View the menu
Many of the stories I relate to you in this email/blog are about vineyards and families. Common themes recur in my "vineyard and family" narratives because Mark and I seek out wine families with values that we respect. It's one of the favorite parts of my job to bring you these wines and these stories. Over the year's, you've grown to trust me to separate the wheat from the chaff; to differentiate compelling truth from marketing blather.
I don't know quite how to impress upon you, dear reader, how compelling and important to me is the story of The McCrea Family and their Stony Hill Vineyard. I am going to try!
Back in 1947, there were 200 acres of chardonnay planted in all of California. Napa Valley boasted 10 wineries. 10!!! That's when Fred and Eleanor McCrea planted Stony Hill on Spring Mountain. That's amazing in and of itself, but the story gets better.
Here are some technical things about Stony Hill chardonnay of the past. First of all, the fruit is from 800-1200 feet up the Spring Mountain. Second, the wine does NOT go through malo-lactic fermentation. Third the wine is aged in older oak barrels that allow for the many complexities that come from wood-aging, but don't impart the vanilla & toasty aromas that can sometimes take over a wine. Sixty-five years later, the wine is (and always has been) made the same way.
Okay, so that last paragraph got a little wine-geeky, but here's the translation. One of THE FIRST wineries of the modern era established high quality, dry-farmed, mountainside chardonnay vineyard and began making super high-integrity, age-worthy wines 30 years before California chardonnay was fashionable. When chardonnay did become fashionable, the McCrea's eschewed the big, oaky, overblown style of winemaking that was getting other winemakers big scores, lots of attention and significant dollars. They knew they had a more serious wine than that, even if others didn't.
Now, as the world's fancy-pants sommeliers and some of the more intellectual wine-writers are bringing America's taste in wine back to more balanced and complex wines, the McCrea family is still there, doing what they've always done. They're still making some of the best and most amazingly age-worthy chardonnay in The New World. That, my friends, is a story of integrity and a dedication to craft and an artistic vision that is inspiring. It spans generations.
Fred and Eleanor have passed. Their son Peter and his wife Willinda now live in the house on the vineyard. Peter and Willinda's daughter Sarah also now works in the family business. Because this family did not give up and did not change their style of winemaking and grape-growing to suit the taste of the times, we have some of the oldest chardonnay vines in California producing some of the most spectacularly age-worthy chardonnay period. I personally have cellared the wine for years, in both Magnum and regular bottles.
Stony Hill chardonnay is different. When it's young it's not effusively friendly and opulent. It's crisp and tightly-woven, but oh my, what a reward it gives those patient enough to wait a few years. I've drunk a number of stunning Stony Hill chards at 20 and 25 years old. They get this, rich and oily mouth-feel. They are redolent of nut oil and brown-butter and woodsy mushrooms on the palate. Stony Hill is singular. There's nothing like it in all of the New World. Like Tigger, it's the only one. In case you couldn't tell, that really gets me excited.
Though we've carried Stony Hill wines for nearly 20 years, this is only the second dinner we've been able to arrange. Sarah McCrea will be joining us on March 12. What's more, she's bringing TWO OLDER VINTAGES of chardonnay from the winery's cellar (2004 and 2007). You see, we need to show you these older vintages so you can see the potential of these wines (and really enjoy well-aged Stony Hill chardonnay). We will taste them alongside two current vintages (2008 and 2009). Now that the world is on to Stony Hill, these back vintages are rarer than hen's teeth.