Nickel & Nickel is a premium winery founded by Gil and Beth Nickel with their first vintage produced at Napa Wine Co in 1997: a Merlot, Zinfandel and several single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon bottlings. The Nickel’s also founded Far Niente Winery in 1979. Gil was born and raised in Oklahoma; he worked for his family business, Greenleaf Nursery and eventually became President of the company for 8 years before he moved to Napa Valley in 1976. He took winemaking classes at UC Davis while in his late 30s and made home wine and entered a competition in Sonoma County and earning a gold medal for his Chardonnay. Incidentally, Greenleaf Nursery (founded in 1945 by Gil’s father Harold) has since become the nation’s second largest, family-owned wholesale nursery employing over 1,000 employees and maintaining four major nursery sites, two in Texas, one in Oklahoma and one in North Carolina. We have visited several of their Greenleaf locations and other spaces and spaces related to the Nickel family. Please see our notes on Far Niente for more details.
Gil was passionate about vintage cars and spent nearly 20 years racing vintage automobiles in select competitions around the world. In 1995 he became the first American to win the FIA Historic Sports Car Championship. He passed on far to young (at age 64) in 2003 from complications from melanoma.
Nickel & Nickel is located in Oakville on site of a farm established by John C. Sullenger. He was born in North Carolina in 1833, came across the country by wagon in 1852 following the Oregon Trail and in 1853 he sailed to San Francisco where he soon made his way up to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and engaged in mining activities. He settled in Napa Valley in the 1850s and worked for George Yount (namesake of Yountville and the first person to plant wine grapes in Napa Valley). Sullenger purchased this land in 1865.
Like other men who owned sizable pieces of land in Napa Valley from the 1860s through the 1890s, Sullenger was involved in local mining. He and his son discovered a rich piece of land in 1874 next to what was the mining town of Silverado on the southwest side of Mt. St. Helena. He called the claim, the Comet; an article dated March 9, 1877, from the St. Helena Star references Sullenger passing through St. Helena carrying ore samples containing both silver and gold. The same article indicates he had sunk several shafts, built one tunnel between them and also constructed a house on site. The ore was assayed at $600 to $2000/ton – not bad considering in 1882 he sold 71 of acres of land near Rutherford for $82.5/acre. He was later involved in other mining activities; an article in the Napa Journal from 1894 references he was co-owner of the White Rock Deposit mine in Pope Valley. Sullenger died in 1925 at 91 years of age at his daughter, Cassie Briggs home in Antioch, CA.
The Nickels acquired the property in 1998 from long time viticulturist, Alex Vyborny and owner of Vyborny Vineyard Management. Today the property is 42 acres and is home to the John C Sullenger Vineyard. The vineyard and winery are located directly next to Highway 29 almost across from the iconic Robert Mondavi Winery and just north of Opus One. One can usually spot the antique Nickel & Nickel truck parked in front of their property. In a throwback of sorts to a slower pace of life along this now often highly congested highway; look for the horses sometimes stabled in front of the property. Their white wooden gate is almost always locked, simply buzz in your arrival using the keypad next to the driveway to announce your visit to the receptionist, who will then open the electronic gate for you.
Nickel & Nickel’s claim to fame is single vineyard, single variety wines and the “b” (blend) word, with one notable exception, is not a part of the Nickel & Nickel lexicon. During one of our earlier visits to the winery, we tasted one wine which supposedly was a winery “mistake” in which their winemaker accidentally produced a blended wine of Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Appropriately they called this wine Lightning Strike (vintage 2004). This was very under the radar at the time and bottles were only available at the winery. In the years following, this Nickel & Nickel blended wine has become somewhat of a collector’s item; one may still be able to find bottles from various online wine brokerage sites.
Nickel & Nickel owns vineyards and also sources grapes from selected vineyard partners; most of their vineyards are located in Oakville and Rutherford but their wines are made from additional vineyards from other parts of Napa Valley.
