2012 Harlan Estate

I was delighted to moderate this charity tasting at the Naples Winter Wine Festival this past January. For the occasion, Harlan presented ten vintages of their flagship wine going back to 1992, which also happens to be the first vintage of Harlan Estate I tasted on release. Needless to say, it was fascinating to taste a cross-section of vintages ranging from the estate’s early days to the present, including a number of modern-day reference-points.

Harlan Estate is no longer new nor novel. The wines are now modern-day classics, with more emphasis on finesse than ever before. Bob Levy, Harlan's Director of Winemaking, credits the older age of the vines for the quality and personality of today's wines. While the importance of older vineyards can't be diminished, there is more than that to the story. Increasingly, there is little doubt the team at Harlan, headed by Levy and winemaker Cory Empting, has shifted these wines away from pure power and opulence and into a much more polished style. Even with all of their successes, the team at Harlan seems hungry and eager to continue to improve, all signs that tend to bode well for the future. In time, the estate's first 25 years are likely to look like a preamble to what will unfold here in the coming years and decades as the Bill Harlan's children, Will and Amanda, take over the reins. As for the wines, they are pretty special. The 2013s are dark and brooding, which is to say very much in line with the personality of the vintage. Empting responded to the natural power of the vintage by lowering temperatures and doing fewer pumpovers in order to not overextract. The 2012s are much more lifted, sensual and open-knit. Perhaps more importantly, they are among the best wines of the vintage.

Harlan Estate fans have a number of fabulous wines to look forward to. The 2011s offer tons of near and medium-term appeal, while the 2012s are more typical of the house style and are also likely to offer wide windows of pure pleasure. As always, Harlan Estate blends and bottles later than most Napa Valley estates, so I was not able to taste the 2013s. According to the winemaking team of Bob Levy and Cory Empting the key to 2011 was dropping a significant amount of crop, which was the only way to achieve reasonable levels of ripeness given the cool, rainy conditions that characterized most of the growing season. The 2011s at Harlan Estate are standouts; that much is obvious. The 2012s are a perfect example of the gradual evolution that has taken place at Harlan Estate. A decade ago, these would have been significantly darker, richer, riper wines, but the 2012s are all about finesse. One of the recent developments at Harlan Estate has been a reduction in the use of irrigation, which can cause rapid and excessive accumulation of sugars. It may seem hard to believe, but Harlan Estate appears to be still climbing up the ladder of quality. These wines are magnificent. It's as simple as that.

A few days after my annual tasting of the Harlan Estate and Bond wines, I sampled recent vintages of Bill Harlan's exciting new Promontory venture, from a large and remarkably complex property just a couple miles south of Harlan Estate in the western hills of Napa Valley. It was impossible not to wonder how these two wines will compare to each other 20 years down the road. Harlan's original intent with Harlan Estate was to create a Napa Valley first growth, and he clearly believes that the Promontory site is at least as distinctive a terroir. Indeed, although there are many Harlan Estate wanabees elsewhere in the Valley, top competition for this original flagship wine will continue to come from Harlan's own ventures, Promontory and Bond.