I can sum up Frog’s Leap Winery in one word...laid back and charming. Okay, that is technically three words, but one leads to the other and vice versa. Frog’s Leap was the next stop on my Tour de Napa and I must say in terms of location it was far different then Pride’s. Where Pride rested on top of Spring Mountain, Frog’s Leap sits on the valley floor in the Rutherford AVA of Napa, which is primarily known for Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc. The hustle and bustle at Pride is met in sharp contrast by Frog’s Leap’s ‘Hey, slow down, where’s the fire?’ attitude. From the moment you arrive and park in front of the big red barn, then walk around to see the peaceful garden and frog pond, you know that the earth is spinning just a little bit slower now.
Upon checking in I am told to go out to the gardens and there, at the picnic table, is where my tour will begin with Armando (from Texas) as our illustrious guide. This picnic table literally sits in the middle of the entire complex surrounded by all of the winery buildings, frog pond and gardens. The word charm, once again creeps up. As Armando joins us, pulling up a chair at the end of the table, he pulls out, what else, a picnic basket filled with wine glasses and a cold bottle of Frog’s Leap Chardonnay. The Chardonnay is only aged in oak 25% of the time. This is not new oak barrels either, they only use old oak to keep from influencing the juice with strong oaky flavors. The rest of the time the Chardonnay is aged in the stainless steel fermenters. The Chardonnay was cool and refreshing and a welcome break from the heat of midday in the valley. For those of you White Burgundy fans, the Chardonnay reminded me a bit of that style and I regret not bringing a bottle back home with me. Fortunately, I believe there are many stores here in Dallas that carry it.
Armando begins to tell the story of how Frog’s Leap came to be in a quite voice reminiscent of camp fire stories of old. Of course the story begins with the man whose dream was the foundation for the winery and that is John Williams. John is originally from the East Coast, up in the Finger Lakes region in New York and started his career in wine at Taylor Winery in that area. I’m sure the wines were interesting, but he kept hearing about how great California wines were so he decided to move out to Napa and check it out for himself. He was the first employee hired by the then new Stags Leap Winery and started in the crush crew until he worked his way up to winemaker. Ahem...maybe you’ve heard of them? Now I’ve not ever personally met John, but I do know quite a bit about him and he is a lighthearted person with a great sense of humor. I can only imagine that the environment at Stags Leap was anything but light hearted. I could be wrong, but that is the impression I get from their winery. So it only seems logical to me that John would eventually leave Stags Leap to start his own winery. From the very start, John was determined to put his lighthearted, don’t take yourself to seriously, stamp on the winery. Frog’s Leap wines come complete with corks that have “Ribbit” stamped on them and if you turn the wine bottle upside down you will find a message stating, “Open other end!” Frog’s Leap’s mantra is “Time’s fun when you’re having flies”. How clever! He will tell you that making wine is fun and certainly not brain surgery. Okay John, point taken!
After we dispensed the Chardonnay and had gone around the table meeting and greeting one another, we stood up and headed over to the beautiful garden area. For the casual observer, the garden provides the winery with a gorgeous addition to the landscape, but to Frog’s Leap, it is far more important than just that. The garden is meant to attract harmful insects away from the vineyards and in turn allows them to keep the vineyards strictly organic. In fact, little did I know, I was about to embark upon a little lesson in Organics 101.
For starters, one could not help but notice all of the animals on the property. We were met in the garden by one of the most important role players. It was an orange tabby cat that chases away varmints and from the looks of him, it appeared that he took his job seriously. There are also plenty of places for birds to perch and to repay the winery they do a fair share of insect eating. I think the most unusual sight was a chicken coup located just beyond the gardens. I am not entirely sure what purpose they served. Perhaps it was lunch!
