Napa Valley: The Frantic 2020s & Stunning 2021s

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | FEBRUARY 16, 2023

With the first 2020 Napa Valley Cabernets starting to appear, readers will encounter one of the most controversial vintages in the history of Napa Valley. Before we take a look at the year and the wines, allow me to get one thing out of the way first. Two thousand twenty is by far the hardest and most complicated vintage I have ever tasted anywhere in the world. This report focuses on 2020 and 2021, along with some late releases from 2019.

Consulting winemaker Andy Erickson and winemaker Braiden Albrecht have elevated the wines at Mayacamas by softening some of the rustic edges while retaining plenty of classicism.

The 2020 Growing Season

For most of the year, 2020 was characterized by intense heat and drought. All of that was quickly forgotten when the LNU Lightning Complex wildfires began ravaging large swaths of Northern California on the night of August 17. These fires raged for a full six weeks, laying tremendous devastation to homes, businesses and forests. The Glass Fire started on September 27 and was finally extinguished after 23 days. In other words, at times, both fires were closing in on life, essentially, in the middle of a year also marked by the most serious global health crisis most people have ever lived through. Even today, more than two years later, the scars of these fires remain visible in scorched hillsides and numerous damaged structures.

As this was all happening, vineyard managers, owners and winemakers had to make very important choices. Forget about sending in grapes or even micro-ferments for analysis; all labs were backed up for weeks. People had to make decisions with limited or no information. In the face of such a catastrophe, those decisions were quite different. Some wineries picked no fruit at all; others harvested what they could and made wine. In the best of cases, in sites that were relatively close to being ripe and less affected by smoke, or for estates that pick early, some fruit was salvageable. In later-ripening areas, or places especially hit hard by fire and smoke, or for winemakers who prefer to pick later, 2020 is essentially a total loss. There was simply nothing to be done.

“We bottled a bit of Napa Valley Cabernet for Caterwaul, and that is the extent of our 2020s,” Thomas Rivers-Brown told me. “We did not even pick fruit in most cases,” Nigel Kinsman explained. “At one point, we had several five-gallon micro-ferments going, and we did bring in about ten lots, but in the end, the wines were shades of their usual selves. We did not see the quality we are striving for.” Likewise, winemaker Celia Welch bottled no Cabernets for her Corra label or any of her roster of consulting clients. Indeed, I imagine Vinous readers will be shocked to see how many 2020s were not bottled. The number is in the many hundreds of wines that simply do not exist in 2020. There are virtually no wines from Pritchard Hill, virtually no wines from Stags Leap. The western bench, including parts of St. Helena, Oakville and Yountville, and some spots in the southern reaches of the valley are rare bright spots. 

One interesting dynamic is the difference between estates that farm their own fruit versus vineyards that sell fruit and their clients who purchase those grapes. In the case of estates, many made wines, a decision driven in part by having already paid for the costs to farm. Discussions between fruit sellers and buyers were much more tense, as many buyers passed on fruit they felt was flawed. Other wineries may have preferred to take an insurance settlement rather than deal with wines that will be hard to sell; others may be sitting on unsold inventory. Given the recent pace of winery transactions, it is safe to say that any winery shopping itself during this time surely preferred to skip the vintage rather than have wines from a challenging year sitting on their books.

In the cellar, winemakers did everything they could to handle the fruit as gently as possible. Short fermentations were the rule. New oak was generally kept to a minimum. Many wines are blends of only or mostly earlier picks, either because that was the only fruit that was sound and/or because later-ripening fruit never made it to the winery. At bottling time, even producers who made 2020s did not necessarily make all their wines. Some bottled a selection of their wines, while others blended all their top lots into a single wine, generally one of their entry-level labels.

Trying to sort out this tangled mess is next to impossible. Ask ten winemakers or owners about 2020, and you will get eight or nine different opinions. I am certainly not going to judge anyone’s decision during what was the most difficult vintage anyone has ever faced. Readers who would like more context on 2020, may wish to revisit my article The 2019 Napa Valley Cabernets: A Deep Dive, particularly the section that looks ahead to the 2020s titled 2020 – The Vintage of a Thousand Truths.

The Forman estate vineyard, perched on St. Helena border, is always striking.