Cheers : 8 Vintages Later, Opus One Is About to Get Its Own Winery

OPUS ONE, the much-heralded joint venture of the late Baron Philippe de Rothschild of France and Robert Mondavi of California, has broken ground in the Napa Valley. Construction of a seven-acre winery has begun. The building, which will stand in the center of Opus One’s mature 100-acre Oakville vineyards, will be, in the words of designer Scott Johnson, “a seamless blend of two cultures, of the tastes and desires of two families.”

The winery, to be completed in 1991, is the final step in executing a 1979 Rothschild-Mondavi agreement to produce a Napa Valley red wine embodying the features of California’s Cabernet Sauvignon and classic Bordeaux claret.

An integral part of the 60,000-square-foot winery will be the first-year-barrel cellar--all 15,000 square feet of it. The cellar will be four times larger than most red-wine cellars because Opus One is aged in new French oak barrels placed side by side, as is the tradition at Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. The barrels are not stacked because during the first six months, the new wine is topped twice weekly (once a month is the norm in the industry); therefore, easy access to each barrel is essential. Topping is the process in which the same kind of wine is added to keep the barrel full. The wine also is racked--drawn off from the dregs--more frequently, four times each year.

The new winery will have the capacity to produce 20,000 cases annually. In the meantime, the Robert Mondavi Winery, which has been the production site for the past eight vintages of Opus One, including the recently released 1986 ($50), will continue to send out about 10,000 cases a year.

Before the Opus One ground-breaking ceremony began, members of the nation’s wine media were invited into the cool barrel-storage hall of the Robert Mondavi Winery for a vertical tasting of all editions of Opus One. It was conducted by the wine-making team of Tim Mondavi, son of Robert Mondavi, and Patrick Leon of Mouton.

For Opus One, Leon and Mondavi always blind-taste as many as 150 lots of wines to select perhaps 25 barrels that they feel would make the blended style they are seeking.

But the style has been inconsistent. The composition of the wine has changed with every vintage. Sometimes there would be no Merlot, and sometimes there would be too much Cabernet Sauvignon. The 1980, with 96% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4% Cabernet Franc, is not yet ready to drink. The makers learned a lesson with that wine and gave subsequent vintages decreasing amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon, lending it a gentler taste. But then, for reasons known only to the wine makers, the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the ’84 edition jumped back up--to 97%.

In the open-discussion period after the tasting, Robert Mondavi posed some questions to his son Tim. Some of us winced when he asked him about the “style” of the 1984, using the word “clumsy” in his appraisal. But in his own evaluation of this very good wine (sitting next to him, I could easily read his scoring), the elder Mondavi had given it 18 points out of a possible 20. His top rating, incidentally, a 19.5/20, was reserved for the 1986. I, too, had given it the same score. That edition contains 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Cabernet Franc and 4% Merlot.

“We are pursuing wines of suppleness and richness,” Tim Mondavi said.

And the 1986, with its taste of ripe loganberries, is the finest example of that pursuit.