Beringer’s Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: One of Napa Valley’s First Cult Wines 

The historic Beringer winery was founded by the German-born brothers Jacob and Frederick Beringer in 1876, with Frederick opting to live in San Francisco while Jacob managed the vineyards and winery for 37 years from the historic Hudson House on the estate in St. Helena. This March, the Hudson House was the site of an extraordinary tasting of nearly four decades of Beringer Vineyard’s Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve, going back to its maiden vintage in 1977. The tasting provided a fascinating counterpoint to my other vertical tastings in March, which were classic studies of terroir, as they were essentially based on a single site. The Beringer Private Reserve, in contrast, is an unapologetic blend of vineyards assembled to make the best possible Napa Valley Cabernet from each vintage. While having multiple sources gives the winemaking team more flexibility, it has also made the Private Reserve something of a moving target—but also a fascinating tasting exercise.

Early photograph of winery workers outside the Registered Distillery of Beringer Bros

At the outset, the Private Reserve was made with grapes from the obsidian-rich Lemmon Ranch vineyard (later renamed Chabot), on the eastern side of the valley just north of St. Helena. (Beringer’s long-term lease on this vineyard continues today.) The vintages through 1980 were entirely from Lemmon-Chabot. Since 1981, however, the Private Reserve has been an increasingly complex blend of disparate components. Yet, while vintage character can vary depending on the main sources of fruit in a given year, quality has been remarkably consistent, chiefly because the Private Reserve program has benefited from continuity of winemaking.

The Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was dreamed up in 1977 by winemaker Myron Nightingale and then-assistant winemaker Ed Sbragia, who would go on to become one of Napa Valley’s great Cabernet masters. Laurie Hook joined Beringer in 1986 and eventually took over winemaking responsibilities in 2000 when Sbragia was elevated to Winemaster Emeritus. (Sbragia maintained a consulting relationship with Beringer through 2009.) In other words, just two personalities worked in harmony for nearly four decades. I should note that a couple weeks after my March tasting, Mark Beringer, a direct descendant of Jacob Beringer and previously the winemaker at Artesa Vineyards, was named Beringer’s new winemaker, with Hook taking on the role of Winemaker Emeritus.

When Sbragia helped to create the Private Reserve back in ’77, his background was in Italian winemaking rather than in Bordeaux. For him, sanitary practices were paramount; he did not adopt such Bordeaux techniques as frequent racking, early blending of a wine’s components, and fining with egg whites. He also started harvesting at roughly 25.5 degrees Brix in 1978, which was high for the time. “Everyone else was picking food wines at 22,” he told me. The riper grapes, he added, brought fuller phenolic ripeness—more color, flavor and texture in the wines. “We picked with brown seeds; the grapes were just starting to soften up.” Sbragia did frequent pumpovers during the early days of the fermentation but eschewed rougher punchdowns. “And we ended up with resolved tannins,” he said. Total time on the skins was about 14 days, including just a few days of post-fermentation maceration.

Sbragia added back the press wine after the fermentation, noting that “the wines were thus intact from the vineyard.” The components were racked into tanks, then allowed to settle until the end of the malolactic fermentation in late winter, at which point they were racked into barrel. He topped up the barrels monthly but did not rack again until the components of the wine were assembled a month prior to the bottling, which was normally 24 months later.

The Private Reserve quickly became a blended wine, rather than a single-vineyard bottling. Beringer had leased and planted the State Lane vineyard in 1976 and began using this fruit in 1981. (In turn Lou Kapcsándy purchased State Lane in 2000 and replanted it in 2002; it has been the source of all of Kapcsándy Family Cellars’ outstanding wines since the outset.) Fruit from Beringer’s original St. Helena Home Vineyard (purchased by Jacob Beringer in 1875, the year before Beringer’s first harvest) also began to go into the blend in 1981.