My first stop along my Tour de Napa, would feature an exciting drive up Spring Mountain to the top, where there, directly straddling both Napa & Sonoma Counties, sits Pride Mountain Vineyards. If visiting remote wineries was a goal of mine on this trip, I get an A+ for selecting Pride. Oh, and please do not be fooled by the five miles from Highway 29 statement located on the tour map. These are no ordinary miles we are talking about and if you are planning on visiting Pride, you had best give yourself a thirty-minute head start. The road named for the mountain its laid on features a never-ending series of hair-pinned turns and narrow lanes that resemble a Monte Carlo Grand Prix race. Why even Mario Andretti in his hay day would have trouble navigating these twists and turns. In fact, they are so tight, you will never get your car above thirty miles an hour (going up the mountain that is) in any stretch of the journey. Should you plan on visiting Pride, I’d make it the first winery you visit while your mental proficiency and motor-skills are still sharp. Otherwise, you might overshoot a turn in the road, parking your rental car into a few rows of someone’s highly acclaimed single- vineyard cabernet sauvignon vines. The loss of their small crop could throw them into bankruptcy given the price per acre in Napa today. On the flip side, the ride back down this mountain road presents a whole new challenge whereby your gas pedal becomes the most useless feature on your car as you go barreling down the mountain like the jolly Jamaican bobsled team. I think I was riding the car’s set of brakes so hard I could see red flames and smoke shooting out the sides of the wheels... but I digress!
I should point out that there are several wineries that are located off of Spring Mountain road that provide the journey up and down the mountain with absolutely breathtaking views. Unfortunately, you have to focus on the road so much you will probably miss most of the views. That is why I pulled over frequently to take photos of the vineyards. If you are traveling with someone that gets carsick easily, I would stick him or her in the front seat or insist they drive. In fact, it would probably be in everyone’s best interest if they did.
Now I kid a lot about the drive up the road, but you should not let that discourage you from driving on it because it affords you some of the most spectacular views in Napa and is well worth the Evel Knevel type of death defying navigation. Along the way, there are several of Napa’s greatest cult cab wineries and I got to visit one them in Pride Mountain Vineyards, who’s property and story were extremely rewarding.
There are kind of two entrances to Pride. One that is off of Spring Mountain Road, that serpentines back and forth up another hill until you reach the gated fence-line of Pride’s property, where the second entrance is located. Here you will find yourself amongst Pride’s lower vineyards, which they refer to as their valley vineyards because they are tucked somewhat in a valley basin. As you are following along another…surprise…winding path up the hill, you will notice signs that say, “Please keep your speed to 10mph, grapes do not like dust”. Given the way that Pride’s amazing wines taste, I felt guilty just driving over 5mph. Once at the top of the hill, you immediately find yourself facing the tasting room building, which is currently undergoing some construction on a new and larger tasting room.
If you plan to visit Pride, you will need to make an appointment in advance and I had one to meet with Jason Skelley, who was to be my tour guide. The Pride family would be hard-pressed to find a more passionate, knowledgeable and enthusiastic tour guide than Jason. Why, he eats, breathes and lives for Pride wines and that point becomes crystal clear, very early on, in the tour. Upon prodding Jason for a bit of background information about himself, he informs me that at one time he had worked for Michael Chiarello at his Tra Vigne restaurant in St. Helena.
Jason, who I believe has been with the winery for at least four years, starts the tour off behind the tasting room where they house all of the steel fermentation tanks. There is not that many steel tanks at Pride by the way. Pride is not a large-scale operation. They are family owned and operated and do not hire outside help in the vineyards. Everyone working at Pride is either on the staff or in the immediate family.
Jim and Carolyn Pride bought the vineyards, which are half on Napa County side and half on Sonoma County side, back in 1989. Jim was a dentist by trade, but decided on a simpler way of life by owning and managing vineyards, mostly selling the crops to other wineries. In 1991, they made their first wine from grapes grown on their own property at the local co-op in Napa. That year, their Merlot & Cabernet Sauvignon’s scored 92 points in the Wine Spectator. These results forced Jim to think about starting a winery there on premise.
Probably one of the most important developments that spurned on Pride’s success was the hiring of the extremely talented and well-known winemaker, Bob Foley. Once Bob was on board making the wine, it did not take long for Pride to reach its legendary status among the cult wine collectors. In fact, there is a two to three year waiting period to get on Pride’s reserve wine mailing list.
