Bryant’s Cabernet Sauvignon: 1994-2014
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
St. Louis businessman Donald L. Bryant, Jr. acquired his 13-acre
vineyard overlooking Lake Hennessey in the late 1980s, then called on top viticulturist
David Abreu to replant it with 100% Cabernet Sauvignon (there had originally
been vines on the property dating back to the 1950s). Bryant hired winemaker
Helen Turley at the outset and the first vintage to be released was the 1992.
Thanks to Turley’s talents and the quality and concentration of the fruit, the
Bryant Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon quickly became one of Napa Valley’s most
fashionable and expensive cult wines.
Bryant Family Vineyard, as seen in the Vinous Map: The Vineyards of Pritchard Hill
A Warm, High-Altitude Site
Bryant’s Pritchard Hill vineyard is located between 750 and 1,000 feet above sea level. It’s rocky and exposed, with a tilt toward the afternoon sun that makes it a very warm site (Colgin’s IX Estate, by comparison, is mostly east-facing and at slightly higher altitude.) In fact, shade cloth is used across the entire property to give the wines some relief from the hottest afternoon sunshine in mid- to late summer. According to winemaker Marc Gagnon, because many key phenolic compounds require early-season sunlight, the estate normally waits until late July (i.e., after the veraison and green-thinning) to mount the shade cloth.
A road separates the bottom two-thirds of the vineyard from the top third, which was covered with oak trees at the time of the purchase but was planted to Cabernet Sauvignon in 1998 (the estate is now in the process of replanting one of those upper blocks to Cabernet Franc). The lower sections were replanted by Abreu in 1996, 2001 and 2006. The constantly decomposing volcanic soil is predominantly a reddish-brown Sobrante loam spread along a patchwork of varying depths before reaching solid andesite. Sections of the property are dry-farmed, as some of the top blocks along the tree line have deeper soil. Yields for the estate’s flagship wine are routinely very low, ranging from 1.1 to 2.8 tons per acre, although the estate has reached 3+ tons per acre three times since 2009, with that vintage having produced an all-time record of 3.8 tons per acre. Annual production of the flagship estate wine has ranged between 300 and 1,000 cases. (The estate also produces two other bottlings: Bettina is a proprietary red blend made from three vineyards owned by David Abreu – Thorevilos, Madrona Ranch and Las Posadas. Bryant also offers an earlier-maturing wine called DB4 made from the home site on Pritchard Hill plus the Abreu vineyards.)
