Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019 - 35

Top 100 Wineries
THREE PALMS VINEYARD

RENEE
ARY

Duckhorn

vineyard photo by Wildly Simple Productions

CALIFORNIA | NAPA VALLEY
Subtle changes at a Napa Valley icon bring detailed site
expression to top-flight cabernet and merlot.

FOUNDED :

1976

OWNER:

Duckhorn
Portfolio
WINEMAKER:

Renee Ary
VITICULTURIST:

Rob Sorenson
ACRES OWNED:

227
CASES PRODUCED:

100,000
ESTATE GROWN:

25%

DUCKHORN BUILT ITS REPUTATION ON Napa Valley merlot. In
1978, Dan Duckhorn and founding winemaker Tom Rinaldi
set the style that would define supple, rich, satisfying merlot
from California with their first release from the Three Palms
Vineyard. In the 1990s, merlot took off with Americans looking to try a glass of red wine for their health, influencing the
Napa Valley style of cabernet that we know today. Through
the 1990s and into the new century, the Duckhorns and their
team purchased a range of vineyards throughout the valley
and into the eastern hills, using that fruit to produce rich
Napa Valley reds.
Now owned by a private equity firm, Duckhorn is a Napa
Valley institution, which, by its nature, is not something easily changed. It has consistently produced top-flight Napa
Valley wine, earning a place in our Top 100 eight times since
2001, even as we've noticed a slow, significant shift in the last
few vintages. The wines are still loyal to the Duckhorn style,
but each of them is subtler, allowing a view through the fruit
to distinctions in the vintage or the site. Increasingly, they
have been standing out in a region where ripe fruit and polished tannins rule.
That's not to say that current winemaker Renee Ary's
wines are not ripe or polished. Just that, under her leadership, Duckhorn's wines show a restraint that brings more
detail to the fore. Ary started at Duckhorn as the lab manager in 2003 and took charge as winemaker in 2014. She has
been an advocate for incremental changes since 2008, the
year Duckhorn began using cold soaks on all the reds, after
trying it out on the merlots in 2007.

"Bill [Nancarrow] could handle way more tannins than
I could," she said of her predecessor at a recent meeting. "He was doing almost double the pumpovers I do
now [hers are shorter], and he was pressing heavier. I
wanted to pull back on tannins. And I'm picking three to
five days later, to refine the tannins a little more without
going to overripe." She's also been tinkering with barrel
choices and aging regimens. "Each wine requires a certain amount of time to come into balance and integrate
tannins," she says. She achieved that integration with six
exceptional releases this year, headed up by The Discussion. -J.G.

2015 Napa Valley The Discussion ($150, 95 points) Renee
Ary focuses this wine on Duckhorn's top estate parcels, blending cabernet sauvignon (66 percent), merlot (29 percent) and
small amounts of franc and petit verdot. She ages the wine in
new French oak barrels for 18 months, then lets it rest in neutral oak for another six months. In 2015, it developed a seamless beauty and textural finesse that's already apparent on
release. "It's not meant to be the biggest wine in the portfolio,"
Ary says. Instead, she looks for complexity and elegance. Tannins create tension in the wine, corralling all the tropical chocolate richness and focusing it into a layered density that packs
scents of rose buds, cherry skins and morels. It has years of
development ahead.
2016 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($78, 93 points)
There's black-currant clarity to this clean and luscious cabernet, blended from estate-grown and purchased grapes. The
dark fruit is layered with brighter black-raspberry flavor and
rich chocolate tones from its time in French oak barrels (50
percent new). Relatively light in weight but saturated with flavor, it sustains a lovely mineral tension.
2016 Carneros Napa Valley Merlot ($78, 93 points)
Merlot at its silken best, this makes the most of the variety's
fine tannins to support and coddle its generous red fruit. It's
firm and lovely, delivering richness while sustaining clarity.
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