It takes more than just Bob’s magic to make Pride a household name, and the fruit being produced from the soils in the vineyard were also helping to make Pride special. High up on the mountain, they have the benefit of achieving remarkable temperature swings between day and night that allow the grapes to achieve optimal ripeness while maintaining their acidity levels. It wasn’t only the Pride’s that knew they were sitting on a gold mine, other vintners in Napa knew this too. In fact, Robert Mondavi himself was sourcing select grapes from Jim Pride’s estate and using them in the Robert Mondavi Reserve wines. In 1994, Robert came to Jim and informed him that they had decided to go in a different direction with their reserve wines. So he decided to no longer buy his grapes from the Pride Vineyards. Jim began using those same grapes for his own reserve wine and just two years later the wine made from that vineyard scored 99 points from Robert Parker. After that, Robert Mondavi asked if he would be interested in selling those grapes to him again and I believe Jim said…well…we’ll just say he said, “No”.
Jim has since passed away and now his son and daughter, Steve and Susanne, run the day-to-day operations at Pride Family Vineyards and since taking over they have made some remarkable improvements in the property. Most notably, the construction of the massive wine caves that house the wine barrels. These caves are 1/3 of a mile long and were dug into the side of the mountain. What the caves provide for the winery is a staggering savings in money by eliminating the need for more than $100,000.00 a month that would be spent on electricity to cool and humidify a barrel room. Since the caves are dug into the earth, the natural temperature inside them stays relatively cool in the summer and warmer than the outside in the winter. There is also natural humidity in the caves, which takes away the need for misters. If there is a need for more humidity during the hot summer months, they will just spray the cave down with water, which evaporates quickly and helps to dissipate the alcohol levels in the wine. The caves are so large, they too split the Napa & Sonoma County lines. Jason informed us that they play a practical joke on all new winery employees by sending them into the caves for a box that is all the way in the back, then turn the lights out to see if they can find their way back. The caves took approximately 1.5 million dollars to construct, but clearly, it will more than pay for itself in the near future.
Aside from just housing the wine barrels, the exit to the cave opens up on the Napa side into a very medieval-like dinning room, which is used for special events. There is also a kitchen off to the side of the dinning room that is completely electric. Had the kitchen been outfitted with gas appliances and there had been a gas leak, it could quite literally blow half the mountainside vineyards away. So I guess electric stoves make sense after all. The dinning room door exits to a patio complete with picnic tables that you are welcome to use. From this patio you are afforded a birds eye view of their beautiful vineyards and on a clear day, you can see up to seven different county lines.
As we enter the 1/3 of a mile long caves, Jason begins to go over Bob Foley’s winemaking philosophy. Of course it starts with the grapes from the vineyards and Pride tastes the grapes for themselves rather than relying on a refractor to check phenolic ripeness. Bob is shooting for wines that are approachable now, but will age well. This is almost assuredly achieved because the vineyards are situated so high on Spring Mountain, which is rich in rocky soil. Their microclimate is cooler during the day and warmer at night during the summer time than the vineyards on the valley floor. The cooler weather allows for a month longer hang time for the fruit on the vine and this helps them maintain great acidity and PH levels to give the wines balance.
When it comes to applying oak to the new wines, Bob takes a wait and see approach. Typically, Bob will prefer to wait four or five months before placing the current vintage of wine in a new oak barrel. This allows him to access the quality of fruit before deciding on which oak treatment to use for the young wine. In the meantime, he will place the wine in neutral oak until he is ready to make that decision. This is a great approach to oak treatment if you ask me, because once you introduce the young wine to new oak, you cannot get those oak flavors out of the wine. It’s like putting salt on your food before you have even tasted it. How could you possibly know how much salt it needs or in this case, oak? Speaking of seasoning, Pride prefers a medium toast on their barrels, and they’re all French from the Troncais forest. They use FAE barrels, which stand for Fast Aging Export. These barrels are just ¾ of an inch thick, and they allow for better evaporation. You will also no doubt notice from the pictures that all the barrels in the cave are stacked no more than two high. This is done to allow Bob easy access to all of the wines.
These barrels can be used from anywhere between five to ten years. However, you must be careful not to overuse the barrels because bacteria like brettymicosis can develop; this imparts barnyardy and horse sweat aromas in the wines. After each use, the barrels are sprayed out with water reaching a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit in order to sterilize between usages. While the barrels sit empty, they place dixie cups in the bungholes instead of plugs. If the plugs were used instead, it would trap oxygen inside creating an anaerobic environment. Instead, the dixie cups serves two purposes at once by allowing the oxygen to escape while keeping out dust and critters!
