Hensel West Wine

Hensel West Wine was founded by Will Phelps with his first vintage produced in 2023. This tiny brand is built upon the paths forged by family members; it honors their legacy, their contributions to Napa Valley and the heritage vineyards they worked with. Phelps was raised in St. Helena and was surrounded by the wine business; his grandfather, Joseph Phelps, founded his namesake winery, and Will’s father, Bill, served as chairman of Joseph Phelps Winery

Hensel is a family name lasting generations, dating back several hundred years to when the family lived in Pennsylvania; it is Will’s middle name and also the middle name for his father and grandfather. Will’s great grandfather Abel Hensel was left for dead on the battlefield in the Civil War, but he survived and eventually settled in Maysville MO and purchased a several hundred acre farm. The Hensel family lived there for two generations, farmed and built the Hensel School House. The Great Depression and Dust Bowl forced the family to sell their farm. Abel was a deeply religious man; he then moved the family to Greeley, CO, perhaps attracted to the fact that Weld County was a dry county at the time. He started Hensel Phelps construction company in 1937. And Greeley is named in homage to American author and newspaper editor Horace Greeley, who is often attributed as saying, “Go west young man”.

During the summers Abel’s son, Joseph Phelps worked at Hensel Phelps. He spent a year in the U.S. Navy, and after returning, convinced his father to sell him the construction company. He significantly expanded the business; their first office in California was in Burlingame. One of Joe’s projects was to work on building the BART system in the San Jose Bay Area (Bay Area Rapid Transit). Other projects included building a launch pad for NASA and a protective exterior for the Pentagon post 9/11. During his time in the Bay Area, he would often visit Napa Valley.

A banker informed him of several potential winery projects in Napa and Sonoma. One of the projects was to build Souverain Winery in Napa Valley (now Rutherford Hill Winery). After this project Joseph became interested in purchasing his own property in Napa Valley. He initially purchased about 15 acres on the corner of Zinfandel Lane and the Silverado Trail in 1972. In 1973 he acquired 600+ acres of land which at the time was a cattle ranch and no grapes were planted on site at that time.

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Will recalls his grandfather amassed an impressive wine collection over the years, primarily from overseas producers. Joseph began purchasing wine from first growths in Bordeaux in the 1960s and 1970s. Will remembers early in his childhood his grandfather asking him to go down the cellar and grab a bottle of wine. Phelps particularly loved aged wines, so the wines Will brought his grandfather from the cellar were always older and special bottlings. His grandfather would open the bottle and then decant it, always with candlelight. One of Will’s aha wines was a 1968 Pinot Noir produced by Hanzell Vineyards in Sonoma.

Will spent one summer interning at Joseph Phelps, spending two week at a time working in various aspects of the business including in the vineyard, in the cellar and in the ‘front of the house’ building his hospitality skills. Still, he had no interest in working in any aspect of the wine industry.

He went to school at the opposite end of the state, graduating from the University of San Diego and later earned his MBA from Sonoma State University. While in college at San Diego he discovered a love of travel through Semester at Sea, a program offering students a multi-country study abroad program on a ship; after graduating he realized he wasn’t ready to move back to Napa Valley and wanted to continue traveling.

So he moved to France and with Adam Mariani, the co-founder of Scribe Winery in Sonoma (whom he met in college); they worked as harvest interns for Domaine E. Guigal, located in the Rhone Valley in the summer and fall of 2008. It was a time Will fondly remembers expanding his perspective on wines; after work, he and Adam would frequent wine shops or wine bars trying as many wines as they could afford. During a subsequent harvest Will worked at Paul Cluver Winery in Elgin Valley, South Africa, a cool climate part of the country known for their Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. His travels and work overseas helped spawn a latent interest in wine.

Returning stateside, his father encouraged him to work outside the family winery. He took a position at Trinitas Winery as a sales rep in southern California. Admittedly, this was the type of work in the wine industry that most appealed to him, focusing on sales. He worked at Joseph Phelps from 2012 through 2022 in a variety of roles ranging from sales and marketing to viticulture. His family sold their winery in 2022 to LVMH Moët Hennessy. He was offered a brand ambassador position under the new ownership. That lasted only 6 months before he decided it was time to refocus; he took a year off to plan his next move in the industry.

Overseeing the winemaking for Hensel West, Ashley Hepworth is originally from Denver, worked for two years as a chef at the acclaimed Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago before moving to Napa Valley. Her winemaking career began at Joseph Phelps, taking a harvest intern position in 1999 before becoming their head winemaker in 2008. During her time at Phelps she oversaw a diverse portfolio of winemaking ranging from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, sparkling wine and their red program including their flagship bottling, Insignia. She left Phelps in early 2023 to focus on her consulting career, and she now oversees Ashley Hepworth Wine Consulting.

Will has known her since he was a child; in fact she used to babysit him.

