The New Wine Country: Exploring Napa's Hillside Wineries
By Sara Hare Diablo Magazine, October
2003
Twenty years ago it was easy to find the "country" in Wine Country---the
sultry hills, leafy vineyards, and shadowy live oaks. Today the Valley
floor, though still a fabulous place to visit, has exploded with hot-ticket
restaurants, museums and shops. All that success has its price: three-deep
crowds at tasting bars, cars and tour buses jamming Highway 29. You can
still experience a sense of discovery in Napa Valley: the winding back
road, the hidden winery producing amazing wines. You just have to drive
a little farther---and up a little higher--to find it.
In the past few years, a handful of Napa's once little-known hillside wineries
have inched open their doors to wine lovers. In most cases, these gems
offer uncrowded tasting rooms, unhurried conversation and some of the most
talked-about wines in the Valley.
These so-called "boutique" wineries---small, hard to find, and
open by appointment only--are Napa's newest thing, pouring up stunning
countryside and exquisite wines, with more than a glassful of local charm.
Up above the Valley floor, it looks and feels a lot like the Napa of twenty
years ago.
With just a few more curves.
Just as some of Europe's best wines are grown in hillside vineyards in
the Cote d'Or of France or Italy's Montalcino, blockbuster wines are being
made today in Napa's hillsides on the Mayacamas and Vaca ranges, the two
slopes that flank the Valley floor. On Pritchard Hill, Howell Mountain,
Spring Mountain, Diamond Mountain and Mount Veeder, wineries are building
a reputation for making hillside wines with intense, ripe fruit as well
as longevity and structure. Some of the wines are amazing enough to delight
the taste buds of The Wine Advocate's Robert Parker, who can make a star
out of any wine he recommends.
"
Hillside vineyards are producing some of the most exciting wines in the
Napa Valley today," says John Thoreen, wine tutor at Meadowood Napa
Valley. "Many of the hillside wineries are so small. The owner may
be the winemaker and the entire staff. I like to bring people here because
it's a personal experience."
Spring Mountain is one of Napa Valley's 13 American Viticultural Areas
(AVAs in wine speak). Of all the hillside areas, Spring Mountain has the
most wineries and is the most accessible to visitors.
Smith-Madrone, one of Spring Mountain's oldest wineries. Stu Smith, owner
and general partner, greets us outside his stone winery built in the '70s. "Up
here," he jokes, "we're more about the wine than the gift shop." Chatting
casually with Smith next to his stainless-steel fermentation tanks, we
taste the 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon, with hints of cedar and mint, and the
flinty and fresh 2000 Chardonnay. Stu and his brother Charles, who makes
the wine, are two former beach kids from Santa Monica. They discovered
wine while at Berkeley in the '60s and spent too much of their money drinking
it. Says Charles: "This was a hobby that got totally out of control."
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