Hospitality
The winery sees visitors by appointments and the “10 second Napa Valley appointment” does not apply here as you must reserve ahead of time – often well in advance of your planned visit, especially during busy weekends and the summer months (recommended: a month or more in advance).
The picturesque white building, the Sullenger House dates from 1884 and serves as their hospitality center. It was impeccably restored by the Nickels in 2002. When the Nickels restored this home, they raised it and then rolled it slightly to the south – built a small cellar below ground and then rolled the home back onto its original footprint.
This is one of the classiest properties in Napa Valley and attention to detail is everywhere.
After visitors’ park, weather permitting, one will be greeted by a host outside awaiting with glasses of wine and then accompanied into the historic Sullenger House. Or guests will be greeted inside the home by a concierge. If it is a warm day, the brass handle on the front door of the Sullenger House will be covered in cloth so that one doesn’t ‘burn’ one’s hand. Before tours begin, Nickel & Nickel always offers visitors a welcome wine – typically a Nickel & Nickel Chardonnay or a wine from one of their other sister properties. If not too crowded, guests will enjoy time in the elegant reception salon before the tour and or tasting begins.
After a brief history overview of the property and of the Nickels’ background, tours will proceed into the tank room for a quick lesson in winemaking. The winery was certainly built with quality in mind; their winemaking team uses the latest state of the art technology. Their wine maker can remotely control various aspects of the fermentation tanks directly from a laptop including temperature. A soil’s room provides an intriguing look into the diversity of types of soils from vineyards that Nickel & Nickel own or purchase fruit from. The visual composition differences are dramatic, despite the relatively close proximity of the vineyards to each other.
The 30,000 square foot cellar is perhaps the largest underground cellar on the valley floor of any Napa winery. The footprint of the cellar is underneath both of their wine making production buildings; employees refer to these structures as the ‘barns’. Holes in the roof of the cellar can be used to gravity flow wine from tanks on the top floor.
Tours will also make a brief stop in the historic Gleason Barn.
Tours culminate with a tasting of select vineyard designate Cabernet Sauvignons and are usually held in a small classically styled room in the Sullenger House (a seated tasting). Typically, visitors will be served the same vintage Cabernet Sauvignon but each of the wines are sourced from different vineyards. As a result, one can often taste the terroir differences between the various wines. The wines are typically tasted in order of geography, ranging from vineyards in the north to the south. At the end of the tasting, one will have the opportunity to purchase any of the wines tasted as well as select wines from Nickel & Nickel’s sister properties or even purchase future vintages of the Nickel & Nickel Cabernet Sauvignons.
And similar to other premium Napa wineries that offer personalized group tours (i.e., Darioush, Far Niente, Inglenook, Spottswood, Stags’ Leap Winery, just to name a few) a tasting is often an excellent opportunity to meet wine lovers from around the country. And more frequently than not, based on several tastings we have participated in over the years, guests sometimes meet others from their same state.
Gleason Barn
The Nickels worked with Ken Epworth, the founder of The Barn People in 1975, a company that is no longer operating, but whose business was restoring old barns. Through this company, the Gleason Barn was located at 123 Gleason Road in Meriden, New Hampshire, less than a quarter mile drive east of the Gleason cemetery. The site is on private property; the footprint of the original barn is now covered by a lawn. According to Donald Polaski of AntiqueBarns.net, “This barn is what I call a center aisle, gable entrance barn. The center aisle is off center which is not uncommon. Although I could not see the top of the eve wall or roof system, if I had to guess, it is a “tie at the plate” frame. It probably has the old English tying joint where the principle rafter lands on top the end of tie beam which sits on top of gunstock posts.”
Using images from Google Earth dating from the late 1990s and 2003 and lots of deductive reasoning, we narrowed down the potential site to several properties. And soon after with the help of several wonderful local residents including forester Leo Maslan and Stephen Taylor, former Commissioner of Agriculture for New Hampshire for 25 years, we confirmed the original site of the Gleason Barn.
