Anyone who has driven highway 29 north from Napa has likely noticed the To Kalon Vineyard sign just south of Mondavi Winery in the town of Oakville. This legendary plot of land produces some of the most sought after Cabernet fruit in the US, if not in the world. While the history and even ownership of To Kalon is confusing and contentious (for more, see this article), 89 acres comprises perhaps the very best vineyard owned by renowned viticulturist Andre Beckstoffer.
Cynthia and I visit Napa (and Sonoma) a lot. We usually go with some strategy or theme, such as exploring Rutherford or focusing on mountain fruit. Having explored all the AVAs we recently decided to take a different approach. We decided to explore the various wineries that source fruit from a specific producer--and we chose Andy.
Many of our posts talk about the never-ending quest of finding good wine at great prices. This is not one of those posts. Beckstoffer fruit yields great wine but they are costly.
Beckstoffer owns numerous vineyards in and around Napa Valley. But he is best known for the 6 that make up the Beckstoffer Heritage group. These include To Kalon, Missouri Hopper, Dr. Crane, Georges III, Las Piedras and Bourne. These properties command breathtaking prices for their yield and winemakers line up to pay them.
The average price for Cabernet Sauvignon grown in California in 2017 was about $800 per ton. Sonoma fruit commanded around $3000 and Napa more than twice that at around $7000. Beckstoffer's top fruit topped $60,000. Yes...sixty thousand dollars per ton!
So what kind of wine can you make with $60K/ton fruit? That was our focus on this particular Napa trip. And while some Napa trips consist of squeezing 4-5 (or more) wineries into a day, many of them a few hundred yards apart, this pursuit was different. More driving, scheduled visits, longer tastings, and certainly higher tasting fees.
The stated format of this blog doesn't allow us to dive into each of the four "focus" wineries we visited on this trip and their offerings of Beckstoffer-based wines. For a complete listing of wines that use this prized fruit, see this. We will likely find opportunities to share some of these in future posts.
For this blog, we will share our visit to Alpha Omega Winery. While some of the greatest wines in Napa comes from wineries that are 2nd, 3rd, or more generation, there are also numerous wineries that outside money has recently launched. These ventures face a daunting challenge. The land of Caymus Vineyards was purchased by Charlie Wagner in the early 70s for a few thousand dollars per acre. Today, Napa averages around $300,000 per acre under vine.
Robin Bagget, a successful attorney from the Bay Area launched Alpha Omega n 2006. They source fruit from some of the very most elite vineyards in Napa including 5 of Beckstoffer's Heritage sites. Robin secured the services of the acclaimed Michel Rolland as consulting winemaker. Michel consults for hundreds of wineries in 13 countries, including elite Napa brands Staglin Family and Harlan Estate.
We booked our reservation at AO a week in advance, although same day RSVPs are often available. We opted for the single vineyard tasting, which offered 3 different Beckstoffer-based wines. The price tag was a hefty $100 per person.
Upon our arrival, we were shown to a "VIP" area for the tasting. Our host was very pleasant, not pretentious, and we never felt any pressure to purchase wine.
The tasting consisted of 3 single vineyard Cabs from Dr. Crane, Missouri Hopper and To Kalon. All were from the 2014 vintage. Each pour was about 2 ounces. All of the wines were spectacular. We are always very mindful of trying to filter out the magical influence that the place and time can have on how we perceive the wines we taste. How often has a wine that was incredible when tasted at the winery dropped a few notches when tasted from your cellar? But magic aside, these were truly stellar wines.
Every major wine review site has tasting notes and scores on these wines, so we won't bother to duplicate those efforts. We did rate them all in the upper 90s. We also were treated to a barrel tasting of Dr. Crane vineyard 100% Petite Verdot. While the Cabs were around $150 per bottle (a nice discount from retail), the Petite Verdot was closer to $200. A bottle of each currently resides in our cellar awaiting the right occasion to revisit these gems. Then we will know how much of the magic was real.
We visited 3 other wineries that featured Beckstoffer bottlings, and we were not disappointed with any of them. Of course, this turned out to be our mostly costly Napa visit to date. That is, unless you consider the new treasures in our collection as appreciating assets!
The idea of focusing a Napa trip around a single grape producer was novel and turned out to be fun and provide a refreshing strategy for exploring the valley.