From the Vault: Realm 2005-2018
BY ANTONIO GALLONI |
Realm has been one of the hottest wineries in Napa Valley for the last decade or so. This remarkable retrospective spanning more than 60 wines started pretty humbly. My initial intent was simply to fill in a few gaps in our database. I asked some friends if they had certain wines. Then the replies started coming in. Before I knew it, we had assembled dozens of wines, more than I could count, across a number of vintages, all of them purchased by mailing list members directly from the estate. It was one of the very few opportunities I have ever had to taste a large number of wines with impeccable provenance, but outside a winery. More importantly, this tasting provided an incredible opportunity to look at several key periods in Realm's history.
Benoit Touquette and Scott Becker in their Hartwell XX Vineyard just before harvest 2021.
The Tasting
All of the bottles were opened in the early afternoon. I spent several hours alone with the wines and tasted them at my own relaxed pace. The bottles were then taken to a local restaurant where an assembled group of about 50 or so guests enjoyed them. By that time I was drinking water, but it sure looked like a tremendous party.
The wines in this tasting run up to 2017 for the reds. Readers may also want to take a look at my reviews of the 2018s and 2019s, which really complete the picture as to where Realm stands today. That’s important for a young winery. Many times when I have done much larger vertical tastings of 25-30 vintages or more, that greater context is helpful in understanding early wines essentially as experiments and steps towards the present.
This tasting took place in the fall of 2019. Ordinarily we strive to publish articles closer to the tasting date, but this was an extremely challenging period for me personally. A few months earlier, my basement was flooded while I was in Europe. Repairs took seven months to complete, during which I was forced to live in temporary housing. I moved back just before COVID. The challenges of managing a full tasting schedule from home, running a business and dealing with the overall stress of the pandemic made it hard to find the right moment to publish this article. But, as the saying goes: Better late than never. I hope you will agree.
A remarkable collection of Realm wines spanning more than sixty bottles.
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Realm has been one of the hottest wineries in Napa Valley for the last decade or so. This remarkable retrospective spanning more than 60 wines started pretty humbly. My initial intent was simply to fill in a few gaps in our database. I asked some friends if they had certain wines. Then the replies started coming in. Before I knew it, we had assembled dozens of wines, more than I could count, across a number of vintages. This tasting provided an incredible opportunity to look at several key periods in Realm’s history.