William Quimby Barn, Valley News dated Monday Apr 07, 1975
After the Quimbys ownership, the property was sub-divided and sold off including the parcel that housed the original barn to Thom and Amy Lappin, owners of the local tavern; they made significant improvements to the old house (built in 1830). Today this site is only 8 acres. According to Taylor, New England’s only period of agricultural prosperity was between 1810 and 1840. This agricultural boom also influenced the region’s architecture; the barn features a classic cable design and included a ramp on the east end for hay wagons.
Dating from 1770, it was dismantled, each piece was numbered, and it was stacked on a flatbed truck and shipped in pieces across the country where it was re-assembled on site in 2003. The architectural firm, Taylor Lombardo Architects were involved in this project. The wood was cleaned through an acid bath process. Not a single metal nail was used in the inner construction as the beams are all held together by wood. The prominent cupola was added following the move as were the brick-red French doors and double-hung windows. This is now probably the oldest building in Napa County. The Gleason Barn is used to host larger groups and also houses several of their offices and the winery lab.
View our photographs of the Gleason barn at the bottom of this profile.
Meriden/Plainfield, NH
Gleason Road/Gleason Cemetery, NH
Select Wines
A number of wines are only available at the winery or tasting room. We have tasted several of these highly coveted wines over multiple visits to the property over the years.
Chardonnay
The 2023 Nickel & Nickel Grand Sky Chardonnay, Carneros Napa Valley is medium gold in color; the bouquet offers aromas of honeycomb and ripe orchard fruits including yellow nectarine, apricot and yellow peaches. There are also notes of vanilla and butterscotch; this latter aromatic will probably will become even more pronounced as this wine ages in the bottle. Based on the ripe characteristics of the bouquet, one would think the palate would also be a ripe expression of the variety. But it is not as much so. Balanced, without being buttery or oaky, this wine tastes like Meyer lemon, green apple, tangerine, mandarin orange, kiwi and a light note of baking spices. Its mouth feel is fleshy, creamy and rounded. This is a rich expression of the variety but also quite lifted by its lively acidity. Finishes bright. This wine’s primary fermentation was in barrel while its malolactic fermentation was inhibited. Post fermentation, the wine spent 10 months in French oak barrels of which 30% were new and 70% once-used.
The 2021 Nickel & Nickel Truchard Vineyard Chardonnay, Carneros Napa Valley is medium to deep gold in color; the generous and layered aromatics immediately offer notes of honeycomb and honeysuckle, along with crème Brule, vanilla, baked apple, coconut, pineapple and hazelnut. The bouquet offers a pleasing balance between fruit and secondary aromas. This wine’s texture feels like velvet in the mouth; its supple and satiny feel is complemented nicely by the wine’s lively acidity. This is a richly flavored wine, showing melon, lemon, hazelnut and some lingering lightly toasted oak spices on the bright finish. It shows plenty of California sunshine but without the overt butter and or oaky characteristics that are commonly associated with California Chardonnay.
Cabernet Sauvignon
Branding Iron
The 2022 Nickel & Nickel Branding Iron Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Napa Valley is deep ruby and nearly opaque; bright, lively and an expression of ripe fruit, its scents include cherry at the peak of its ripeness, dark raspberry, wild plums, plum sauce, red licorice and a light but complementary note of chalk and cocoa powder. The aromatics are still somewhat restrained at this age and need time and oxygen to fully evolve. Ripe, rounded and highly approachable at this age, 2.5 years post vintage, the soft palate reveals flavors of raspberry, cherry, plum, blackberry and a dusty character. The tannins are seamlessly integrated into the finish, a comfortable union of flavor, texture and acidity. This wine was aged for 18 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used. Its remarkable the differences between this vintage and the 2021 from the same vineyard – especially in terms of texture, flavor and ripeness. This wine is named after the vineyard owner’s branding iron.
