Chateau Montelena Cabernet Estate: 1977-2010

BY STEPHEN TANZER | MAY 21, 2019  

Veteran International Wine Cellar subscribers may recall my report on a vertical tasting of the Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon that I conducted at the winery back in 1998. In March I had the good fortune to do another vertical tasting stretching back to the first Estate bottling and also including vintages from the first decade of the new century. I am happy to report that today’s wines are better than ever, showing more pristine, delineated fruit and mineral elements thanks to a cleaner winemaking facility and the contribution of grapes from maturing vines planted on a rocky hillside north of the winery. Meanwhile, the earlier vintages tasted two decades later are still, with very few exceptions, in remarkable form.

Chateau Montelena, Calistoga

The History of Chateau Montelena

San Francisco rope magnate Alfred L. Tubbs bought 254 acres of land two miles north of Calistoga at the foot of Mount Saint Helena in 1882. He had heard that Napa Valley was the best place to grow grapes in California, and the stony, loose, well-drained soils north of Calistoga were considered particularly suited to Cabernet. He quickly planted vineyards and in 1886 hired a French-born winemaker. Then in 1888 he constructed the “chateau” itself, originally called A.L. Tubbs winery, as a barrel-aging facility, with thick stone walls to provide insulation in summer and winter. It was massive for its time. The winery was built into the side of a hill, providing a further moderating effect on temperatures year-round. The rather forbidding structure is in the style of a Gothic castle, but when I visit I am always reminded of a horror-movie hospital for the criminally insane—especially in late winter, when the building is missing its thick green summer coat of Virginia Creeper.

By the mid-1890s, the winery had become the seventh largest in California. Winemaking ceased during Prohibition, but Tubbs’ grandson Chapin Tubbs re-established grape-growing following the end of Prohibition in 1933, bottling some wine himself and selling grapes to other producers. In 1940, Chapin Tubbs renamed his operation Montelena Winery, a reference to Mount Saint Helena. Winemaking ended two years after Tubbs’ death in 1947, and the Tubbs family eventually sold off the Chateau in 1958 to Yort and Jeanie Frank, who were looking for a place to retire. Frank, an electrical engineer, excavated a lake and landscaped the grounds to resemble the Chinese gardens of his native Hong Kong but did not make wine during his tenure.

The winery, with the Virginia Creeper pruned back after winter frost

In 1968, the Franks sold their property to Lee and Helen Paschich, who quickly put the original vineyards back together before selling the property to lawyer and part-time winemaker Jim Barrett and his partners. Barrett took over full ownership of Montelena in 1972 and immediately went to work restoring grape production and winemaking, clearing and replanting the vineyard, purchasing modern winemaking equipment (trucks, tractors, tanks), and installing a concrete floor in place of the previous dirt surface. He put a new team in place and then grew and contracted for the highest-quality grapes in Napa Valley. In 1972 wines were made for the first time under the new regime, with Mike Grgich as winemaker. Jim’s son Bo Barrett, who had then just graduated from high school, worked at the winery during its first harvest.

It was Montelena’s no-malolactic fermentation Chardonnay that put the estate on the world wine map when the 1973 vintage won the famous Paris Tasting of 1976, being preferred by a panel of French judges over five other California examples and four white Burgundies in a blind tasting. The judges were also convinced that the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay was a Burgundy. Grgich immediately capitalized on this surprise victory by leaving to establish his own eponymous winery, Grgich Hills Estate, and Jim Barrett then hired Jerry Luper (who had previously made wine at Freemark Abbey before moving to France for a year). Luper, whose availability Bo Barrett described as a stroke of good luck, made the 1977 through 1981 vintages before Bo officially took over winemaking duties at the beginning of 1982. (Bo had earned a degree in Viticulture and Enology from Fresno State in 1977 and, after a few years at Montelena as assistant winemaker, left the winery in 1980 and 1981 to broaden his winemaking experience and tour the major wine regions of Europe before returning to join his father.) Bo continued to be responsible for winemaking until he promoted Cameron Parry to the top job in 2008, followed by Matt Crafton, who took over in 2014 after serving as assistant winemaker for several vintages, with Barrett assuming the role of CEO.