Aside from explaining the types of plants and animals located on the grounds, Armando preceded to point out Frog’s Leap’s commitment to Organic farming methods. They do not use sprays or pesticides in the vineyards, that is left up to the animals and good critters. Instead of irrigation, they dry farm the vineyards, thus forcing the vines to dig deep into the earth for fresh water supply. In just two or three years, vines can dig down anywhere between ten to fourteen feet below the surface. This makes the roots stronger and allows them to avoid the diseases that occupy the first five feet of soil. After a period of time, the vines begin to take their toll on the soil, so periodically, they will pull out the vines and let the vineyards sit idle for three to five years. Not all the vineyards mind you, but a section here or there at a time. Sometimes they will plant mustard seed in those vineyard sites just to add nutrients back to the soil.
Frog’s Leap also allows the grass and vegetation to grow wild in between the rows of vines. This provides a habitat for all of those good critters like ladybugs, wasps and caterpillars that eat all of the bad critters that wish to do harm to the grapevines. They will periodically start cutting down every other row of grass and vegetation just to encourage the good critters to move around throughout the vineyard. And as far as fertilizing goes, Frog’s Leap employs a method that is not only organic, it is recyclable too. They use the old grape seeds and skins as fertilizer to put back into the vineyards, which also provides the soil with valuable nutrients.
When John first started growing grapes at the winery, he thought he would show all of those ‘old timers’ (local grape growers) just how it was really done. His methods were a bit unorthodox and results were slow to develop. In all of the local honky-tonks (keep in mind Napa was not always the commercial circus it is today), the growers would make fun of him and when they saw him, they would jest, “Hey, your that guy out there killing all those vines.” There was one grape farmer that was particularly tough on John named Frank. He would drive by the vineyard just to give him a hard time. Eventually John came to realize that maybe there was a better way of doing things. Another local farmer named ‘Amigo Bob’, who grew grapes in Mendocino County, befriended John and showed him the ropes. It wasn’t long after that things started to come together for John in the vineyards.
For the first five years John only made Sauvignon Blanc that was fermented completely in stainless steel tanks. John realized that when it comes to growing great grapes it’s all about location, location, location and quite frankly, the Rutherford AVA in Napa is Cabernet Sauvignon territory. So with that in mind, he started producing Cabernet, Merlot and a whole host of other varietals. Today they are even starting to grow Petite Sirah.
Now certainly Frog’s Leap is not the only winery to adopt an organic farming policy and some would say that is more than enough when it comes to saving the environment, but John has taken his earthly responsibilities up to a whole new level with the advent of their solar power system. In fact, Frog’s Leap winery is 100% solar powered. To accomplish this, they had to tear up three rows of Merlot vineyards to install the giant solar panels. This vineyard space was necessary because the 300 solar panels were too heavy to be supported by the buildings. The energy that these panels create generates enough electricity to run the entire winery and has enough power left over to provide an additional amount of electricity to power up to four hundred homes. The winery receives a credit from the Electric Company for the excess electricity.
One of the main uses for all of this solar powered electricity is the operation of the barrel cellar, an enormous two story building (the first floor is actually underground). The walls to this building are eighteen inches of solid concrete, which helps keep the building cool. It does have air conditioning and humidity systems, but at night in Napa, the air gets cool, so to take advantage of this they open vents that allows in that nighttime air to cool down the building. Armando informs us that the barrel cellar is only five years old and that they used to store all of their wine barrels at a co-op in Napa. One of the more interesting notes about the building is that it was constructed with timber that came from a bridge in Canada.
I am not sure exactly how many wine barrels Frog’s Leap has, but you can tell from the pictures that there are a bunch of them! Of all the wineries I visited on this trip, they are the biggest operation in terms of numbers of cases produced. They use both French and American oak barrels. The French oak has a tighter wood grain, but the American oak imparts more flavor. Their Syrah for example is aged for a period of fourteen months in a combination of both. The difference in price is pretty dramatic. The American Oak barrels are $500.00 a piece, while the French are $900.00 each and these prices are the bulk discounts given to Frog’s Leap by the coopers. These barrels have to be replaced every seven years and all red wines receive a mixture of new and used oak. As you can see, running a winery is not cheap.