Talented creative Michael McDermott designed the label, using geometric shapes to represent the negative space for the H and W of Hensel West. He chose security ink for the label; each SKU incorporates the same design but different colors. And every bottle contains the same quote printed on the back label. This reads, “Behold, a sea of spires”. These words were attributed to Abel Hensel Phelps. After moving his family to their farm in Maysville MO, Abel walked up to the top of plateau where he planned to build his house. He saw church steeples below; as a deeply devout man, he realized this is where he wanted to build his family home and settle down.

Will’s wife Amanda is an artist focusing on paintings, graphic design and calligraphy (Amanda Phelps Designs); she created three distinctive paintings, each one tied into the three different wines produced by Hensel West. She is the creative director for the brand.

The Joseph Phelps red wines in particular are crafted to be enjoyable in their youth but always have the bones for long term aging. And one of the hallmark characteristics of their vineyards is they are generally located on benchland soils. The resulting wines often have a plushness to their texture and overall feel. The Hensel West wines are crafted the same way, always with an eye on balance.

Select Wines
The 2024 Hensel West Sauvignon Blanc, Riverbound Vineyard Yountville is a blend of 66% Sauvignon Blanc clone 530 and 33% Sauvignon Musqué. This wine is pale to medium gold in color; vibrant and highly expressive, the bouquet offers aromas of citrus blossom, honeysuckle, jasmine, passion fruit, guava, not fully ripe pineapple, papaya, lychee and young kaffir lime leaf. And as the bouquet evolves, it reveals a thread of sweet and persistent vanilla. The lifted and lively aromatics foreshadow the character of the palate. Bright, juicy and thoroughly refreshing, this wine sings soprano. It tastes like pineapple guava, golden kiwi, white nectarine, Babcock peach, Golden delicious apples, passion fruit and kiwi with a lightly tangy finishing touch of lemon/lime. Perfectly balanced, the lively acidity buoys the lightly rounded and silky texture. The long finish lingers mouth watering with loads of lasting flavor and freshness. This wine expresses a union of the typicity of the variety but also plenty of California sunshine. Its ABV is a listed 14%. For best results, enjoy this bottling with the sounds of Hilary Hahn playing Bach Partita No.3 in E major softly in the background and a plate of lightly seared fresh scallops. This wine was fermented and aged in 40% new French oak barrels; it was in barrel for 9 months with the gross lees stirred every two weeks. And it over delivers for the price.

The Riverbound Vineyard is owned by Tom Gamble. Joseph Phelps used to regularly frequent Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, a restaurant in St. Helena that is now the home of Charlie’s Napa Valley. During one lunch with Tom Gamble, Joseph listened to him discuss the challenges at that time of being in the wine industry. Phelps picked up the tab for the meal and said something like, “Hang in there Tom, it is worth it”.

In 2026 Hensel West will release two more wines including a Syrah sourced from Hyde Vineyard in Carneros. Grower Larry Hyde worked at Joseph Phelps in the 1980s. Will and Larry’s son Chris Hyde attended both the same high school and graduate school. And Joseph Phelps produced a Hyde Vineyard designated Syrah for more than 20 years. In fact the first wines produced at Joseph Phelps in 1974 included their now hallmark red blend, Insignia and a Syrah. Phelps was fascinated with wines from the Rhone Valley in particular. When Will decided to produce a Syrah he inquired locally and through UC Davis discovered Syrah was planted on Zinfandel Lane on site of what is now Wheeler Farms.

And the HWX Proprietary Red Wine is a blend of both vineyards and varieties. The X is a nod to the French pluralization of words – but its also an homage to vineyards Joseph Phelps historically sourced from in the 1970s and 1980s. The 2023 Hensel West HWX Red Blend is made with grapes from the following vineyards: Tench in Oakville, Sleeping Lady in Yountville and Steltzner and is a blend of 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Petit Verdot and 10% Cabernet Franc.

In a feel good story from 1977, John and Joan Tench along with one of their neighbors slightly to the south, Harry See (of See’s Candy fame) donated 5 tons of second crop grapes to members and related family of the St. Helena High School Jazz Band. The band members with help from their families harvested the grapes, sold them to Joseph Phelps Winery for $2,500 where they were made into wine and bottled as vintage 1977 Jazz Band Cabernet Sauvignon. The attractive label was the donated work of designer Charlotte Kay and featured two students blowing horns. The wines were sold at several wine shops around Napa Valley, of which all are no longer in business except for Oakville Grocery. Profits from the sales of the wine totaled nearly $5,500 and were donated by Phelps to the band to help with their expenses in 1980/1981.

Joseph Phelps used to purchase grapes from what was called Reese Vineyard, today known as Sleeping Lady Vineyard. And grapes from Steltzner Vineyard went into the first bottling of Insignia.

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The wines are primarily sold direct to consumer with some local distribution including through ACME Wines in St. Helena, Honor Market in Yountville and at Scala Restaurant in the city of Napa. The brand will remain small, for now annual production is less than 1,000 cases. For more information, or to join the mailing list visit: www.henselwest.com