Majuscule Wine

Majuscule Wine. A blind date. Two couples. And then an ensuing friendship led to creating a Napa Valley wine brand. First vintage 2018. Greg (the winemaker) and his now husband Jeff had recently moved to St. Helena when one of Jeff’s friends suggested they go out on a blind date with someone he knew also living in St. Helena. The site was Martini House (now Goose and Gander). The blind date, Juanita showed up wearing a rose so that they would easily recognize her. They did. Little did they know that this first dinner would lead to both a strong friendship and a business partnership formed over their mutual love of wine. Greg and Geoff (who used to own a wine shop in Scottsdale) divide their time between the Napa Valley and Arizona while Alex and Juanita live full time in Napa Valley. Note that Alex and Juanita are no longer part of the ownership of Majuscule and the brand is entirely owned by Greg and Jeff.

Besides operating his Arizona based structural engineering firm BDA design, Greg handles all the wine making and vineyard sourcing for Majuscule. His journey to become a winemaker did not start at a young age. While in France for a year on a Christian mission he and friends visited several wineries on bicycles. Their first stop was at Domain Taittinger in Reims where after taking the memorable tour of their historic caves, the group resurfaced for the tasting. Greg was 19 at the time but due to his mission was forbidden to drink. While he did not taste any wine while in France, he remembered being intrigued by winemaking during his several visits to wineries. Unlike those who grow up in the wine industry, wine did not come until later – he did not drink any alcohol until he was 24.

He first visited the Napa Valley in 1985, staying on Highway 29 because the number of wineries back then was far less than today, with the larger wineries focused along the western part of the valley. He remembers his first visit was to Charles Krug – too early to perhaps realize that he might one day live in Napa Valley. Fast forward to 2007; while needing a break from his job in Arizona he simultaneously noticed that the economy was slowing down. He pivoted and moved to Northern California and began taking wine making classes at UC Davis.

He immediately began working in the industry, taking an intern position at Patz & Hall because he had always enjoyed their wines – followed by working at Villa Mt. Eden, helping make wine from 2008 through 2010. During his time working for others in the industry he developed valuable personal contacts as well as vineyard sources which would prove useful for when he became involved with Majuscule. He counts two people in the industry as personal mentors, long time winemaker at Conn Creek who has since retired, Mike McGrath and Duckhorn co-founder, Nancy Duckhorn.

While no longer involved in the ownership of Majuscule, Alex is a concierge doctor – offering a boutique type of healthcare to clients who pay a premium to have direct access to his services. And Juanita operates Sweet Blossom Company, a small business that originated as a hobby. She hand makes soaps, candles and scrubs among other products. These select items can be found at several locations within Napa Valley including sometimes at Oakville Grocery and the Napa General Store or online.

Majuscule focuses on creating wines from single vineyard sites. The wines we have tried are extremely very balanced. As Greg mentioned, he strives for elegance in all wines that he produces – giving the varietal and the vineyard their voice. For him, winemaking ties in art, creativity and science.

Select Wines & Winemaking
Whites/Rosé
The 2022 Majuscule Sauvignon Blanc Russian River Valley, Sonoma County is deep straw in color; the bouquet is initially muted and a bit shy and needs time to evolve. It opens and becomes more expressive with aromas of lemongrass, honeydew melon, pineapple, lemon zest and passion fruit. The aromatics are neither green or grassy nor overly tropical, but saddled somewhere in between. A balanced approach to this variety in terms of acidity, the palate offers flavors of mandarin orange, pineapple, kiwi, passion fruit, honeydew melon, green apple, guava and papaya. The mouthfeel is supple and soft with a rounded texture. 13.5% alcohol. In a blind tasting we might have guessed this was Pinot Grigio instead of Sauvignon Blanc. Regardless, it should pair well with a variety of fish, perhaps seabass covered in a citrus-soy reduction glaze, sprinkled with chopped green onions would be our first option.

The 2019 Majuscule Cabernet Franc Rosé was sourced from a well-known vineyard on the Napa side of Carneros. The grapes spent 4 days cold soaking in a tank before being pressed off in a bladder press with very gentle pressing and then went straight to fermentation. The ferment to dryness was cold and slow, lasting about 18 days. It experienced no oak and was stirred on its lees during its aging. The wine is 100% varietal. Noticeably darker salmon in color. Sports an elegant bouquet with hints of strawberry, peach, citrus blossom and rhubarb. Glides across the palate with an ethereal lightness – displays a gentle textural grip, creamy with a slight viscosity. The wine is seamless from start to finish and is very flavorful. An impressive inaugural release.

