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Smith-Madrone owns 200 hillside acres and like several other Spring Mountain based wineries, their land offers spectacular views overlooking the Napa Valley, neighboring vineyards and the mountains in the distance. One side of their property backs up to the Bothe-Napa Valley State Park which of course will always remain in its natural state. Their vineyards are between 1300 and 2000 feet in elevation and for the most part are planted on steep rocky red soils. During their initial exploration of the property they discovered remnants of old vineyards and an old dirt wagon road that connected the city of Santa Rosa to the west with the Napa Valley. You can see the original olives trees still growing just down from the winery and these are over 120 years old. Their property is surrounded by Stony Hill Winery directly below them, Barnett and Keenan Winery - not a bad neighborhood at all! What started out as a hobby many years ago somewhere became a passion and turned into a serious business with their wines often winning medals and scoring other fairly high ratings. There is a board full of gold medals next to where you taste and as Charles says, they throw out all the bronze and silver medals. Perhaps not. Their first big recognition came in 1977 when they sent 2 cases of Riesling to the American Embassy in Paris. As Charles said they were about out of capital at the time and needed a "shot in the arm". This "shot" came in the form of the Wine Olympics who secured their wine and other producers' wine from the embassy. Six months after they sent their wine, unbeknownst to them, their 1977 Riesling had won in its category. This wine made headlines in the French papers and helped validate the quality of their wine and terroir. Upon arriving at the winery during our initial visit, we found Charles in the barrel room washing wine glasses and he told us we would find his brother Stuart asleep in the truck "out back". It is a unique experience just walking into the main winery building, which is part laboratory, part workshop, part tasting room and part storage for older vintages dating from the early 1980's. This winery is a contrast with the newer fancier wineries that have more recently sprouted up in the Spring Mountain district in the last 10 years. Tasting is always one on one with one of the Smith brothers. They have been farming these vineyards for 35+ years and as a result, intimately know their hillside terroir. They make 3 hillside grown wines, (all dry farmed), a Chardonnay, Riesling and a Cabernet Sauvignon. These wines are typically aged in bottle longer than most current releases at area wineries. This is not a bad thing of course for the consumer. Smith Madrone should almost should be called a Riesling house as this is the wine that they are most known for and have spent years perfecting. You love Rieslings? You come here, however note that they sell out quickly of this varietal and may not have a bottled vintage available for tasting. The best way to acquire this wine is to join their mailing list and take note: they do sometimes re-release older vintages of this varietal to mailing list customers only. After all these years of producing Rieslings their are a few factors in their wines that tend to "work" from vintage to vintage. First of all their pH levels tend to be extremely low - typically around 3.0+ with usually just under 1% residual sugar (near the threshold for where you can taste sugar). These wines pair well with food. As a result of the mountain complexities shown in their Rieslings and the wonderful acidity, these wines do also age very well. Charles told us their Rieslings can easily age 15 years. Riesling is such a versatile variety and can be paired with so many different foods. It is also a wine that can be enjoyed by a variety of palates. As Charles also says, "Riesling is a wine for both under sophisticated and over sophisticated drinkers!". We have tried some of their earlier 90's vintages of Riesling. Charles cracked open a bottle of 94 estate Riesling for us; it was golden hued in color with so much fruit flavor after all those years. A 93' we tried was absolutely delicious by itself with still tons of flavor - this is a wine that will still be good for a number of more years. The nose showed slight diesel qualities that Rieslings of this age often develop as well as notes of freshly pulled saran wrap (sounds odd, but doesn't detract from the bouquet!). Smith Madrone's Rieslings have a nice balance between acidity, structure and weight. It is this balance that is so important to their wine. During one of our visits Charles was filtering his 2006 Riesling so we sampled straight from barrel. These younger Rieslings show more fruit than the older vintages and this one had great pear and other stone fruit aromas, along with honeysuckle and some nice terroir driven mineralities. The younger vintages of these wines are very lively and do vary both in aroma and flavor from vintage to vintage. The 2006 Chardonnay was completely fermented in barrel (rather than tank), it is a rather big Chardonnay with notes of caramel on the nose and a rich rounded mouth feel. The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon was 5 years old by the time we tried it. It is a very dark wine that is smooth on the palate and doesn't go down the road of big huge tannic finishes, rather the tannins are delicate and anchor a velvety mouth feel. This wine has dusty aromas, hints of cloves, flavors of plum and a nice smoky finish. Their total annual production of all three wines is usually between 4,000 and 5,000 cases. Did you know that Smith Madrone used to make a Pinot Noir many years ago? Today growing Pinot would be unheard of on Spring Mountain. The reason they no longer grow this varietal is out of all the years they made it, the stellar vintages were far and few between. At the time of our latest update, Smith Madrone has produced their first ever Reserve wine - a 2007 vintage. Their "Reserve" wine will only be made in years where the quality meets their exacting specifications. This wine contains a different blend than their their typical Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2007 is 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 11% Cabernet Franc. This wine is structurally a more "Napa" styled wine in that the fruit shows well at a young age, its riper, with just a touch of jam characteristics on the bouquet with a soft plush entry showing very well balanced fruit along with its pleasing structure. Their Cabernet Sauvignon's age very well - a 1979 vintage that we tried, while having lost some of its fruit still had incredible structure. We have been here a number of times and can highly recommend the tasting and visit. If you want to really "escape" from the valley floor and have a very personable tasting experience one on one with the owners its well worth your time to make the trek up to Spring Mountain. When you have winery owners who have the experience the Smith brothers have, you will probably even learn something about wine and vineyards that you didn't know before! Visit: www.smithmadrone.com Making Wine On Spring Mountain: |
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