2011 Cappella

Brad Grimes was one of the most nonchalant winemakers I visited with during the craziness of the 2011 harvest. That calmness was definitely a virtue in a year that required clear thinking. The 2011s are aging effortlessly and are among the clear stars of the year.

David Abreu's wines remain some of the most compelling expressions of Napa Valley terroir readers will come across. Meticulous viticulture is at the heart of everything that happens at Abreu. One visit through any of Abreu's four vineyards is enough to see and understand that. But in the winery, things are much more stripped down. Winemaker Brad Grimes is driven more by intuition than anything else, and it is that spirit which gives these wines a human feel that is sometimes lacking in Napa Valley. As always, Grimes vinifies by pick dates, which means almost all of the lots are co-fermentations, an unusual approach, but one that is gaining more traction in the valley. The best parallel I can draw for the Abreu wines comes from the world of music. Grimes has both prodigious natural talent and an indomitable work ethic. When those two forces collide the results can be stratospheric, as is often the case here. The 2011s, 2012s and 2013s are all fabulous. I did note a number of wines, especially some of the 2011s, did not show as well from bottle as they did from barrel, most likely the result of bottle shock, which is not entirely surprising given how long these wines need in bottle to blossom.

I wish I had taken some pictures or shot a video when I stopped by at Abreu during the 2011 harvest. Unfortunately words will have to do. After a brutal growing season in which yields in the vineyards were reduced by poor flowering, cold weather, rain and botrytis, the work done on the sorting table was at least as Draconian. The amount of less than perfect berries and other stuff that ended up in the trash was far more than what went into the crushed, and winemaker Brad Grimes isn't afraid of a jack or two going into the tanks. Proprietor David Abreu and Grimes have made some of the greatest wines of the year. The 2010s, which I tasted from bottle are massively shut down today, but show the potential I sensed from barrel. Today, the 2012s are obviously very young, but they will have a hard time matching the 2010s and the best of the 2011s. I have included the blends for all of the wines, but long-time Abreu fans know the approach to winemaking here involves considerable co-fermentation, so the blends are more the result of decisions in the field on when and what to harvest rather than blending decisions, as they are pretty much everywhere else in the valley with perhaps a handful of exceptions. Brad Grimes explains it all in this short video we shot at the winery this past spring.

Brad Grimes has done a fabulous job with these wines, each of which is loaded with personality and character. One of the widely acknowledged criteria for separating the great estates from the merely excellent is the quality of the wines in lesser years. In 2011 Grimes shows he is at the top of his game. Selection at the sorting table was Draconian, something I saw for myself one early morning as fruit was coming in towards the end of the harvest.