2017 Napa Valley – First Impressions
BY ANTONIO GALLONI |
Two thousand seventeen will mostly be remembered for the October wildfires that ravaged Northern California. However, the keys to understanding the vintage and wines are much more nuanced than just what happened over that period of about ten days during which the survival of Napa Valley and surrounding counties felt severely threatened by relentless, advancing fires and high winds.
Let’s Get To It…How Are The Wines?
I am sure this is the question that is on most readers’ minds, so we might as well get straight to the point. Is all of 2017 in Napa Valley smoke-tainted or not? I tasted a wide range of wines during my annual spring tasting of young barrel samples, everything from sumptuous, racy Cabernets with a lot of potential to wines that are clearly compromised and will never be bottled. Readers will have to be very selective, but there are indeed some wonderfully promising wines in this vintage, as well as some examples where smoke taint is impossible to ignore.
Tasting the 2017s at Ovid
2017 in Review….
Two thousand-seventeen started with epic winter floods the likes of which I have never seen in Napa Valley, or anywhere, for that matter. The severity of the winter rains caused road closures, damaged bridges and other infrastructure and was quite disruptive, although the rain was welcome after four years of drought. All of the rain was concentrated between January and April. After that, not a drop fell. Vegetative growth in the vineyards and elsewhere was significant.
Two thousand seventeen will mostly be remembered for the October wildfires that ravaged Northern California. However, the keys to understanding the vintage and wines are much more nuanced than just what happened over that period of about ten days during which the survival of Napa Valley and surrounding counties felt severely threatened by relentless, advancing fires and high winds.