The 2021 Nickel & Nickel Branding Iron Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Napa Valley is deep ruby, opaque and with an amaranthine rim; sweetly perfumed, with both floral and dark fruited characteristics, the bouquet reveals aromas of blackberry, dark cherry and boysenberry, accompanied by rose petals, violets and some darker baking spices including clove. Intense across the palate with pronounced layers of both flavor and texture, this wine is cerebral. It offers flavors of dark plum, blackberry, boysenberry and mulberry. Clearly dark fruited rather than red. The tannins are robust, grainy, pixelated and persist on a remarkably long finish filled with their textural presence. Also offers notes of tobacco spice, dried herbs and a significant dusty character. Mouth watering. Still extremely youthful, but already, memorable. Loads of life ahead of this big boy. Pair with a well marbled medium-rare thick cut of tri-tip on the BBQ.
Kenefick Ranch
The 2022 Nickel & Nickel Kenefick Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon, Calistoga Napa Valleyis deep ruby and nearly opaque; its floral attributes are immediately present including violets, lavender and lilacs. Both dark and red fruited, additional scents include dark raspberry, cherry cola, Santa Rosa plum, old cedar box, mocha, dark cocoa powder and a light assortment of pleasant baking spices. Ripe, but more red fruited than dark fruit on the palate, it expresses flavors of raspberry, cherry and red plum with a light but persistent note of toasted oak, dried sage and white pepper. The texture of the tannins fit into the finish comfortably in its youth. They are lightly grainy with a gravelly feel and linger with a light drying character. Medium acidity. This wine was aged for 16 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used. Kenefick Ranch is in Calistoga and named after the owners, the Kenefick Family.
Quicksilver
The 2022 Nickel & Nickel Quicksilver Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford Napa Valley is deep ruby, and nearly opaque; highly distinctive the nose sports aromas of spicy plum skin, white sage, violets, lilacs, a ferrous/minerally character that almost crosses into the territory of being sanguine, red plums, currant and red cherry. Higher toned. Brightly lit across the palate, it’s both red fruited and simultaneously savory. Its flavors include red cherry, currant, cranberry and plum. Fresh and almost crossing into being tart, the finish lingers with firmly gripping, grainy, still gritty and gravelly textured tannins, which outpace the fruit by far on the finish. Finishes thoroughly dusty with lasting flavors of dried herbs. Pair this with barbecued lamb ribs covered in a dry rub of spices and herbs. This wine was aged for 20 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used. The name quicksilver is in homage to the historic quicksilver mines in the Mayacamas mountains to the west of this vineyard site.
Air Show
The 2022 Nickel & Nickel Air Show Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville Napa Valley is deep ruby and opaque. This is one of the more attractive bouquets we have sniffed over the years from Nickel & Nickel’s single vineyard designated bottlings. The nose is a union between floral and darker spices, including rose petals, lilacs, pipe tobacco including dried tobacco leaf, smoked sage, dust, dark plum and blackberry, plum and raspberry. Super balanced from the entry through the finish, this wine reveals flavors of dark cherry, blackberry, dark raspberry, red licorice boysenberry, and dark plum. The fruit is ripe, but it is never overripe and never crosses into the territory of being jammy. The tannins are lightly grainy, and already well integrated into the finish at this young age. Lingers bright and savory with dried herbs and a note of crushed pink peppercorn. This wine was aged for 16 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used. Its name refers to the blackbirds which fly in flocks at times over the valley floor. This wine was aged for 16 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used.
Vaca Vista
The 2022 Nickel & Nickel Vaca Vista Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Oak Knoll District Napa Valley is deep ruby and opaque; the bouquet is a union of both spice and dark fruits. Its scents include red chili, light jalapeño, dried tobacco leaf and old cedar box; this latter aromatic reminds us of the jewelry box lined in velvet that our grandmother gifted us more than 30 years ago. Fresh, bright and lively across the palate, its flavors include red cherry, currant, cranberry, and raspberry. And it has a fresh and herbal character, especially noticeable on the finish, including pepper, sage and dried bay leaf. We don’t often associate these attributes with this particularly ripe vintage in Napa Valley. The finish lingers with a note of dried tobacco leaf and dusty and grainy textured tannins sporting a moderate grip. Their resulting dusty character outruns the fruit. This wine was aged for 20 months in French oak barrels of which 55% were new and 45% once-used. Its name comes from its views of the Vaca mountain range to the east.
