Rutherford Hill Winery: Upscaling All Around

 

Rutherford Hill Winery long has been an outrider on the Napa Valley wine scene. It stubbornly has stuck by Merlot as its signature wine as its neighbors have staked their acclaim on the comparably more esteemed Cabernet Sauvignon.

It is secluded high in the hills along the east edge of the valley, unseen by wine explorers zipping up Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail.

And while its architecturally stunning winery and mile of caves have awed visitors, tastings have not generated the buzz heard at other venues scattered through the valley.

Now, the folks of Rutherford Hill Winery, founded in 1972, are launching the results of an ambitious and imaginative makeover to elevate the property as both stirring destination and as incubator of wines that warrant the imprimatur “luxury.”

Elevation is a given, with the winery and six acres of estate grapes perched about 400 feet above the valley floor. To capitalize on that elevation without clear-cutting the slope’s native oaks, winery principals sculpted a sunny terraced aerie that provides valley views that only hawks and hot-air balloon passengers previously enjoyed. (Oh, and guests of the nearby posh resort Auberge du Soleil.)

To inaugurate the makeover, several members of the Terlato family, which bought Rutherford Hill Winery in 1996 and oversaw the restyling, invited members of the wine media to the site the other day. The festivities included a vertical tasting of eight estate Merlots dating to 1975, and a lunch that included ricotta gnocchi with a Tuscan-inspired pork ragu, and grilled flat-iron steak with trumpet mushrooms and roasted Brussel sprouts, potatoes, and carrots, each paired with Rutherford Hill Winery wines.

The meal was lavish, the pours generous, the service synchronized with grace and precision, the wines rangy in style and steady in execution, and the views from decks that jut out over the hillside sweeping and bright, and a bit too blinding and hot for guests not shielded by flaring sunshades.

For paying guests, the price to sip wine while savoring the view will be heady – $75 per person ($30 extra per person for a cheese-and-charcuterie board). Other opportunities to play and learn go up from there – $95 for a tasting with a tour of the estate and caves, $100 to taste a selection of appellation-designated Merlots, $195 for a tour of the vineyard via ATV paired with a tasting of “reserve” wines in a cave lounge ($50 box lunch optional). (The bargain on the premises is to reserve one of eight tables in the site’s historic picnic grove; cost: one bottle of wine per two people.)

At a time when the wine trade is in economic turmoil – sales stalled, vineyards being torn up, wineries folding or on the market – isn’t this kind of investment and confidence an exceptionally gutsy gamble?

“Some people will look at it that way, but I tend to be a contrarian. When no one wants to invest, I see it as a good time to invest,” says William “Bill” Terlato, chief executive officer of Terlato Wine Group and Terlato Wines.

(Also, remember that Rutherford Hill Winery is in Napa Valley, somewhat isolated from economic tremors unsettling much of the rest of California’s wine trade. A study commissioned by the promotional group Visit Napa Valley concluded that 3.7 million people visited Napa Valley during 2023 – 18,306 of them on any given day, each spending an average $281 per day.)

Bill Terlato was talking at the outset of the vertical tasting of Rutherford Hill Merlots, and offhand couldn’t recall how much the Rutherford Hill makeover cost his family’s business, though he said the bill for the project and for a companion remodeling of another Terlato winery, Sanford Winery and Vineyards in Santa Barbara County, came to a total $18 million.

The Terlatos have gambled often, starting when Bill Terlato’s maternal grandfather, Anthony Paterno, opened a grocery story on Chicago’s west side in 1938. There, customers would fill jugs with wine tapped from oak barrels.

Largely under the guidance of his father, Anthony Terlato, who early on worked in the original grocery store and later married Anthony Paterno’s daughter Josephine, the family’s involvement in wine has been nimble, daring and steadily expansive.

They first moved into distributing and importing wines, then in the 1990s into buying vineyards and wineries. This was principally at the urging of Bill Terlato, who, fretful that this new thing called the Internet would disrupt wine sales, persuaded his father to buy Rutherford Hill Winery as their first step toward controlling production as well as distribution.

