Premiere Napa Valley Comments and Notes

This event remains profoundly important for Napa's future

I’ve just now sat down after the Grand Tasting at Premiere Napa Valley, my index finger, teeth and gums, and lips, all stained purple – par for the course as they say. This was, maybe, my tenth PNV, I think, and certainly the best post-pandemic PNV that I can recall. Without looking or counting, it seemed a bit smaller and less crowded than before (and that’s not a complaint!) There was a proliferation of collaborative bottlings, too, some quite interesting, some less so, but generally speaking, the 2023s are totally smashing wines, as are the 2024s I tried. The best of the offerings ranged from elegant and stylish, complex middleweights with grippy finishes to bolder, riper, and toastier, but there was that consistently lovely freshness and acidity in just about all of them.

I will tell you, though, how profoundly disappointed I am in the great wineries of Napa that did not show up with their peers and colleagues to show off what is arguably the best vintage of the century so far – their loss, I suppose. Events like this are what create the ties that bind our industry together, both with the trade and each other.

Maybe it’s just me, but the mood inside the grand tasting was a little subdued and a little bit serious, yet the presenters and attendees were equally determined, almost resolute. Perhaps tomorrow’s auction will be a return to the more uproarious event we’re used to, but I doubt it. Certainly, the pall of a declining sales environment hung over the event, echoed by the many, many hushed conversations I had with friends and allies who still feel a little bad for me that I haven’t found a cool new executive position in the wine sector as of yet. “This is a weird time,” they say to me, and they’re right, of course. Selling wine has become quite a challenge, requiring an all-hands-on-deck approach to the marketing and peddling, while winemakers (and owners) are shouldering so much more of the marketing and selling burden(s) now that the staff has been reduced to save money in the face of the wine recession. As Forbes reminded us a few years ago, “You cannot cut your way to growth,” and yet we keep trying to do that anyway.

Now, the extreme importance of groups like the Napa Valley Vintners should be plain as day to anyone in the industry who wants to see a return to (business) normalcy for the valley. Bringing us together with the trade, presenting, tasting, and talking about the greatness of this vintage and the next one is what we must keep doing, if only to remind the global public of who and what this wine represents. Beyond marketing, they build reputation, value, and desirability and are an extension of ourselves.

Still, I saw a group of people in that room who knew fully well that the business, writ large, was troubled, but their collective love and passion for wine, these wines, is boundless, endless. Today we got to talk about Taransaud barrels, November harvests, and clone 645 Cabernet instead of distributor consolidation and Generation Z. Unscientifically, I think if you took a poll and asked the collective if the wine business would come out of this, they’d say yes to a person. Why? Because it must. How? By continuing to be beautiful, artful, and authentic. #WhyWine? If you’re reading this, you already know why.

Some highlights for me of this lovely tasting today included:

Corison Winery 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon lot#5 – It’s exactly what you hoped Cathy Corison would do with the best vintage in a generation. Just a stupendous execution of balance, restraint, and joyfully (but mildly) exuberant black, red, and blue fruit and fresh acidities. Long, long finish.

La Sirena/Materra 2023 Grenache “Helluva Dream” lot #11 – What a pleasant surprise. I love Grenache, especially when it's from the south of France and called Vacqueyras, but this Napa version was delightful. It would never ever be confused for a Southern Rhone, but that’s good. Instead, this Napa Grenache was a super-aromatic bouquet of red fruits, violets, flowers, and fresh cherry-red, juicy yumminess. I loved it. (Heidi Barrett and Chelsea Barrett) You know, someday, like in 15 years or so, Napa Grenache is going to be $20,000 a ton and be as in demand as any Napa wine, right?

Hudson 2023 “Trillium” Carneros Chardonnay lot #71—Artful winemaking here. A blend of three different Chardonnay blocks, it was nevertheless typically Hudson, which means real fruit and flower brilliance. Floral, intense, mineral, not exotic, but traditional, and mouth-filling. Bold, and literally speaking, it is very exciting to drink. I’m not sure it smells like trillium, but certainly does smell like green apple, pie crust, spices, and a massive attack of citrus.

Cakebread 2023 “Suscol Mountain Vineyard” Cabernet Sauvignon (blend) lot#80 – The what vineyard? From an area in the Southeastern corner of the Napa Valley, below even Coombsville and hillside planted. Where nothing much is ever new, this is a terroir I hadn’t experienced before, and I would love to know more. Great complexity, unique Cabernet (blend) character, textured, with red and black fruits, tapenade, and wisps of herbs and earth. Restrained and stylishly deep.

Hyde Vineyard 2024 Pinot Noir “Larry Hyde” lot #89 – Wow. Dense, dark, brooding, but not so tightly wound as you might think. It has that warm Clos de Vougeot-ish complexity, sweet earth, moss, densely packed black plum compote, rhubarb pie, fresh fig, and herb, with ripe black and red raspberries in the finish. I’d give a lot to drink a whole one of these later this year.

Gallica/Snowden Vineyards/Trois Noix 2023 Cabernet Franc “TBC” lot #92– Classy, stylish, c’est vraiment rive droit de Bordeaux. Wins the “I would take this decanter home tonight and drink it myself” award if there were one of those. The interplay between the Cab Franc and the Merlot was dazzling. Elegant people make elegant wines, and this was extremely fine.

