Entwined in Napa

"David Abreu is a living legend in the Valley" says Brad Grimes, the Abreu Vineyards winemaker. “He's farmed just about every property here.” The third-generation Napa native has been planting and growing grapes at local vineyards for three decades. In the early eighties, the viticulturist acquired Madrona Ranch, the first of four of his own vineyards. In 1987, he introduced the first Abreu Vineyards wine.

Grimes joined the operation in 2000. “I’m actually making wine as opposed to managing a team that makes the wine, which is a rare privilege in Napa and around the world,” the Seattle chef turned winemaker says. “Once the fruit is in the door, I’m the only one to touch it.” Abreu Vineyards produces just 15,000 highly coveted bottles each year; there are four single-vineyard cabernet blends and a fifth that blends grapes from all four vineyards. “I am completely immersed in the process of making truly noble, transcendent wines,” Grimes says.

While Grimes reveres the land, the fruit, the process, and the wine, he eschews the stilted language surrounding wine culture and intimidates novices. He feels there need not be tasting notes that wax poetic about tobacco, pomegranate, and figs. If a person thinks that a wine tastes like Flintstones vitamins or smells like Fun Dip, then that’s okay, he insists. “Right now, I’m sitting on the beach drinking beer brewed with raspberries,” he says. “It’s about enjoying the day drinking what tastes good to me, not about devising a tasting note.”

Typically, grapes are sorted and crushed outdoors on a concrete or stone slab called a crush pad. At Palmaz Vineyards in Napa, that process, and every subsequent step, happens underground. When Julio and Amalia Palmaz established this 600-acre family-run estate on the site of a historic pre-prohibition winery in the late 1990s, they built the entire operation into the side of Mt. George. Using a gravity flow winemaking process, the grapes travel down four levels of the 18-story subterranean cave over a period of three years. “Grapes are sorted on the top level, cascade to tanks where they ferment, then flow to barrels where they age, and finally flow to the bottom level bottling line and storage area,” says Florencia Palmaz, the chief executive officer and the founders’ daughter. “If you’re gentle to the wine, it rewards you,” she says, noting that eliminating mechanical pumps from the process minimizes damage to the fruit and thus the wine.

The vineyard produces primarily cabernet sauvignon. All their grapes are grown on the property’s 64 acres of vineyards, which are planted at three different elevations. Tours guide visitors through all four levels of The Cave onto the hillside to see the crops and to the library for tastings that are paired with culinary offerings utilizing fruits and vegetables grown in their gardens. “It’s a one-on-one experience,” Palmaz says, “in which you can get the whole story.”

Dirt isn’t just dirt in wine country. The Rudd Estate, located in the heart of Oakville, has rich, red volcanic soil. “You can see the color of our soil when driving down Silverado Trail,” Wendi Green, the Rudd Estate marketing director, says. The volcanic rock is part of the family-run estate’s wines in more ways than one. When Leslie and Susan Rudd purchased the 56 acres in 1996, they expanded the existing caves, using rocks pulled from the vineyards for the stone walls around the property’s perimeter. Pulverized rocks were also incorporated into the winery’s custom concrete tanks. “The land is always part of the process,” Green notes.

Today, the couple’s daughter, Samantha Rudd, is in charge of the flourishing vineyard, which produces predominantly cabernet sauvignon. The land is farmed organically and biodynamically by a dedicated in-house team. “Each crew member cares for his or her own row of vines from start to finish, year after year,” Green says. “It’s that attention to detail that sets us apart.” Guest visits begin in the vineyards, continue through the extensive California-inspired gardens, into the estate’s winemaking workshop, and end with an outdoor tasting overlooking the lake. If you come during the winter season, you can catch a glimpse of the dozen-plus sheep that eat the cover crop and naturally fertilize the land. “There’s a wonderful energy here,” Green says.

“You feel like you’re visiting the family’s home.”