Today, the Terlatos own six wineries, which in addition to Rutherford Hill and Sanford include Chimney Rock also in Napa Valley and Klipsun Vineyard in Washington state. They own 1200 acres of vineyards, and control the distribution of more than 80 brands, including such critical and popular labels as Domaine Vacheron of Sancerre, Il Poggione of Tuscany, Rochioli of California, Wairau River of Marlborough, and Chateau de Marsannay of Burgundy.

Despite today’s financially rattled wine trade, the Terlatos wager that wine’s long and significant role in cultures about the world will endure, particularly in the “luxury” segment, where wines tend to be dear as they are sculpted painstakingly to represent wine’s highest calling – a sense of place and an expression of artful craftsmanship.

“Wine has been around for thousands of years. It’s part of our food-driven culture,” said Bill Terlato. “We’re bullish on the wine business, putting our money where our mouth is.”

In addition to sprucing up Rutherford Hill Winery to draw more visitors, he talked of other recent improvements – upgrading the vineyards, embracing sustainability practices, bringing in a new winemaker (Michael Coode, who took over three vintages ago after stints with such high-profile properties as Inglenook in Napa Valley, Wolf Blass in Adelaide, and Paul Jaboulet Aîné in Rhone Valley), refining vinification methods, and even redesigning the label, all to convey the dawning of a new era.

While Merlot remains Rutherford Hill’s flagship varietal wine, accounting for about two-thirds of the winery’s output, Coode and crew are giving more attention to Cabernet Sauvignon, and they are diversifying the vineyards with grape varieties like Touriga Nacional, Vermentino, and Aglianico. Even such obscure grapes as Gouveio (Portuguese) and Xinomavro (Greek) are in play, though their roles are largely speculative at this early stage. In addition to the winery’s six-acre hillside estate vineyard, the family’s local vineyards include the 66-acre “AJT Vineyard” on the valley floor in the Rutherford American Viticultural Area (AVA) and the 62-acre “Juliana Vineyard” in the broader Napa Valley AVA.

Rutherford Hill Winery’s cordial, plush, vivacious and sweetly fruity “Napa Valley” Merlot ($38) is its workhorse, but Coode is extending the brand’s commitment to the varietal with more layered and energetic interpretations based on sub-appellations within Napa Valley.

My favorites were the floral and cherry-accented Rutherford Hill Winery 2022 Oak Knoll Merlot ($75), which while elegant in its bearing also had the structure and drive to stand up resolutely to the richness and depth of the muscular pork ragu with ricotta gnocchi.

Another favorite was the strapping and warm Rutherford Hill Winery 2022 Stag’s Leap Merlot ($75), a mouthful of saturating cherries and plums, substantial in build and a touch spicy in the finish, splendid with the succulence of the grilled Angus flat-iron steak.

Also poured were two proprietary blends that represented a thoughtful step aside from the winery’s long association with varietal Merlots. One was the Rutherford Hill 2022 Napa Valley Winemakers Blend ($75), which while largely Merlot (73 percent) also included enough Cabernet Sauvignon (27 percent) to add more cherries and olives to Merlot’s customary dark and juicy plums.

 

The other was the Rutherford Hill 2022 Heaven’s Peak Red Blend ($125), a seamless mix evocative of Bing cherries, dried cranberries, and Mission figs. A blend of 58 percent estate Cabernet Sauvignon and 42 percent Merlot from Napa Valley’s cool Carneros sub-appellation, the wine is hefty and warm, but with brightness and equilibrium, its 15 percent alcohol not at all blundering into and interfering with the wine’s freshness.

Especially notable with all recent vintages of Rutherford Hill wines, whether Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon based, was Coode’s judicious use of oak, thanks in part to his fondness for larger format oak vessels to ferment and age wines.

As to the lineup of eight older Rutherford Hill Winery Merlots, they validated the brand’s confidence in the varietal with a reliable presentation of fresh fruit, perky acids, and welcome balance. What they lacked in drama they made up in nuance, elegance, and persistence.

And as a measure of the Terlato family’s confidence in the Napa Valley wine trade they are not finished reimagining their local facilities. Next up is a restyling of their Chimney Rock Winery just a few miles down Silverado Trail from Rutherford Hill Winery.