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| Drinking window: Drink between 2026 and 2033 (based on 35 user opinions) |
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| Palmaz Vineyards Producer website
The Palmazes bought a forgotten stone winery, a fine old house badly in need of renovation, and acres of land that had once produced fine Napa wines. The little valley had been the site of Cedar Knoll Vineyard and Winery, founded in 1881 by Henry Hagen, one of Napa Valley's pioneer winemakers.
Henry Hagen produced wines that garnered many awards, including a silver medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889. During that era, Cedar Knoll was one of Napa's premier wineries. The vineyards survived the Wine Country’s phylloxera infestation in the 1890s, but Prohibition was fatal. The winery fell into disrepair and the vineyards lay fallow for nearly eighty years.
Today, the vineyards are burgeoning, the restored Hagen house is a family home again, and the winery has been reinvented.
acres of vineyards grow more than fourteen unique terroirs at three elevations — 400, 1200, and 1400 feet above sea level and are nurtured under the respectful tenets of sustainable agriculture. They thrive on the slopes of Mount George at the southern end of the Vaca Range. The foundation for it all is base rock laid down during the Pliocene volcanic age. Vineyard geography ranges from steep slopes with shallow nutrient-poor soils, which produce concentrated grapes, to stony colluvial deposits made up of cobbles, gravel, and sandy loam. Variations of soil type, sun exposure, and elevation produce a robust range of flavors and concentration to create a wine with balance and complexity.
The winery's 24 fermentation tanks accommodate the yields of individual blocks within the estate, vinifying each parcel’s grapes separately to preserve the unique characteristics intrinsic to the parcels. This provides a complete and pure palette for the winemaker’s art — tasting, appreciating, and blending individual lots to bring balance to the wine.
The vineyard is planted primarily with Cabernet Sauvignon, plus some small lots of Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc, which are used as blend components for Palmaz wines. The vineyard is also planted with small lots of Chardonnay, Riesling, Muscat, and Malbec for limited production. The vines are hand pruned and trellised, with production carefully moderated to grow only the finest quality grapes.
Palmaz Vineyards' winemaking and aging takes place within the living rock of Mount George, in a flawlessly engineered maze of tunnels and lofty domes. The height of the wine cave is equivalent to an 18-storey building, providing the vertical range needed for true gravity-flow winemaking. Thus, the wine is never subjected to the violent agitation of pumping, which can change the wine’s intra-molecular structure. This gentle treatment allows the finest nuances of flavor to develop naturally—the result is a complex, elegant wine.
The fermentation dome is the world’s largest underground reinforced structure. It is 72’ in diameter and 54’ high.
Temperature stays constant at 60 degrees and humidity at 75%, the perfect atmosphere for aging wine.
The cave houses its own water treatment plant built to comply with strict conservation guidelines.
Fermentation tanks rotate on a custom-designed carousel.
For a truly unique wine tour and tasting, this winery represents the ultimate in technology-driven and focused delivery of Napa Valley's iconic wines. Appointments are necessary, but this is a must-see family operation.Cabernet SauvignonCabernet Sauvignon is probably the most famous red wine grape variety on Earth. It is rivaled in this regard only by its Bordeaux stablemate Merlot, and its opposite number in Burgundy, Pinot Noir. From its origins in Bordeaux, Cabernet has successfully spread to almost every winegrowing country in the world. It is now the key grape variety in many first-rate New World wine regions, most notably Napa Valley, Coonawarra and Maipo Valley. Wherever they come from, Cabernet Sauvignon wines always seem to demonstrate a handful of common character traits: deep color, good tannin structure, moderate acidity and aromas of blackcurrant, tomato leaf, dark spices and cedarwood.
Used as frequently in blends as in varietal wines, Cabernet Sauvignon has a large number of common blending partners. Apart from the obvious Merlot and Cabernet Franc, the most prevalent of these are Malbec, Petit Verdot and Carmenere (the ingredients of a classic Bordeaux Blend), Shiraz (in Australia's favorite blend) and in Spain and South America, a Cabernet – Tempranillo blend is now commonplace. Even the bold Tannat-based wines of Madiran are now generally softened with Cabernet SauvignonUSAAmerican wine has been produced since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in New Mexico in 1628. Today, wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84% of all U.S. wine. The continent of North America is home to several native species of grape, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis vulpina, but the wine-making industry is based almost entirely on the cultivation of the European Vitis vinifera, which was introduced by European settlers. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France.California2021 vintage: "Unlike almost all other areas of the state, the Russian River Valley had higher than normal crops in 2021, which has made for a wine of greater generosity and fruit forwardness than some of its stablemates." - Morgan Twain-Peterson Napa Valley Napa Valley Wineries and Wine (Napa Valley Vintners)Napa ValleySt. Helena |
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