High above the nose-to-tail weekenders on Napa Valley's Highway 29 and a thousand feet higher than the manicured wineries they have come to visit is another world.
In fact faint-hearted drivers would not even make it to Carole
Meredith and Steve Lagier's tiny vineyard high on Mount
Veeder, so steep are the bends and the gradient of the track
that winds up through the woods from Dry Creek Road. Until two
years ago it was not even paved and for the first few harvests
Steve, who rents winemaking space in Monticello winery down on
the valley floor, literally slid the truck full of grapes down
the hill.
This is mountain lion country, although fewer of them are seen
now that the four acres of Lagier Meredith Syrah vines, as
much as Steve can manage on his own, have been fenced to keep
marauding deer out. They and their vines live in a clearing on
the crest of the hill, on an old cart track over the mountain
between Napa and Sonoma, and have picture postcard views both
ways.
You might call Lagier and Meredith nature-rich and time- and
cash-poor. They do every bit of work with their own hands,
helped at harvest-time by pickers borrowed from their friend
George Hendry down the road. (Their Syrah tactfully ripens
after Hendry's delicious Zin and before his Cabernet.)
Lagier, who cannot walk past a vine without fiddling with it,
worked for 14 years at the famous Robert Mondavi winery a
thousand feet below on the valley floor but left to devote
himself to his own precious vines in 1999 when the first
plantings were five years old. Carole Meredith has an
international reputation as an academic. She was the professor
at Davis whose team discovered the most unexpected
relationships between various wine grape varieties by diligent
application of DNA analysis.
Lagier Meredith Syrah's first commercial vintage was 2000 but
right from the initial 800 bottles produced in 1998 it has
shown a distinct, glossy and fragrant, sense of place, what
the French call terroir. Such has been the success of this
variety, relatively new to Mount Veeder and chosen because
Lagier and Meredith fell in love with Chave's Hermitage, that
they can now claim that the noble Syrah vine seems to have
forgiven Meredith for exposing its humble parentage, an
obscure grape called Mondeuse Blanche.
Meredith claims that nowadays her Davis colleagues are apt to
say, "Carole, to think you used to be a scientist – and now
you mention the T-word!" "But I've seen it," she told me,
gazing maternally at the glasses of Syrah poured out on their
most modest of decks. "This wine really does taste like this
place."
The soils here are poor so there is none of the 'California
sprawl', thickets of green leaves, to be mastered as with
valley floor vines. Cool marine influence comes straight in
off the Pacific (which we can almost see), and facing east
means that by the time the air really warms up the vines are
in shade so the crop ripens nice and gently.
This spine to the west of Napa Valley seems particularly
blessed. It may be a long drive, twisting and turning through
forests of Douglas fir, madrone and oak, to the nearest store
(which is probably a winery gift shop), but it really does
feel like fine wine country.
Just along the mountainside is another one-couple operation,
Wing Canyon. Bill Jenkins and Kathy Dennett have been
demonstrating the particular qualities of their patch of
mountain Cabernet and Merlot since the 1991 vintage. He has
been farming biodynamically for years, long before it became
fashionable, but is too much of a loner to play the game of
pricing high and earning fame.
There is a real sense of community on the ridge (as there is,
it should be said, throughout the entire California wine
business in my experience – in marked contrast to parts of
Europe). Steve Lagier occasionally lends a hand at Wing
Canyon, and can walk through the forest to Jim Paras' property
in just 20 minutes (about the same time as it takes to drive
via circuitous mountain lanes).
Paras is a lawyer who fell in love with both wine and the San
Francisco area and after extensive researches in the mountains
of northern California acquired the old Veedercrest site,
where vines were first planted a century ago. With talented
young winemaker Douglas Danielak, he built up the reputation
of Jade Mountain's Rhône-like wines to such an extent
that the brand was bought by the Chalone Group (owned partly
by the Rothschilds of Lafite and now in cahoots with the giant
Constellation Brands) in 2000.
Today the pair, owner and operative, are concentrating on
producing the finest Cabernet of which their sun-baked patch
of mountainside is capable. According to Danielak, "the
important aspect of Mount Veeder is that the character of the
vineyard overpowers the character of the vintage."
Since the 1999 vintage Paras has become a relatively serious
producer of Nebbiolo too – albeit in small quantities, less
than 300 cases a year. Both 1999 and 2000 have much more
Nebbiolo character than most examples grown outside Piedmont
so this may be an profitable new direction.
Again there are stunning views, but Mount Veeder for all its
idyllic aspect has its disadvantages. Rainfall varies
enormously. The fine shale drains rapidly. Three summers out
of five, water has to trucked all the way up to Paras Vineyard
to keep the vines alive. The soils are quite different on the eastern side of the Napa Valley, more
volcanic and more exposed to the afternoon sun.
Also in these western mountains is the extraordinary Long
Meadow Ranch, restored to far more than its former glory by
Ted Hall, once a Stanford weekend winemaker at Ridge
Vineyards, subsequently a director of McKinsey and recently
appointed chairman of The Robert Mondavi Corporation. Like
others on the ridge, this property gives the impression of
being entirely hidden in a secret and magically bucolic
location even though its area is given proudly by Hall as "18
times bigger than Disneyland". Nowadays Long Meadow Ranch is
not just a winery making unusually fine Cabernets but also a
completely authentic frantoio (olive press) with its own handsome olive
groves, a fully fledged organic farm raising beef and, for
good measure, an Appaloosa stud.
As Hall pointed out when I visited there a couple of years
ago, these mountain vineyards follow quite a different vintage
rhythm from the very much more common valley floor vineyards.
For considerable periods they are in bright sunshine while the
valley floor is smothered in fog so, for instance, Long Meadow
Ranch's 1998 Cabernet is exceptionally sophisticated and
interesting, without the under-ripeness that plagues some
valley floor wines.
All these mountain wines have a distinctive character. Thanks
to their infertile soils and notably cool nights they do not
fit the valley floor mould of velvety, opulent, sometimes
overripe reds but tend to finish drier with more delicate,
often intriguing fruit and brisk, natural acidity.
The only problem is that supply is necessarily limited. Not
only are most already extant vineyards on this steep,
difficult terrain fairly small, but we are unlikely to see
many more. Strict ordnances on hillside terrain have seen to
that, as readers of James Conaway's 2002 book The Far Side of
Eden, reviewed here, will recall.
Lagier and Meredith planted just in time.
Some recommended mountain wines
Lagier Meredith Syrah 2000 and 2001
Paras Cabernet Sauvignon 1999 and 2000
Long Meadow Ranch 1998
Sky Zinfandel 1999
For stockists and prices see www.winesearcher.com