On the floor of the Napa Valley, the grapevines of the Oakville American Viticultural Area (AVA) enjoy a warm climate and powerful, ripe fruit. Getting that cool early morning fog and exceptionally good drainage are key to keeping these wines balanced in their strength.
Our vineyard is situated downhill between Rector Reservoir and a hill within Oakville, and the vines are planted directly on an alluvial fan composed of 65% Cortina. The soil is classified as “excessively drained,” which is rare at lower elevations like this one. This is just one of the things that make this subregion of Napa special.
Stories that cast a spell
Thanks to these distinct features, Oakville AVA wines are known for their weighty presence. They meet you with intensity at first sip and then stay, continuing to build layered, subtle power through depth and craft.
The artistic pull of these wines gives us the same awe as a Toni Morrison novel, so we’re pairing Oakville AVA with the late, great, captivating American author. The first lines of Morrison’s novels pull you into a spellbinding world and don’t let go. Like the poetic wines of Oakville, Morrison is a ripe and powerful storyteller.
The 2022 vintage: a tale of two harvests
Our Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon is a 2022 and this vintage is known locally as the “tale of two harvests.” It was a unique year weather-wise; the white grape harvest kicked off in August with red grapes following closely behind. In September, we experienced over five days of triple-digit heat, and we harvested our Cabernet grapes on the fifteenth. Things really came to a head at the end for our grapes.
So it’s only appropriate to pair this unique vintage with Morrison’s Beloved, which contains two endings, one of which ends with the kind of gut-wrenching intensity that Morrison is so famous for, with Sethe trying to kill Mr. Bodwin with an ice pick, after mistaking him for Schoolteacher.
This late-stage intensity for our grapes translated to a red wine with powerful structure, deep garnet color, vivid tannins, and pronounced aromatics. Like Morrison’s often heartbreaking themes, this wine isn’t for the faint of heart.
Reading into the Oakville AVA climate
Thanks to its position on the floor of the Napa Valley, Oakville gets plenty of sun and warmth, making way for wines with strong aromatics and dark fruit flavors. Oakville is also situated right at the center of the valley, so it gets the cooling influence from the bay, and heat from the north. So while these wines are quite intense, all of the qualities are balanced thanks to fog hitting the vines in the mornings and evenings.
A diverse soil profile makes Oakville a very unique place, especially for a lower-altitude region. The most common soil type found here is sedimentary, but you’ll also find loam, gravelly fans, iron-rich soils, and volcanic material. Our vineyard site is made up of 65% Cortina, a very deep, well-draining soil on an alluvial fan.
In fact, the soil here is classified as “excessively drained,” a rare thing for a site of this elevation. This impressive drainage forces the vine roots deep into the subsoil, where they will extract nutrients that contribute to wines that express a kind of magical realism not unlike Toni Morrison’s novels.
Our beloved Oakville AVA wines
We treasure the 2022 Oakville Cabernet like our favorite book—always keeping an extra copy to give to a loved one. Hopefully, they’ll take it home and find themselves forever changed by a tale that is as beautiful as it is tragic.
No one tells a story as human as Toni Morrison, and the wines from Oakville are a reminder that through a bottle of wine, we can also read a story that reminds us of who we are and where we came from. We hope you can’t put it down.