm
low-yielding cabernet vines in Napa Valley is a labor
of love. The old, magnificent beasts at Kronos are
approaching their 50th birthday, producing one of
the crown jewels of Napa Valley, an unpretentious
beauty with the black-fruited ripeness of St. Helena
fruit, soft, supple and clean. As the wine picks up air,
the fruit moves through red notes of cranberries and
cassis toward silky tannins that feel light and youthful. It's a wine of classical proportions and simple
grace, with the stamina for long aging.

2016 Red Mountain Component Collection Syrah
($85, 93 points) Col Solare planted an acre of syrah
just to round out the Bordeaux assemblage in its flagship wine, but this bottling shows that the variety can
hold its own: It's fully expressive of Red Mountain,
with heady blackberry and licorice scents and dark
fruit held in suspension by dense, powerful tannins.

FOUNDED:

1995

OWNERS:

Chateau Ste.
Michelle and
Marchesi Antinori
WINEMAKER:

2016 Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon ($75,
92 points) More than half of Col Solare's vineyard
is planted to cabernet sauvignon, and so this wine
feels emblematic: Powerful and monolithic at first, it
develops a warm glow of fruit to pierce the darkness.
It's focused and concentrated, the texture sleek and
guided by sumptuous oak to a long finish.

Darel Allwine
VITICULTURIST:

Dick Boushey
ACRES OWNED:

CASES PRODUCED:

4,000 to 8,000
ESTATE GROWN:

35% to 70% (vintage dependent)
30

2016 Red Mountain Collector's Society Cabernet
Franc ($95, 92 points) Allwine likes the feel and flavor of cab franc on this property, how it provides a bit
of finesse against the Red Mountain brawn. He bottles it on its own for Col Solare's wine club. The wine
is lively with flavors of crushed purple berries, notes
of lavender and black pepper that give it uncanny lift
and freshness for a Red Mountain wine.

WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2020

THIS YEAR, CATHY CORISON IS BUSY replanting
some of the vines at her winery on Highway 29.
A small parcel in front of the winery was grafted
on AXR, a once-promising rootstock that proved
susceptible to phylloxera. She is replacing them
with clone 2 cabernet on St. George rootstock,
the same combination that has thrived on the
benchland soil behind the winery since 1971.
That sort of sensible farming produces some of
the valley's most coveted cabernet. The Kronos
bottling comes from those old cabernet vines,
now some of the oldest in the valley. Corison
could mine the property for gravel, she says, having once watched PG&E dig pits 20 feet down
along Highway 29. Thanks to the permeable soil,
the vines' deep roots reach cool earth under St.
Helena's sunny skies and reliably grow one of
Napa's most graceful cabernets. Nearby, the Sunbasket Vineyard is a newer vineyard designate,
offering similarly convincing proof that Napa's
gravelly western bench remains one of its greatest terroirs. -J.G.

FOUNDED :

1987
Cathy
Corison and
William Martin

OWNERS:

WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

Cathy Corison
ACRES OWNED:

CASES PRODUCED:

2,500
ESTATE GROWN:

40%

2016 St. Helena Napa Valley Sunbasket Vineyard
Cabernet Sauvignon ($185, 93 points) Though it's
new as a vineyard-designate, since it became part of
Corison's estate in 2014, Sunbasket has been part
of Corison's Napa Valley cabernet blend for three
decades. Her 2016 Sunbasket is cool enough to sustain a fennel-like cabernet scent, even as it's saturated with dark, meaty fruit.
2016 St. Helena Napa Valley Helios Sunbasket
Vineyard Cabernet Franc ($100, 93 points) There
are three short rows of cabernet franc at Sunbasket,
producing between four and six barrels of wine each
vintage. Those vines deliver the kind of clarity and
earthy detail that franc rarely achieves in Napa Valley. In 2016, the flavors are rich and fully saturated
even as the wine feels relatively light, its tannins cool,
with herbal complexities.

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019