Is Napa Valley quantitatively important for California wine? Absolutely not. The volume of wine produced represents only four percent of the total. But in terms of image and prestige, it is vital. In fact, since 85 percent of American wine is grown in California, Napa Valley is emblematic of all American wines.
I spent a week there at the beginning of the month, perhaps at the most beautiful time of the year. After a rainy start to the year, the hillsides were unusually bright green. Bright orange poppies, California’s protected state flower, dotted the shoulders. Flowers were everywhere, and the ubiquitous cover crops between the vines were also in full bloom, knee-deep and above, ready to be mowed down by the sheep that many growers hire or raise themselves.
It’s no surprise that Napa Valley, an hour north of San Francisco, attracts tourists. Napa wine producers responded by turning tourism into a major profit center. You can no longer walk into a tasting room and see if you like the wines. Slots are reserved and paid for in advance, and you get to choose your “experience.”
According to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2023 Direct to Consumer Wine survey, the average cost of a “reserve tasting” in Napa Valley was $128. Even a tasting of a winery’s basic range costs an average of $81, and if visitors also want a tour, they could end up paying much more.
For wineries, being able to sell directly to a consumer who has just tasted their wine is a joy, especially in a country where the alcohol distribution system is still strangled by post-Prohibition regulations. In 2022, the average spend at a Napa Valley tasting room was nearly $500, again according to the SVB report. It’s no wonder that in the 2024 version of SVB’s annual report, Rob McMillan’s State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report, By Far the Most Important Sales Channel for High-End Wineries was the tasting room, accounting for 31% of total revenue.
“Wine clubs,” which are essentially subscription programs where members commit to purchasing a certain amount of wine, are the second largest source of revenue at 25 percent. Traditional sales through distributors and other wholesalers accounted for only 17 percent. (Exports accounted for only 2 percent.)
These profitable direct-to-consumer channels are likely a draw for the many French wine producers investing in Napa Valley. They are even allowed to sell their French wines directly to American consumers.
The Rouzaud family of Roederer Champagne recently added Diamond Creek Winery and its hallowed Napa Vineyards to their portfolio, alongside Merry Edwards in Sonoma and their first investment in Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley. The Cathiards of Ch Smith Haut Lafitte in Bordeaux established Cathiard Vineyard in the prized Rutherford foothills of the Mayacamas Range on the west side of the valley. They followed the Pinault family of Ch Latour and others, who in 2013 purchased from the Araujos what is today called Le Vignoble Eisele, and were so sure of their expertise that they didn’t even imposed a non-competition clause on the former owners.
Domaine Chandon, Opus One, and Dominus are long-standing Napa wineries with French owners or co-owners, Moët-Hennessy, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, and Christian Moueix, respectively. Carneros, at the cooler southern end, saw a wave of French investment at the end of the last century, with Taittinger and GH Mumm of Champagne and HdV, which is a joint project between Carneros producer Larry Hyde and Aubert of Villaine from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
The fiery Jean-Charles Boisset from Burgundy arrived at Raymond in 2009, Chanel Inc bought St Supéry in 2015 and the following year, the Tesserons of Ch Pontet Canet in Bordeaux bought the Pym Rae estate from Robin Williams.
Families are one thing, but locals aren’t excited about the arrival of big business. In 2022, the Joseph Phelps family winery was purchased by luxury group LVMH, which had already acquired a substantial stake in Colgin on prized Pritchard Hill from Ann Colgin and Joe Wender. AXA Millésimes, the insurance company’s wine division, is much more discreet than Bernard Arnault’s vast LVMH empire, but has its own investment in Outpost on Howell Mountain, east of the valley.
Two massive conglomerates with substantial interests in Napa Valley are New York state-based Constellation Brands and Australian wine giant Treasury Wine Estates. Constellation’s flagship Robert Mondavi Winery, once Napa’s crown jewel and global pioneer of smart wine tourism, is currently a messy construction site undergoing an overhaul. Very little Napa. Ditto, Treasury’s field full of storage tanks across the street from his Beringer winery, which is so big it’s hard to believe all those tanks hold nothing but Napa Valley wine. Both companies are accused by more discerning wine growers of planting vineyards designed for machines rather than skilled humans. Labor can cost $25,000 per acre per year in a prime vineyard.
One of the major new players in the valley is an individual, a newcomer to wine production. In recent years, Tennessee agrobillionaire Gaylon Lawrence Jr. has purchased many famous wineries, including Heitz Cellar, Stony Hill and Burgess in Napa Valley (as well as the second growth Ch Lascombes in Bordeaux).
It’s too early to reach a consensus on what wines the new empire produces – and I’ve been assured that rumors that they will no longer produce Stony Hill’s iconic Chardonnay and Riesling are false. But I’ve heard approval from the Napa community for its apparent determination to operate each winery separately, and I can vouch for the elegant character of the Ink Grade Pavilion, a tasting room built last year down the road main 29. It is likely designed to sell wines from the vast Ink Grade Howell Mountain vineyard accompanying the Heitz acquisition.
But how easy will it be to sell these wines? In San Francisco and the valley itself, I’ve heard the cry “Napa Valley wines are too expensive” as well as an enthusiasm for imports, which many wine lovers believe offer a better bang for their buck. value for money and better variety. Cabernet dominates the Napa Valley but is a fairly heterogeneous category and can cost hundreds of dollars a bottle. The Valley’s most expensive Cabernet blend, Harlan Estate, costs about twice as much as its Bordeaux counterpart.
The SVB 2024 report clearly indicates that imports are becoming an increasingly attractive alternative in a shrinking US wine market. And a real worry for California winemakers in areas less exalted than Napa Valley, like Lodi, is that big brand owners in the United States have begun to replace wine imported in bulk from cheaper sources than California, like the Chile, without necessarily changing. the label other than adding a discrete country name.
Warning emptorno matter how much you pay.
Napa wines with a French accent
Recommended for quality not value. Excludes 2021 on which I will report
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Dominus, Napanook 2016 Yountville or Napa Valley (14.5%)
£53.01 Lay & Wheeler -
Ulysse 2018 Oakville (14.5%)
£144.30 Corney & Barrow -
Diamond Creek 2018 Napa Valley (14.5%)
£1,399.24 per case of six Goedhuis Waddesdon -
Joseph Phelps, 2014 Napa Valley Badge (14.5%)
£325 Hard to Find Wines -
Cathiard Vineyard 2020 Napa Valley (14.1%)
£339 Brunswick Fine Wines and Spirits -
Eisele Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 Napa Valley (14.8%)
£413 Hedonism, £441 Berry Bros & Rudd -
Opus One 2019 Napa Valley (13.5%)
£418 Hedonism -
Colgin, IX Estate 2015 Napa Valley (15.3%)
£1,871.05 for three Corney & Barrow bottles
Tasting notes, notes and suggested consumption dates on the purple pages of JancisRobinson.com. International resellers on Wine-searcher.com
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