Reds
Lisa Chu owns the Wildcat Vineyard at about 1800 feet in elevation on Mt. Veeder. This gorgeous property features rolling hills, picturesque views and borders the historic Mayacamas Winery. Greg made small amounts of wine from her vineyard beginning in 2009 and during several other vintages (never released). As a result, he became intimately familiar with this vineyard prior to making the first Cabernet Franc for Majuscule. This vineyard is an integral site for the Majuscule wines.

The 2021 Majuscule Merlot, Mt. Veeder is medium ruby in color; the aromatics are highly attractive with some floral tones of rose petals and violets, along with raspberries, a light dried chili spice, an herbal note and as it opens further, a nuance of milk chocolate. This is an elegant showing of both variety and its mountain site. The palate offers flavors of raspberry, plum, cherry and strawberry. Two words can be used to describe its cadence across the palate: balanced and seamless. The rounded and supple tannins are well integrated into the polished finish. This wine drinks very nicely by itself.

The 2019 Majuscule Cabernet Sauvignon, Mt. Veeder is 98% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Cabernet Franc. This wine is deep ruby and nearly opaque in the glass; the bouquet smells elegant with a diversity of aromas including the smell of slate rock after the first rain, a hint of dark tobacco spice, red fruits including raspberry, sandalwood, violets and freshly tilled soils. For the fruit to become more expressive, this wine needs time in the glass. The palate reveals flavors of cherry, plum and dark raspberry. This is a mountain grown wine but clearly a more elegant bottling. We often want to pair young Napa Valley mountain grown Cabernet Sauvignons with cheeses or well marbled steak to tame the texture; there is no reason to do so for this wine – it drinks very nicely by itself. The tannins are lightly grainy and linger along with a note of dried tobacco leaf on the finish. Balanced. This wine was aged for 24 months in French oak barrels of which 60% were new & 40% once used.

The 2019 Majuscule Mt. Veeder Garçon (meaning boy in French) is 100% varietal Cabernet Sauvignon from clone 169. This wine is deep ruby and opaque in color; the bouquet offers a diversity of aromas including lavender, violets, licorice, mint, red cherry and a chocolate mint thins character. The palate is clearly about the fruit with the oak serving as a complementary partner. This wine offers flavors of cherry and red plum with a bright and balanced acidity. Looking for robust mountain tannins? You won’t find that here. The texture features broadly distributed, integrated tannins with a grainy texture. The finish is slight savory with a light drying character. Balanced and beautiful like all the Majuscule bottling.

The 2018 Majuscule Cabernet Franc is 100% varietal; this wine is- medium to dark ruby in the glass; it offers dark fruit aromatics with an elegant ripeness. Initially notes of blackberry, cigar smoke and old cedar – the cedar notes are not overt but more subtle and refined. Additional notes of chocolate and red licorice. As the wine aromatically opens further, more fruit is exposed overtaking some of the secondary characteristics. The darker fruit on the bouquet continues onto the palate with flavors of black cherry. It lingers with earthy tannins of medium grip; they are noticeable, but are not course in their feel, along with some subtle pepper spice notes.

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Their inaugural release was very small with (less than 70 cases produced for each of the wines). Production has grown in the coming years including number of cases as well as diversity of wines produced. Each wine is crafted in quantities of between 50 to approximately 200 cases. Greg eventually would like to produce one wine from each of the western hillside appellations: Mt. Veeder, Spring Mountain and Diamond Mountain. During their aging, Greg always selects several of the best barrel lots from their hillside sites – holding them back 3.5 years before their release.

Wildcat Vineyard, Mt. Veeder

The name majuscule, one would think would be the opposite of minuscule, but in reality, this word does not exist in the English vocabulary. It is a French word that means capital letter and in Latin, something big but not to massive. This ties into Greg’s time in France and also into their winemaking philosophy – creating noticeable wines with depth yet retaining their gracefulness and balance.

