Seavey Cabernet Sauvignon: A Complete Retrospective
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
In 1979, Bill and Mary Seavey purchased a roughly 200-acre property in the sheltered rolling hills of Conn Valley—barely four miles east of St. Helena as the crow flies but farther as the road winds—as a weekend retreat (Bill practiced law in San Francisco). The estate was originally founded in 1881 by the Franco-Swiss Farming Company but wine production ended with Phylloxera and Prohibition and by the 1970s it was a cattle and horse ranch. To this day, the cattle remain, and a stone dairy barn constructed in 1881, which served as the Seaveys’ original winery, still stands at the front of the property. As her father was ailing (his wife had passed away in 2008), oldest daughter Dorie Seavey returned to co-manage the estate with her brother Art Seavey in the summer of 2012 after a three-decade career as an economist in New England. Bill Seavey eventually died in 2016.
Bill Seavey was a Bordeaux lover but began his Conn Valley venture by planting some Chardonnay in ‘79 and selling off the fruit through the 1980s. In the late ’80s he started planting Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (the oldest Cabernet planting was actually 1983) and the winery’s first vintage under its own label was 1990. The genteel Seavey was never actively involved in promoting his wine but thanks to strong early press and its very reasonable price, the Seavey flagship Cabernet was quickly discovered by serious lovers of Napa Valley.
The entrance to the estate
Today, Seavey Vineyard makes about 3,500 cases of wine annually from 40 acres of vines, 30 of them Cabernet, all from estate grapes. Just over one-quarter of this total is their flagship Cabernet bottling (the subject of this article), the rest Chardonnay, Merlot and their second-label Caravina Cabernet.
The tranquil park-like setting of the house and winery is surrounded by hills, but the estate’s best steep vineyards, extending up to 800 feet, are invisible from the bottom of the property. And it’s another world at the top, as the vines there bud as much as ten days earlier in the spring than the Cabernet vines situated lower on the slopes, according to winemaker Jim Duane. The harvest has traditionally started in mid- to late September – or even the beginning of October – and takes three to four weeks to complete, but in recent vintages the estate has begun picking a bit earlier. And the older vines that now form the core of the blend are generally picked in a fairly narrow window during the middle to latter part of the harvest.
Seavey and neighboring Conn Valley properties, as seen in the forthcoming Vinous Map: The Vineyards of St. Helena & Conn Valley
Subscriber Access Only
or Sign Up
In 1979, Bill and Mary Seavey purchased a roughly 200-acre property in the sheltered rolling hills of Conn Valley – barely four miles east of St. Helena as the crow flies but farther as the road winds – as a weekend retreat. This comprehensive vertical tasting traced the arc of the flagship Cabernet Sauvignon all the way back to the inaugural 1990 vintage.
