2005 Mayacamas Cabernet Sauvignon
Courtland Boland
Mr. Wine Cutie and I had been trying to visit Mayacamas for some time now. We first attempted a trip back in 2017. However, due to the Tubbs Fire, the tasting room was sadly destroyed. We were so bummed but decided to follow Mayacamas's progress, and when we found out they were opening a tasting room in downtown Napa, we couldn't be more excited to schedule a tasting.
Our day in Napa was terrific, though our initial plan was to head home after our Mayacamas tasting. However, on the way to Mayacamas, we spontaneously decided to extend our trip an extra night and morning, so we could relax that night and visit Artesa the next morning.
I called Mayacamas and let them know we were going to be late as we needed to check into our new hotel. Lucy, the tasting room host, was so kind and super understanding. We checked into our hotel and called a Lyft immediately.
As we arrive in downtown Napa, we realize that Mayacamas is attached to one of our favorite hotels in Napa, the Archer Hotel. We walk in, check in and are seated. Ahh, we can't hold back our excitement, let's start this tasting already!
Wine Cutie side note: Mr. Wine Cutie is a colossal geek. When he finds something he's interested in, he becomes passionate about learning everything there is to know about the subject. In this case, wine but more specifically, the 1976 Judgement of Paris blind tasting that helped put California wine on the map. His goal is to visit every California winery in the Judgement.
Mayacamas doesn't grow all of their grapes on their estate. However, all of the grapes used for their wine are grown on Mount Veeder and from organic farmers, a significant part of what makes Maycamus who they are.
Lucy explained that Mayacamas has made their cabernet sauvignon the traditional way since 1889. They use a cement press that preserves fruit and helps create soft tannins. The cement press also provides natural yeast. The wine is placed in a foudre barrel, which is a giant wooden tank. Mayacamas's oldest foudre is one hundred years old. It's aged in a foudre, then transferred to barriques, or regular size barrels, for further aging.
The second wine was a 2004 vintage. This was my favorite wine of the vertical. It was smooth, delicate tannins, fruity and well rounded. It was ready to drink now. However, according to Mr. Wine Cutie, it needed a cheese pairing.
Miljenko Grgich's life in wine is an object lesson in courageous dedication to a philosophy, supported by empirical evidence, that some wines need no tinkering, and that adhering to old paradigms can create greatness.
As he celebrates his 90th birthday, the diminutive, beret-wearing winemaker everyone calls Mike reflected back on his accomplishments, assessed the acclaim he has rightfully gotten as a dedicated craftsman of chardonnay, and finally called himself little more than a shepherd of great grapes.
An old Australian saying goes, "To make a great wine, get great grapes and don't trip on the mat." To a degree, it was this philosophy that drove Grgich to, first of all, craft a wine of balance that displayed the great fruit California grew, and then to stick to the style of wine despite pressure to join the forces of evil who transmogrified the grape into a parody of the original.
Grgich has made a wide array of stellar wines in his life, from great cabernet sauvignon to a sublime dessert wine named for his daughter. But it is chardonnay that has defined him since the one he made exactly 40 years ago, 15 years after he came to the United States from his native Croatia.
That wine, the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, ended up winning a blind tasting against famed white Burgundies in a 1976 tasting in Paris that rocketed California and Napa Valley into a vinous spotlight they have never relinquished.
The wine was a crowning achievement for Grgich and Montelena, and it followed the tradition of California's greatest winemaker, Russian expatriate Andre Tchelistcheff, with whom Grgich worked in the 1960s while Tchelistcheff was at Beaulieu Vineyard (BV).
The procedure, then considered a spoilage element since it could not be controlled, is called malolactic fermentation (ML). BV under Tchelistcheff never employed the then-controversial practice on its chardonnays. He said the resulting wine would usually turn out to be deficient in acidity.
Grgich adopted Tchelistcheff's philosophy that the best style of chardonnay was one that featured good acidity so it would work with food -- its intended purpose. Mike believed that although ML-treated wine might be softer and more appealing to novices, his style was more valid. Not only that, but that non-ML chardonnays live longer and prosper.
As a proof of that theorem, at a birthday luncheon a week ago at his winery, Mike poured for 40 guests sips of his first California chardonnay, the 1972 Chateau Montelena, and the wine was still vibrantly scented, fresh, un-oxidized, and tasting as if it were 10 years old, not more than 40!
"I never would destroy the malic acid," he said when asked about his penchant for leaving his chardonnay unaffected by the ML process. "Malic acid is an antioxidant, and the wine lives longer" when ML is avoided.
Grgich and a number of older stalwarts instead stuck to their guns and resisted ML for their chardonnays. Among the finest that still do not force their chardonnays to undergo the indignity of ML are Far Niente, Chateau Montelena, Stony Hill, Freemark Abbey, Mayacamas, and others who know that time is on their side.
Grgich has said of his chardonnays at his own Grgich Hills Cellars that they show vitality and complexity with time, yet when they are young, still work nicely as a truly dry alternative to the occasionally dull, soft, full-ML styles.
At his birthday party, Mike said he has lived his life primarily "for the two W's," which he acknowledged were wine and women. "This is the happiest day of my life," he said," and then added as an aside that he has more happy days ahead.
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