There’s still hope!
Merrill, I ate lunch at Redd Wood today on a whim. Thought about you as I was walking in.
Yeah, but Casey, you’re in Wine Talk now! Think of it!!! Don’t tell PeeWee that you strayed outside the bounds of The Weather Thread. She would be so, so disappointed.
I’d love to hear thoughts on the 2014 vintage - how they are drinking now, how it compares to other recent (or older) vintages, some favorite producers, etc. TIA
Wines that stick nowadays in Napa are usually ones where people either try to “naturally ferment” beyond 14%, which is very hard to do. Or, more likely, in years with big heat spikes, underestimated the sugar level of the fermenting wines and did not add enough nutrients or perhaps did not add enough water. (Note that you usually remove the same amount of juice during the cold soak as the amount of water you add, so you don’t dilute your wine.) When wine goes into tank after de-stemming, you take a sample to the lab and find the brix number. But if you do this too early, before some of the grapes have been crushed and macerated, it can under-maeasure the sugar.
Many winemakers make their water add and then assume they have done all they need to do. Then find out when fermentation stalls at 0 to 2 brix that they undershot their add, the wine is 15.5% and the yeast cannot continue fermentation beyond that. Many yeasts max out at 15.3-15.5%.
The solution for some who have many lots to monitor and don’t want to keep checking in, is to use William Selyem “Jackass Hill” Zin yeast to ferment their Cabs. Originally isolated to help restart stuck ferments, it has become one of the go-to yeasts of the valley for Cab. You can “pitch it and forget it,” within reason.
A lot of the top scoring wines in Napa use this yeast now. It can ferment to 16% easy. An even newer yeast isolated from Daou vineyard in Paso can go to 17%. Not that such numbers should be the target of table wine, though.
As for 2014, I consider it a “good” vintage for Napa, but not a “great” one. But the structure and tannin indicate long lives ahead and it could surprise us in another 5 years and become Napa’s 2010’s version of 2006, another “good but not great” vintage that surprised us on the upside and has become better than the lauded 2007 did.
Agree on 2006. Just had a Robert Craig Mt Veeder that was excellent.
2014 (along 2012) is my favorite vintage to drink these days. The wines have a soft, fine tannin structure and fresh acidity but first and foremost they are not fat, without any shred of overripeness. In terms of which wines: The valley floor, rather hot vineyards are made for such a slighly leaner and slighly cooler vintage (lots of Beckstoffer wines which are too much for me in 2015/2016 work well in 2012/2014). My highlights in 2014 in the past months: Dana Lotus, Maybach Materium, Realm Dr Crane, Chappellet Pritchard Hill, Realm Absurd, Dalla Valle Maya.
2013, 2010 - most often not yet ready, muted, still hard edges
2015 - too much fat, too much fruit, often too ripe
2016 - nice to drink this young with much cooler and fresher profile than 2015, still often a tad too sweet and fat
2011 - not a good vintage
2017 - haven’t tasted many wines yet
plus ‘naturally’ fermenting in a shared production facility likely means any natural ferment is just using the residual commercial yeast your neighbors previously used.
living in the valley in 2014, at the time i thought it was a solid year-overall warmer than 13 but less acute spikes, maybe just two spikes over 101 IIRC depending on where in napa county. jan/feb was certainly warm and yea was definitely a very early year for harvest.
overall i haven’t had too many underwhelming 2014 wines, but at the time i thought 2014’s were going to be better than they’ve turned out as it seemed to be a very even year temp wise.
i have had lots of good chard and pinot from sonoma county in 2014 which has been nice.