Warren Winiarski

Owner and Founding Winemaker
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
Napa

Interview by Diana H. Stockton

Warren Winiarski grew up in a family that used wine only ceremoniously, to mark an occasion. Later, when Warren had a chance to study and travel in Italy, he encountered an entirely different approach to wine: la dolce vita. On his return to the University of Chicago, Warren lost this new habit. After his studies,

however, he had a memorable glass of wine. A friend from college brought this epiphany, with a white--not even a vinifera. Probably from New York State. But it made the impression. Warren’s second memorable glass was in Napa with Nathan Fay. The second coming.

Warren had been teaching political theory at the University, but he and his wife wished to have their children share a whole life. Warren thought to make a vineyard. He had a vegetable garden in Chicago, he had a green thumb. So, the Winiarskis moved from Chicago in 1964. Warren was to do something with Martin Ray; instead, he worked two years at Souverain with Lee Stewart, then at Robert Mondavi Winery where he made Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Rosé, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. At Souverain they’d made Green Hungarian, Riesling, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. In 1968 Warren got an offer from an outfit in Denver to make wine out of grapes shipped to Denver from the Napa Valley. He did that, and, in 1969, met Nathan Fay. Warren had already known of Nathan, and had gotten in touch with him to talk about irrigation and trenching. At his house he also got to taste Nathan’s 1968 Cabernet. It was outstanding, and 1968 was a Great Year.

Nathan had been the first to plant Cabernet in his end of the Napa Valley in 1961. At that time there were 700 acres planted in all of California. Now there are over 14,000 bearing acres in the Napa Valley . Nathan was selling most of his fruit to Krug. He made a little wine of his own across the yard from his house (Warren still honors the site, now a guest house, with a commemorative plaque). Nathan Fay’s wine influenced many winemakers, Williams (at Frog’s Leap) and Kongsgaard among them and, of course, Warren Winiarski.

Upon tasting Nathan’s wine, Warren immediately bought the prune orchard next to him and called it Stag’s Leap Vineyard, after its location in the Valley. Nathan had used St. George rootstock. Warren planted on riparia Gloire de Montpellier. Rootstocks for the site now are 3309 in the alluvial and 101-14 and 110-R in the volcanic soils. Nathan’s Cabernet budwood had come from the UC Davis experimental station in Oakville. Clone 2. Same for Martha’s Vineyard. Warren’s bud-wood came half from the Fay vineyard and half from Martha’s Vineyard. Warren also built a reservoir and put in some drain tile. Warren says his knees have been on all of the ground of his Stag’s Leap Vineyard, ground which is soft, mellow. He hand cut the tops of his vines for grafting, noting that Nathan planted much of his own vineyard himself. Abutting property owners continue to share upkeep of a deer fence which stretches from Calistoga to Napa in the foothills along the Silverado Trail.

In 1986 Warren was able to buy Nathan’s vineyard. That was the year of Halley’s Comet. 1970, when Warren bought the neighboring prune orchard and planted Stag’s Leap Vineyard (SLV), was the year of Bennett's Comet. 1996, when he blasted the hillside for his wine caves and bought Arcadia Vineyard, was the year of Hyakutake. A natural feldspar sparkle in the caves inspired the hanging of a Foucault Pendulum and custom wall sconces akin to comet tails to bring the heavens down deep.

A 2,700 acre Stags Leap District appellation in Napa and Yountville was granted by the federal government in 1989 and includes, within its boundaries, vineyards at less than 400’ elevation. SLWC is not a member of the Stags Leap District Association, a marketing organization, although Warren was involved with the appellation process and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is one of the wineries in the appellation. Soils in the appellation are not unique to the region. They occur in other parts of Napa Valley. At SLWC there are different soils on different contours - Bale gravely loam, and, at the very top, Keefers. The variation and layering is from alternating years of heavy rains and more or less run-off fanning out from drainage channels in the Stags Leap formation. With respect to climate, there is early ripening in the Stags Leap District relative to the west of the Valley

Black fruit is especially susceptible to heavy sun, which denatures the skins and alters the phenolic profile. So, row orientation is important. It is even hotter on the hillside as tilt increases exposure. A north-south row orientation mitigates the effects of the sun so there is no real very hot or very cool side. The vineyards are composed of alluvial and residual soils, which change in color from dark grey near Chase Creek, to tawny , rose and a red volcanic in the foothills. Water versus fire. Soils which quench each other. Grapes of the same clone, planted from down to up, make the wine. The ones up are fiery, intense, concentrated. The ones down are supple, round, soft. The ‘down’ has less persistence in flavor, ‘up’, more. If they clash, there is no harmony.