Armando tells us how to spot the older barrelhouses around Napa. He says they are the ones with green moss growing on the roofs. This moss is created by the barrels sweating, causing the bacteria to form.
Between the Barrel Room and the Big Red Barn is a giant grape press and come harvest time it sees plenty of action. Harvest by the way takes place from August to October with Sauvignon Blanc being the first to come in followed by Merlot and Syrah. Then the rest come in with Pinot Noir bringing up the rear. The grapes are pressed ever so lightly to extract only their juice. Special care is given to make sure the grape seeds are not compressed because that creates bitterness in the wines. Once the juice is extracted, it is immediately pumped into their temperature controlled steel fermentation tanks and those are housed in the Big Red Barn. White wines spend more time in the steel tanks as the red wines only spend enough time to ferment in them. While the grape juice is fermenting, Armando says it looks like dishwater... yummy!
The grounds around Frog’s Leap are amazing and the garden and frog pond are beautiful, but it is the awe- inspiring presence of this great big red barn that holds your fascination from the moment you arrive at the winery. And once you learn its story it becomes all the more intriguing. It is massive on the inside and the walls to the main area are lined with giant steel fermentation tanks that are almost two stories high. This barn was used by the previous owners for drying walnuts and other nuts and the drying racks that were used littered the barn everywhere you turned. It was the only building on the entire property when John purchased it back in 1991 and it was in shambles, resting on its side. An agriculture company used the area to dump stuff here. True to John’s ‘replenish and restore’ nature, he took the barn down piece by piece and rebuilt it using 75% of the original wood and restoring it to exactly the same way it originally was.
The history of the barn is even more intriguing. A German family owned a winery, that included this barn, dating all the way back to 1890. Twenty years after they started the winery the vines on the property were hit with phyloxera and subsequently, they lost the entire vineyard. The wife killed herself there in the barn after the family went bankrupt. Her ghost still haunts the big red bard to this day. The Cellar Master says that he feels a cold presence at night when he walks by tank six and there have been several people there working for the winery that report strange things happening around the barn at night. In fact, many workers won’t go in the barn at night alone. Well despite our distraught German wife lurking around the building, I am happy to report that there were no paranormal sightings while were we touring the barn. Either that, or the wine Armando was pouring was getting to me quicker than I thought.
The upstairs to the barn provides entrances to the catwalks that grant the winery workers access to the steel tanks. Just peering down the narrow corridors lined with steel barred flooring reminded me of the catwalks one might encounter on a World War II Submarine. Just like Pride, the upstairs houses a long dinning table that is probably used for private parties and special occasions. It is carefully placed by the upstairs barn doors that open up to what amounts to a breathtaking view of the winery property, vineyards and the mountains in the background. Truly stunning, just see the pictures here at the bottom of this page. We paused here a while to soak up the view and the rest of the wine. Everyone told some stories about where they were from and their own personal wine adventures. And once the wine was gone, the party moved on.
Upon exiting the winery, Frog’s Leap has a tradition and that tradition involves shooting a basketball through a hoop that is located in an awkward position. It is behind some obstacles, for lack of a better word, but certainly make able. Each guest gets the opportunity to show off their basketball skills, or lack there of, and should he or she make a basket, they are rewarded with a poster of Frog’s Leap wine labels. It is actually really quite neat, especially if you’re a cork dork like myself. I really wanted one of those posters to take home, so with my heart pounding, I gripped the ball, lunged forward and proceeded to put up the worst brick imaginable in the history of the sport. Needless to say, I left without a poster. Oh well, I guess I will just have to come back and visit again.
As a side note, I was in the Chateau Wine Market this past Saturday and noticed this cool Frog's Leap Poster. When I asked Amir how he got it, he said, "Yea, I made my basket!" Figures!