Simon Family Estate 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon “Vine Hill Ranch” lot #93 – A true showstopper. I knew that Maayan was excited about this project, but wow, this is really, really something special. Powerful, traditional, intense, complex, ultra-long, and black fruit-studded excitement. Absorbed the very fine oak in the very best way imaginable, too, for added extraordinary texture, smoothness, and complexity.

Quintessa 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon “Corona” lot #97 - Has the presence of a first-growth, regal, round, textured, quietly stunning – I didn’t stay long enough to appreciate this enough, which was a mistake on my part. Rather cerebral, and old-viney in the way it makes you feel. Classic.

Hourglass 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon “Gran Miscetis” lot #104 – Blending the Hourglass Estate with the Blueline Estate for the first time, “Why hadn’t we thought of that?” said Jeff…Balanced, pure, fresh, and showing off bright blue and red fruits, wrapped in blackberry compote. More complex than it even had to be, it showed the best parts of both the vineyards rather than becoming something different. I loved it.

Cain Vineyard and Winery 2023 “The Phoenix Rises” Cabernet Sauvignon lot #117 – It rises indeed. It is wonderful to see the young vines that replaced the burned and destroyed vines at Cain growing and developing exactly like the Cain wines I loved in the late 80s. They’re uniquely complex and compelling wines, with structure and balance and medium-weight elegance too, and as the winery likes to point out, you can’t burn terroir. That’s obvious here.

Frank Family Vineyards 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon “Winston Hill Block 5 – Heart Block” lot #121 – Very cool to have this wine for the first time, especially since I drive past it almost every day. It is a beautiful and expressive wine with a highly developed spice box and black fruit aromatics, balanced, structured, textured, long, quite rich, and unabashedly exciting to drink. It epitomizes Napa in every way.

Kazumi Wines 2024 Koshu (a white Japanese grape variety) – The first ever from Napa, and my first too, 2024 was extremely fresh, clean, and bright, with banana custard, yellow apples, tangy Meyer lemon, and key limes, a maybe a touch of lanolin, with a zingy finish. It was lighter than the 2023, which was also poured from a bottle to show the development, which was surprisingly profound. 2023 was more fresh custard and more yellow and green apples, with exotic fruits added to the citrus, saying to me that this was a 3–5-year wine that is as exciting as any viognier, Vermentino, or Ribolla, I think I’ve ever had. I would plant this myself if I had one square meter of open space at my house. I hope this becomes the new white wine for Napa, supplanting at least some of the poorer Sauvignon Blancs and lesser Chardonnays otherwise unloved around the valley. (Kale Anderson made this trés, trés cool wine.)

Ovid. 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon “MMXXIII” lot #134 – I knew when I went towards the Ovid stand that this was not likely to be a throwaway of any kind, right? Right. There’s a reason why Pritchard Hill is important and just as much a reason why Austin Peterson is criminally under-celebrated as a winemaker (imho). This organically farmed Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc blend from block 1AB took all of two seconds to make my eyes water. It’s frankly an emotional response to profound complexity like this. The wine is perfectly balanced, perfectly complex and profoundly elegant, restrained, nervous, and somewhat ponderous too. There’s no need to talk about fruits and whatnot; it has everything you hoped it would and nothing you didn’t. Literally, everything is where it belongs. If I gave out numbers, which I don’t, it would be one hundred, and to be honest I came to that conclusion in mere seconds.

Also really interesting: Fantesca Estate “Prelude” Cabernet Sauvignon 2023, about as ‘Calistoga’ a Calistoga Cabernet can get; Crocker and Starr 2023 Cabernet Franc “The Goddess”, elegant and deft, lifted gorgeous finish; Copper Bear 2023 “Beckstoffer Missouri Hopper” Cabernet Sauvignon, showing off that 2023 fresh acidity, wound tightly and nervously around the Hopper’s black fruit; Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 2023 “SLV, Judgement of Paris 50^th Anniversary”, duh…a perfect vintage in a near perfect vineyard and 100% new wood, a statement wine for the Stag’s Leap AVA; Silver Oak 2023 “State Lane Legacy” Cabernet Sauvignon with 19% Petit Verdot, made for one of the most unique Silver Oak’s I’ve ever had, with lifted aromatics and a massive wallop of PV on the finish; Barbour 2023 “Man Cave Blend III” from Silver Fox Vineyard, with Celia Welch as winemaker, and the legendary Jim Barbour as vineyardist, what could be better? Lovely, traditional, and very exciting to drink. Lastly, the Denali Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon - the first time I’ve had this vineyard’s produce. Working with Jim Barbour, this vineyard, near to the original Joseph Phelps site, should become a new, and very much sought-after source for grapes, if not the wine itself, which was excellent!

Try to keep in mind I’m releasing a book soon called The Post-Pandemic Wine Market: A Practical Guide. It’ll be worth your time, I promise. It’s not an e-book; it’s a real book. Save up some money and buy one for everyone you know who sells or markets wine. It could even be a Mother’s Day gift, assuming your mom is your Director of Sales and Marketing. Just saying…

I’ll announce how to pre-order with the next post, or you could write to me, and I’ll tell you myself!

Also, I remain very grateful to the Napa Valley Vintners for allowing me to attend the Premiere event with a Freeloader Freelance Media pass this year. I am so proud to be a part of this wonderful community.

Cheers.

Jim