High Over Napa Valley, Barnett Vineyards Shines

 

We’re standing some 2000 feet up the sunrise slope of the Mayacamas Mountains.

We’re looking east but mostly down, way down, scanning the green blocks of grapevines that form the flat and orderly quilt of Napa Valley.

I ask Hal Barnett the whereabouts of the tree he climbed when he and his wife Fiona scouted these hills for a potential homesite in 1983. The stunning view of the valley he got from the tree is what persuaded the couple to invest in this steep, rocky, heavily timbered and viticulturally challenging landscape.

He gestures vaguely to the southeast.

“Long gone,” says Fiona.

 

Lots of trees are long gone from the slope between Barnett Vineyards and the valley floor. In 2020, the Glass Fire raged through the Barnett estate, consuming trees, an outlying storage shed, a soaring tasting platform, and about a fifth of the family’s 14 acres of wine grapes. There will be no Barnett Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon from 2020; grapes that escaped flames didn’t escape smoke, which left the fruit worthless for wine.

David Tate, the winery’s winemaker since 2007, driven by curiosity, made a small batch of Cabernet Sauvignon with smoke-tainted fruit from the 2020 harvest, finding it “wretched,” with an emphasis on retch.

Flames surrounded the Barnett home, winery and the cave that houses row after row of French oak barrels holding one of Napa Valley’s more cherished Cabernet Sauvignons. They were all preserved through the efforts of family, friends, firefighters and employees. Many of their neighbors weren’t as fortunate. Before it was controlled the Glass Fire blackened 67,484 acres and consumed 1528 structures, several of them wineries.

 

But that time now is recent history. We had assembled this day to celebrate, starting with a retrospective tasting of the estate’s Cabernet Sauvignon and finishing with an al fresco lunch to recognize the 40^th anniversary of Barnett Vineyards.

David Tate guided guests through six vintages of Barnett Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, from the effusive 1992, a marvel of haunting bottle bouquet and layered and persevering flavors that suggested sandalwood, orange peel, cherries and olives, to the current release, the saturating 2019 ($90), boldly stepping aside from the rest of the pack for its sweet and sumptuous suggestions of blueberries, blackberries and, again, cherries.

Over lunch, the Barnetts poured their 2017 “Rattlesnake” Cabernet Sauvignon, which with its density and concentration pretty much explained why Cabernet Sauvignon is seen as perhaps the wine world’s most noble variety. (“Rattlesnake” is named for a rocky promontory on the estate where 33 rattlesnakes were found as the site was planted to vines. The Barnetts adopted the name early on to discourage their three young daughters from visiting the site.)

The very first “Rattlesnake” Cabernet Sauvignon, the 1991, dramatically raised the profile of Barnett Vineyards when influential wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. tasted a sample and not only raved about the wine but bought a case, something he noted that he rarely did. The response was immediate and overwhelming, quickly filling up the winery’s answering machine, recalled Hal Barnett. Just 25 cases were released.

But what ran through all the Cabernets that spoke to the Spring Mountain District in general and to the estate in particular?

Spring Mountain District is one of 16 appellations into which Napa Valley is partitioned. High in the Mayacamas Mountains, Spring Mountain customarily is above the fog that intrudes onto lower vineyards. Shielded from late-afternoon sunshine, subject to frequent winds, and cooler than much of the rest of the valley for its elevation, grapes ripen more slowly than fruit lower down, with harvest generally commencing a month or so after it finishes on the valley floor.

Just west of St. Helena, Spring Mountain is a wildly wooded terrain, with plunging slopes, volcanic soils, and small vineyards tucked into clearings in the midst of madrone, pine and oak. The narrow and twisting drive up to Barnett Vineyards and neighboring wineries is a thrill best taken with motorcycle or sporty convertible. Incidentally, there is no Spring Mountain; the term grew out of recognition long ago that this stretch of the Mayacamas was home to numerous springs.

Cabernet Sauvignons from Spring Mountain often are perceived as unusually tannic and long-lived, but that can be said of Cabernets from other mountainous areas of Napa Valley. The tasting at Barnett Vineyards confirmed that they are indeed long-lived, retaining a bright vitality 20 and 30 years after their grapes were harvested.

My favorites included the lean and dry 2009 and 2012, in part because I am a sucker for an insinuation of mint in Cabernet Sauvignon, but also for their leanness, nuanced flavors, sturdy yet pliable tannins and revitalizing acidity, lashing without being lacerating. There was an amiable tension to the wines, an alertness that left no room for ambivalence. They possessed a steady intensity.

David Tate is a disciple of one of California’s more original and disciplined winemakers, Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards, where Tate put in a five-year stint as assistant winemaker. Draper was a proponent of minimal interference with a wine’s launch and development long before that philosophy became as common as it is today.

Draper, says Tate, taught him to “take the best fruit and guide it through and let it express itself.” Thus, Tate avoids capitalizing on all the additives and legerdemain available to the modern winemaker to darken, sweeten, punctuate and otherwise manipulate wines into a preconceived vision of what they should be. As a consequence, the wines of Barnett Vineyards represent the nature of the growing year with uncommon transparency, which explains a note of gaminess in one Cabernet, a thread of herbalness in another.

From Tate’s perspective, the Cabernet Sauvignons of Barnett Vineyards stand apart from the Cabernet Sauvignons of other Napa Valley districts for their fine tannins and pure fruit, and are especially notable for their pronounced suggestions of cassis, or black currants, at once juicy and tart.

While Barnett Vineyards is recognized principally for Cabernet Sauvignon, the Barnetts and Tate look beyond Napa Valley for grapes that have helped establish the standing of other appellations. Thus, their rich, vigorous and multifaced 2022 Sauvignon Blanc ($40) is from the Andrews Vineyard in Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley, and their brilliant, dynamic and spicy 2021 Pinot Noir ($65) is from the Tina Marie Vineyard in the Green Valley of Russian River Valley, also in Sonoma County.

Early in the day’s gathering, Fiona Barnett wistfully reflected on Napa Valley’s shifting culture. No longer is it a scattering of small family-owned and -operated vineyards and wineries that took the initial risks to establish what has evolved into the nation’s most romantic and affluent wine region. Many of those vineyards and wineries are being bought by corporate chains, their principals often more absent than present. The region’s personality is changing, the impact on the nature of its wines uncertain.

How about the Barnetts? They thinking of joining the exodus and relinquishing their precariously perched estate? “We’re not ready to retire,” Fiona says. “We enjoy what we do. We have fun, we have a great team, it’s running like a Swiss watch. This is special. We’d like to keep it going.”

As a measure of the family’s commitment to the area, the Barnetts hope to raise $10,000 for the St. Helena Fire Department by donating a portion of the revenues from sales of their 2021 Cabernet Franc ($110).