Test Driving a Napa Vineyard

One day last week I was on a sailboat outside the Golden Gate, taking advantage of a beautiful southwest wind that came up between storms. The swells were building behind us under an ominous western sky as we flew back in toward San Francisco. As each swell lifted the stern, I angled the bow into the face to catch a ride. The big boat surged, then flew down the face, then coasted gently through whispering foam as the wave passed underneath.

During one such ride I found myself thinking of Steve Test’s wines. I’d tasted some of them a few days earlier at Merryvale Vineyards in St. Helena, where Test has just completed his third vintage.

I had been looking for an image to describe the balance of power and finesse, the momentum through the palate, of Test’s Cabernet Sauvignons, Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays. Here, steering a boat down the face of a steam-rolling Pacific swell, I had it.

Test is one of California’s best winemakers. I first tasted his wines in the early 1980s when he was just getting started at Domaine Laurier in Sonoma County. I still remember a Pinot Noir that stood out for its extraordinary balance, clarity of fruit impressions and silkiness on the palate.

From the mid-’80s, Test made wine at Stonestreet, the signature winery of mega-vintner Jess Jackson’s Kendall-Jackson empire (Stonestreet is Jackson’s middle name). There, Test honed his chops on top-quality Sonoma County grapes, refining his distinctive style vintage by vintage. Stonestreet Cabs and Chardonays quickly joined a select group of benchmarks I use to assess the leading edge of California wine.

There was quite an insider buzz when he moved from Stonestreet to Merryvale in 1998. In many ways the Mayacamas Range is a kind of Iron Curtain dividing the outwardly similar yet deeply different wine communities in Napa (aggressively cosmopolitan) and Sonoma (determinedly parochial). It’s still relatively rare for winemakers to cross county lines, but it does happen (Rudd Estate’s David Ramey, formerly of Matanzas Creek and Chalk Hill Estate, is another recent convert).

Why would a winemaker leave bucolic Sonoma for the spotlights of Napa? Not just to have state-of-the-art equipment--that’s become standard throughout California--but to work with some of the best grapes being grown today. Great wine is all about vineyards, and Napa Valley viticulture defines California’s cutting edge.

Now that most of Steve Test’s inaugural Merryvale wines (all the 1998 whites and most of the reds) are on the market, we can begin to see what kind of treats may be in store for wine fans in coming vintages. The ’98 Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays, especially the reserves (from top old-clone vineyards under long-term contract) and the flagship Silhouette bottling (a blend of the best barrels in the cellar) show remarkably complex and concentrated flavors that seem to float in creamy texture even as they’re etched on the palate, not unlike the image of an ocean swell defined by the passage of a sleek hull.

The Bordeaux-style reds, particularly the Profile bottling (again, a cellar selection of the best reserve lots) are impressive for their fine-boned structure in the midst of silky tannins and luscious fruit. And they all have that taut, dynamic palate impression, entering the mouth with a lift, surging through the palate with a nicely weighted momentum and coasting to a gentle finish.

Test’s arrival signaled a change in Merryvale style. Under previous winemaker Bob Levy (now at Harlan Estate), the wines had been excellent in a typically Californian way: ripe, tannic, boldly flavored expressions of Napa Valley fruit. Test brings a more European orientation toward the balance of power and elegance.

His winemaking is relatively simple, with a strong interior logic that is often missing in techno-centric California wineries. “I’m not a huge proponent of doing a little bit of a lot of different winemaking methods,” he says. The pillars of Test’s technique are native yeast fermentations and traditional French elevage in oak barrels. White grapes are whole-cluster pressed, not crushed; all wines are clarified by racking and light fining and bottled unfiltered.

The start of the Test era coincides with several interesting developments at Merryvale. One is a complete upgrade of the 25-acre estate vineyard in the Mayacamas foothills on the west side of the valley. Originally owned by Bay Area chef and radio personality Narsai David, the vineyard was replanted in 1997 under the direction of David Abreu, one of Napa Valley’s top vineyard consultants (his other clients include Araujo, Harlan, Spotteswood, Bryant and Pahlmeyer, to name a few).

Test has also introduced three limited bottlings of single-vineyard Merryvale Cabernets from the heart of the Napa Valley, beginning with the 1999 vintage (to be released in late 2002). All three are from vineyards owned by prominent Napa Valley grower Andy Beckstoffer: Vineyard X Cabernet Sauvignon (Oakville), Las Amigas Merlot (Carneros) and Beckstoffer Clone 6 (Rutherford).

The single-site, single-clone Rutherford Cabernet is particularly exciting. Clone 6 is thought to be an old Bordeaux selection, although its exact origin in the Medoc has been lost. It surfaced as a “new” clone during the 1980s after a few vines were found languishing in a UC Davis experimental vineyard in the Sierra foothills.

During trials conducted over several years by Beaulieu Vineyards, wines made from Clone 6 grapes consistently showed superior qualities. It was quickly embraced by high-end growers such as Beckstoffer and is becoming the Cabernet clone of choice in Napa Valley, particularly for so-called cult wines. As new plantings come on line, Clone 6 promises to be an ever more important factor in the increasingly distinctive character of Napa Valley Cabernet.

A typical Clone 6 Cabernet is densely concentrated and yet clear and open on the palate, with silky texture and classical Cabernet flavor. The ’99 Merryvale I tasted from barrel with Test was all that and more, with the beautiful reconciliation of apparently opposing values that marks the finest wines: opulence and richness versus definition, clarity and focus.

The ’99 Vineyard X has the same powerful, elegant style with succulent black-fruit flavors. The ’99 Las Amigas Merlot has a core of luscious cherry flavor, a supple, chewy texture and a lovely green note (typical of fine Merlot) pointing up the finish.

That’s not all. In a rare move for a Napa Valley winery, Merryvale will take advantage of Test’s long experience on the other side of the mountains to bottle two Sonoma County wines. One is a vintage 2000 Syrah from the Unti Vineyard in Dry Creek Valley. Another is a 2000 Pinot Noir from the Klopp Vineyard in Russian River Valley (Klopp also supplies fruit to Pinot star Merry Edwards).

Though it was not quite through malolactic fermentation when we dipped into the barrel for a taste, the young Klopp Pinot Noir already showed brilliant high-toned fruit with earthy undertones and fine-grained tannin, a beauty in the making.

Steve Test has even managed to produce a small bottling of that increasingly rare creature, a Napa Valley Zinfandel from 30-year-old vines in St. Helena. Ah, now, that wine just sails across the palate like--well, like a scrumptious Zin. There’s nothing quite like that.

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Smith is writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits magazine.