Nickel & Nickel

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 and 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. The Nickels worked with a company that restores old barns and through this company, located a historical hay barn in Meriden, New Hampshire. 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. Not a single metal nail was used in the inner construction as the beams are all held together by wood. This is now probably the oldest building in Napa County. The building is used to host larger groups and also houses several of their offices and the winery lab.

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. 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.

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.

The 2021 Nickel & Nickel Truchard Vineyard Chardonnay 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.

The 2015 Sori Bricco Vineyard Diamond Mountain 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.

The 2015 Element 28 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 owns this vineyard and suggested that Nickel & Nickel creatively name this particular wine after their family surname.

The 2015 Beatty Ranch, Howell Mountain 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.

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 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