Lee Hudson among the vines on the Hudson Ranch estate in Carneros, California.
Come August in the valley, even as the vines have taken on that beautiful, pregnant-with-fruit look, those of us who live here start to bite our nails. A kind of climate PTSD descends over the collective mood. It’s wildfire season – a term I’d barely ever heard, never mind used, just a decade ago.
I suppose that every wine lover thinks about the weather more than most other people. But having evacuated from my home four times over the last several years, I watch weather very differently now. I am wary. As the growing season unfolds, I can sense the winemakers around me holding their breath.
And 2023 was no exception. It was a year no one will ever forget. But not because of fire or frost or rain, or relentless heat; because 2023 was as perfect as any Napa vintage in living memory. It was Napa’s ‘1961 Bordeaux’.
Silky & captivating
It’s a tricky thing, evaluating a vintage. Even in a tiny 50km-long swath of land like the Napa Valley, there are so many factors that magnify the differential. Elevation alone has a 10-times spread here: some of Napa’s vineyards lie at 60m above sea level, some at about 600m. The rugged mountains, crevices and canyons present on both sides of the valley mean that vineyards face in every possible direction.
Warren Winiarski, the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (now owned by Italy’s Marchesi Antinori group),
