1997 Ca'Togni

I tasted with Togni just before he was to leave for a marathon trip to Belgium, Singapore and Australia, and he seemed genuinely worried that he'd be eaten by a crocodile once he got to Australia, where his daughter was working the harvest at Scotchmans Hill. Togni had his earliest cabernet harvest on record in 2001, beginning on September 8, as his mountain vines are above the fog layer and ripened well. Togni describes his 2000 cabernet as somewhat less ripe and more angular; he picked in October, with a small percentage of the fruit coming in after the rains.

Philip Togni did everything he could to ripen his fruit in the nerve-wracking summer and fall of 1998. "We were catapulted from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe," was how Togni described the '98 growing season in comparison to the last couple of years. He crop-thinned in an attempt to ripen the fruit that remained, and even tried using a five-foot-wide strip of silver paper (a product originally developed to ripen peaches) down the middle of the rows to absorb and reflect sunlight. In the end, he finished harvesting on November 4. But even in 1997, the harvest here did not finish until October 20. "We tend to have a very late spring up on the mountain, and the harvest starts late, too," explained Togni. "But the evenings on Spring Mountain are rather warm in the fall, warmer than in St. Helena down below, so eventually we catch up." Following very low production in 1996 and 1995, Togni had a good full crop in 1997. At the time of my visit, he wondered whether the four-tons-per-acre yield would compromise the wine's longevity.