De Carle
The 2019 Nickel & Nickel DeCarle Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford Napa Valley is deep ruby in color; the bouquet offers plenty of fruit including raspberry, cherry, red licorice and rose petals. There are also more subtle scents of red and green chili pepper spices and dried tobacco leaf. As the wine further evolves it opens to a layer of chocolate and a light note of Graham cracker. However, the aromatic focus is clearly on its fruit. This balanced bottling shows a mix of both red and darker fruits on the palate including of cherry, pomegranate, mulberry and blackberry. The tannins are extremely well integrated in their youth (we tasted this wine 4 years post vintage) and showcase a grainy texture, lingering beyond the presence of fruit. They are felt more on the front of the palate than the back. The finish is bright from the acidity and lingers with a hint of dried tobacco leaf. This is a highly enjoyable bottling on its own.
Element 28
The 2015 Nickel & Nickel Element 28 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley shows sweet baking spices on the bouquet along with a sweetness of fruit (blueberry and boysenberry). This bottling also shows hints of cloves, cinnamon and mocha as the wine opens. It offers plenty of flavor and loads of acidity; it is balanced on the palate showing slightly astringent tannins on the finish, but which are fine grained. Features a long finish. Those who can remember back to their high school chemistry class will recall that element number 28 on the periodic table is nickel. One of the Nickel’s nephews Erik owns this vineyard and suggested that Nickel & Nickel creatively name this particular wine after their family surname.
Beatty Ranch
The 2015 Nickel & Nickel Beatty Ranch, Howell Mountain Napa Valley shows generous aromatics including a bouquet of blackberry, black licorice, a dust nuance, boysenberry and cedar plank. Offers lively acidity which is mouthwatering at times. All components of this wine are well integrated. Mountain, somewhat dry yet plush tannins, anchor a long finish. This bottling has all the characteristics of being quite age worthy. Beatty Ranch is a visually gorgeous site high on Howell Mountain, but the site also has lots of history; it produced the grapes for one of Duckhorn Winery’s earliest bottlings and is also the site of the oldest Zinfandel growing on Howell Mountain (1914). And Beatty Ranch which not only sells grapes to other wineries, but also is the backbone for Howell Mountain Vineyards (same ownership) was our 1,100th Napa Valley based winery or producer visited with and written about since we started the Napa Wine Project back in 2006.
Sori Bricco
The 2015 Nickel & Nickel Sori Bricco Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Diamond Mountain Napa Valley is noticeably dark in the glass with a bouquet that is brooding and savory at the same time. It has a powerful bouquet that is highly aromatic with notes of dark chocolate, plum, blackberry and nuances of baking spices and cedar. Offers a pleasing depth of flavor on the palate; it is juicy and mouthwatering on the finish with excellent acidity. The tannins are rounded yet show good grip and are somewhat dry; they persist for quite some time. Nickel & Nickel no longer produces wine from this vineyard.
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As a general statement, for those who want to age their wines, we were told their winemaker recommends a sweet spot of 7 to 10 years – although the wines certainly can age much longer than this.
At the time of our latest update, for a relatively small winery they make a diversity of different wines (26 in total) with the majority being Cabernet Sauvignon. They also produce limited amounts of Chardonnay, Merlot and a Syrah. For more information, to schedule a visit to the property or to join one of their wine clubs, visit: www.nickelandnickel.com
John C. Sullenger House (c. 1884)
Gleason Barn (c. 1770)
Winery/Winemaking
Grounds
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