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Grace Bridge is made by Scotto Family Cellars, who are by no means the biggest Californian producer, but aren`t the tiniest either. They have good vineyards and know how to manage them effectively too. Their wine benefits from economies of scale and they have chosen to produce Grace Bridge in a drinkable style, not dark coloured, jammy and overextracted.
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It`s still early days for Bill Harlan’s lofty, 200-year vision of a Californian First Growth. But since its first vintages, Harlan Estate has established itself among the very acme of world wines. On an exceptionally diverse set of soils (part sedimentary, part volcanic, all with thin topsoil and entirely exposed) in the western hills of Oakville, Harlan’s vines have been forced to burrow deep into the bedrock to survive.
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When Joe Rochioli Jr. was growing up on the family farm in the 1940s, he had to travel to the one-room schoolhouse by horse, since there weren`t enough cars or roads in the area. Times have changed in the Russian River Valley town of Healdsburg. Among other crops, Joe`s family farm grew grapes, which his family sold to local wineries. Joe formed his own ideas about what would grow well, and in the 1960s, he took the risky decision of planting the little-known grape variety of Pinot Noir. He soon followed with some Chardonnay. Their grapes were popular.
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The bottle shows the Janus-faced profile of the two founders. Opus One was created as a joint venture between two giants of the world wine scene. One was Baron Phillippe de Rothschild of Mouton-Rothschild, the other was Robert Mondavi, but both were internationally-known ambassadors for their respective home regions of Bordeaux and Napa. They first met in 1970, and within a few years moves were afoot to make a great Napa Bordeaux blend with the fusion of Bordelais expertise and top Napa terroir.
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The history of Pulenta goes back to the arrival in 1902 of the splendid looking Angelo and Palmina from Ancona in Italy and this year the fifth Argentinian generation was born. Ten years ago saw the birth of the company in its present form, with many of the lesser vineyards sold off and the company - always excellent growers - now concentrating on producing their superb estate wines of different levels. They have two main vineyard sites about an hour, and slightly higher than Mendoza.
Pulenta has a definite house style, or should I say determined influence on the wines they make.
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Ridge is one of the defining names in American wine. High in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Monte Bello Ridge was first terraced for winemaking in the nineteenth century. It was later abandoned, recovered in the 1940s by a group of amateurs, then famously developed from 1969 by Paul Draper. Draper unlocked the real potential of this extraordinary site, and under his tenure, Ridge Monte Bello was one of the wines on the winning team at the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
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It`s all about the family at Shafer Vineyards. TD-9 may seem an odd name for their calling-card blend of Merlot, Cabernet and Malbec, but when you learn that it was the brand of tractor that John Shafer drove in 1973 when he boldly threw over his Chicago office job and decamped to Napa to start laying out a vineyard, it makes more sense. And what kind of a name is One Point Five for a classy Napa Cabernet? It stands for a generation and a half, the 35 years since John and his son Doug arrived at the foot of the Stag`s Leap Palisades. -
There can’t be many family-owned wineries left in Napa, but three generations of Snowdens have been making wine in the hills east of Rutherford since they moved here in 1955. Their vineyards are even older; premium grapes have been harvested here since the ranch was homesteaded in 1878, during the Gold Rush. When the Snowdens took over, they wisely switched the Petit Sirah and Palomino over to Cabernet Sauvignon.
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Larry Turley is a man with a mission. He started off in the 1970s as the co-founder of Frog`s Leap Winery, making Cabernets and Chardonnays. But over time he came to understand his interests lay elsewhere. By the early 1990s, when Cabernet was king in California, Larry had realised that one of the state`s great viticultural treasures was in danger of being lost; old vine Zinfandel plantings, often predating prohibiton, sometimes on original, ungrafted rootstock.