The wines are sold directly with distribution focusing on Napa Valley and Scottsdale, Arizona markets. Through their network of friends, they often host winemaker dinners at people’s homes but will also host private tastings in either the Napa Valley or in Phoenix. For more information, to sign up for their wine club or to order wine, visit: www.majusculewine.com

Mia Carta Napa Valley
Majuscule is part of a small collective of boutique Napa Valley based wineries represented at Mia Carta Wine Lounge in downtown Napa. This space is located at 1209 1st Street next to Rebel Vintners near the intersection of 1st and Coombs Streets. It had a soft opening to the public on May 22, 2021, and officially opened on June 17, 2021.

In addition to Majuscule Vineyards, this space houses several premium boutique Napa Valley producers including Essere Franco and Earthshine wines. Sharon Harris, proprietor of Rarecat learned about the space early on, and then invited several of her friends to join including Redmon Wines and Ilsley Vineyards.

A significant amount of thought and effort went into the renovation of this space. A couple of items inside quickly catch one’s eye including the Italian Piaggio “Ape del Vino” or in English, referred to as the Wine Bee. It was purchased in Italy, restored and then shipped over, however unfortunately it was stuck for quite some time at the port of Galveston in Texas before it cleared customs and reached Napa Valley. It is fully functional and is operated by a two-stroke Vespa engine. The back opens up to reveal wine kegs with spigots on the side of the vehicle – making this ideal to take to various wine tasting events. And the 145 piece ‘puzzle’ of walnut wood built against the back wall is in the three-dimensional shape of a street grid of downtown Napa – complete with an outline of Napa River and a red marking to indicate Mia Carta’s location on the map.

Recycled cork from cork manufacturer, Amorim Cork America lines the east wall of the space. If one casually glances at this wall, one will think it’s one entire piece of cork but each piece is a quarter offset, so the lines are hard to see between each of the pieces. With Norm’s background as President & Co-founder of Calgary based ZeroSound Systems, his knowledge and expertise were used during the renovation of the interior space. Acoustic tiles are placed on top of the tin stamped metal ceilings – if one looks carefully one can almost see the tiny holes punched in each of these tin squares, which are part of the design to help mitigate noise. The bar and some of the tabletops are constructed from Richlite, a recycled paper/resin composite.

Visitors taste either inside or outside weather permitting (heat lamps are built into the outdoor overhang), choosing flights from any of the vintners or by the glass or by the bottle. This part of the building used to be recessed – set back more from First Street but during the renovation it was expanded, providing more interior space. And a private tasting room is located in the rear of the space.

For those into wine, it is easy to spend an afternoon in this part of downtown Napa – numerous tasting rooms are within several blocks of Mia Carta. For more details about this beautiful space and or to make a reservation, please visit: www.miacartanapa.com

ARCHIVED NOTES
Feast it Forward
For a very short period starting in 2020, Majuscule was one of up to sixteen vintners featured in The Studio by Feast it Forward (opened in June 2018). NOTE: Majuscule is no longer at Feast it Forward, but we keep our notes here for historical reference. This showroom is located directly across from the Oxbow Public Market and packs in numerous experiences in a small space. This two-story building houses an “experiential showroom” as founder Katie Hamilton Shaffer calls it with a focus on wine, food and music.

Each vintner represented offers several wines – several of the showroom’s sponsors have prominent placement including the Gibson Guitar Lounge. A Chocolate tasting is also offered and there is a vinyl station for playing a variety of old records. Upstairs features a demo kitchen – when shows are being filmed here, televisions downstairs will broadcast the live feed. This kitchen can also be used for guest chefs to offer culinary classes.

And visitor’s will want to stop by their bathroom to read the latest in all the graffiti and words of wisdom that visitors mark on the walls. The site can be used for a number of events – they have plenty of space in the back of the building. The Ultimate Airstream Film Lounge trailer is often be parked in the back – they use this trailer when they are on the road hosting unique lifestyle events. One such event at the showroom might be the “Terrible Tuesdays” in which bad films with cult like followings will be shown.

The second floor has a sizable surround building deck – and features swinging ‘beds’. This is an ideal perch to watch passerbys going to Oxbow Public Market or those enjoying the park next to the Napa River. These are also some of the best seats in the area to watch live performances at the nearby green.