When it comes to the wines produced by Pride, all other grape varieties take a back seat to Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, the two mainstays of the winery. For example, in 2005, there were only ten barrels of Chardonnay produced. There are only eighteen barrels of Syrah produced, while Sangiovese, which has experienced a 300 % growth in 2005 has gone from only two barrels to six. Something interesting to note is the fact that only three out of the ten Chardonnay barrels and only two out of the eighteen barrels of Syrah are actually new oak barrels. I find this almost unbelievable because if you have ever tasted these two wines, you definitely notice the new oak flavors. That just goes to show you how powerful new oak seasoning can be on the flavor profile of a wine. The Viognier they produce is only aged in barrels that are three years old or older to keep from masking the varietal’s floral aromas and flavors. Both the Viognier and Chardonnay are filtered to reduce cloudiness and undergo malolactic fermentation in the barrel. The red wines see some malolactic fermentation naturally.
The caves currently house 1,800 barrels, but five years from now they hope to expand that number to 3,000. This isn’t all good news for the winery. Since Pride is bonded in two counties, Napa and Sonoma, and their caves split the two counties, they cannot move fermented wines across county lines until taxes are paid. That by the way can’t happen until the wines are bottled. To eliminate the need for two bottling facilities, they just bottle all of the wines by hand. I can only imagine all of the logistical nightmares and headaches they have to go through to give you and I a great bottle of wine, but thank God they do it.
After our Indiana Jones like exploration of the Pride caves, Jason took us out into the vineyards, which on this day, were blanketed by an ominous layer of fog. This is where it all really begins and if Mother Nature gives you lemons, you better be darn sure you can make lemonade or you’re in trouble. There are two levels of vineyards at Pride. An upper and lower level. The vineyards at the top benefit from having air circulated over them from the ocean. The only frost problems occur at the lower level vineyards that lay in sort of a valley. They have installed fans and heaters to combat the threat of frost on the vines. The oldest vineyards on their property are 24 years old and sit just over the caves on a hill and I believe that Jason said they were planted with Cabernet Franc. The youngest are just a few years old and are perched at the highest point on the property surrounded by quartz rocks that glimmer in the sun. They hope that someday this vineyard site will be in their reserve wines.
There are a total of six different vineyards on the property that are planted with Merlot. Each year, the best vineyard as determined by Bob, is separated from the rest during the winemaking process with half being used as a single vineyard Merlot wine (about 300 cases) and the other half ending up in the reserve claret. For the 2005 vintage, they used Merlot fruit from their Blackbird vineyard. This is actually a pretty clever strategy if you think about it. Many wineries that designate a single vineyard for a particular wine are stuck with using that fruit regardless of whether it was a good vintage or not. By using Pride’s strategy, you are guaranteeing yourself the best fruit possible for your best wines.
Pride helps protect their vineyards by planting cover crops, which fight erosion in the soils. They also breed an insect called a wasp. No, not the kind with a stinger that hurts. This wasp is more like a ladybug that eats harmful insects such as aphids and mites. Unfortunately we did not get a tour of the wasp breeding facility, perhaps on another visit we can accomplish that!
The 2006 vintage has seen an excess of rain in the front end and this has assuredly delayed bud break on the vines more than normal. They had just started to open their shoots while I was there. This means that 2006 will be a long growing season. When you have a lot of rain in the spring and then really hot weather (like in 2005), you will get a lot of unusual split shoots on the vines. These have to be removed or else the vines will become too vigorous and produce too much fruit. That translates into a delusion of wine quality. Each shoot or growth produces two bunches of grapes. Sometimes they will get three or four and they have to go back and trim off the weakest growth. Jason states that they also must be leery of too many bunches of grapes growing together or condensation will form between the grapes and that leads to mold.
Jason goes on to say that there are second and third growths on the vines that don’t completely ripen until December. In fact, they don’t even turn the color red until July. Of course Pride does not use the fruit from these growths in their wines, but they will let the construction crew use them for some “home brew” wines. In fact, the construction crew’s 2005 batch reached a whopping 18.7% alcohol. No wonder they are so happy to come to work!
As the tour ended and everyone dispersed. I stood still for a while to soak up the peace and isolation. It literally seems like you are miles away from anything. What seems like a lot of vineyards at least as far as the eye can see, really only translates into very few wines. That is truly unfortunate for us consumers because the wines that fill the bottles adorned with gold lettered labels and the words Pride Mountain Vineyards are both stunning and surreal. I found myself wanting, or needing I should say, a keepsake to remember my time at Pride. So with that in mind, I wandered back into the tasting room/gift shop, and picked out a really cool polo shirt with the winery logo on it to bring back home. I have worn the shirt many times since I’ve been back and you can rest assured that I have worn it with a whole lot of Pride!