The winemaker must find the mean proportional, a center, a reconciliation. For the SLWC estates program less than 15,000 cases are made from Fay and Stags Leap Vineyard and for Cask 23. Cask 23 is a special selection from Fay and SLV; it has been made every year since 1974. The new Artemis is a blend of Cabernet, Merlot, and Petit Verdot-for the complexity, perfume and aromatics not for color. Warren once had a Niebaum Coppola 1994 Cabernet Franc which was very good. This takes the right kind of clone. He’s otherwise not moved to include Cab Franc in Artemis. Warren’s model is: fire, water, restraint. He is adamant that we leave something to the mind to complete. Wines excessively structured, extracted don’t leave much to the mind. Restraint is an essential element in sensual perfection. Warren likens Fay and Stag’s Leap Vineyards to the two halves of your face.

He characterizes the work of a winemaker in three R’s: Richness, Ripeness, Restraint. Wine has a voice. Green berries taste the same around the world--bullets of acidity. The same is true of oversize, raisin fruit. Raisins have no voice to tell their story, to sing their song. No melody, harmony. Grape vines produce an infinite number of leaves, but only two clusters of fruit per shoot. The challenge is to find where the grapes find their voice. Warren isn’t at all sure that a long fermentation is necessary. Long-chain polymers formed in 20 days of maceration may break up in a year. Eight days of skin contact may be enough. A five or six day fermentation was typical for the 1970’s and 80’s, with a minimum number of pumpovers. Now 20 days is the norm. A bitterness develops from seed tannins between eight and fourteen days; in 20 days it changes. The French do it because their weather is cool, cloudy and the heat accumulation is less, the skin profile is different. We don’t really need to because of the warmer, brighter weather. Maybe eight is enough.

Edited from his lecture,

“The Significance of Terroir”,
given in 2000 by Warren Winiarski for the Napa Branch of the Wine & Food Society:

At Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars we think terroir, by itself, is powerful but mute.

Soil

Our estate vineyards lie next to the foothills of the eastern mountains enclosing the Napa Valley. These eastern mountains are mainly volcanic in origin, so soils in the eastern portion of the vineyard come largely from the degradation of volcanic rock. Westward from these deposits is a mantle of alluvial and marine sediments, thickest at its westernmost extremity and thinnest where marine soils meet those of volcanic origin. I like to say we move from fire to water, gradually, along an east-west axis.

The same grape variety in different locations along this axis expresses a different personality when vinified in a similar manner. Since we desire to compose the character of the final assemblage of wines of any given year, we divide our vineyard blocks in such a way that each block has a distinct identity due to the soil from which it is derived. Wines from soils toward the east possess more intensity and spicy concentration, those from the west have more weight and soft body - an expression of fire and water, as the origins of these soils suggest.

Harvest

Our efforts to identify and segregate various segments of terroir into vineyard blocks has lead to separate harvest times for these blocks. Grapes are monitored daily to measure the onset of perfect maturity. In certain years we find we must harvest sections separately within a block, picking the center of some rows and leaving the two ends for later, with as much as two weeks between harvests.

Winery

Naturally, to maintain vineyard soil and site-derived differences requires appropriate dispositions in winery equipment and procedures, such as different size tanks, especially small tanks for separate fermentations. It also requires a huge commitment of patience and care, suitable for estate vineyards, but I would not recommend it for grapes purchased from independent growers, unless such growers are endowed with divine measures of fortitude and patience. The model I am describing is suitable for a medium-sized estate where the site produces a number of articulations of personality, from a single variety of grapes. It does not reflect what would be suitable for a single, very small vineyard of homogenous character.

I have given some examples of what we do at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars to make the most of our terroir. One could also make the least of terroir, or one could make nothing of it, which shows at least that terroir and man are inseparable.

So, I think the last thing I will mention is probably the first in importance: to make the most out of terroir you have to love it. To love it means making the most diligent choices - in the vineyard and in the winery - to invoke the beauty which it is capable of expressing. This means loving it both for what it is and - perhaps more importantly - for what it might become.