My friend Ken Wytsma once said a vineyard is like studying history without having to engage your mind. I’m not completely sure what Ken meant by the comment, but it struck me as true. Years ago somebody chose to plant a vineyard in a unique place with a specific varietal to nourish the land, climate, and fruit with the hope of a delicious outcome. A lot of history — human, cultural, and geological — is represented in a glass of wine.
The entrance, decorated for the season.
The quote came to mind when D’Aun and I recently visited Ovid Vineyards, a truly unique vineyard high above Napa Valley. If you drove through the area thirty years ago you would never identify it as a natural place for a vineyard, yet now it is one of the most renowned of Napa wineries. The owners had a true sense of history when they carved out a few acres of rocky soil and said, “Let’s try something different….”
There are wineries who craft each vintage into their style. Lovely wines like Caymus and Silver Oak come to mind. They aim for a specific taste profile every year, even when the weather pushes toward something different.
And then there are the rebels, the outliers, the risk takers. Places like Ovid. Each vintage is considered a new experiment in wine making. Of course the physical location and winemaker’s talents have a certain consistency, but there is no fear of experimentation. They embrace the challenge of trying something completely new. When it works, it’s extraordinary.
When it doesn’t….
Well actually, when it doesn’t it can still be amazing. Take a great location, a brilliant winemaker, extraordinary attention to detail … and even a poor vintage can be so good people will wait years to buy a bottle.
The tasting room.
And that, in a nutshell, is Ovid Vineyards. Each year is a new adventure in winemaking. Sometimes the result is extraordinary. Sometimes it’s merely amazing.
High above Napa Valley, with a view all the way to San Francisco, sitting comfortable in an architecturally stunning building, D’Aun and I had a private tasting with Kaitlin of Ovid. First she served us the experimental wine created during the legendary 2007 vintage. It struck me as powerful, full of ambition, and still young. Classic Napa 2007. Then she opened a bottle of their 2012 vintage, which was smooth, silky, beautifully structured, and just a hint of perfume I couldn’t put my finger on (and still can’t).
I knew we were really onto something when I saw D’Aun’s eyes widen. Her palate has always been more refined than mine and I could see from her expression she was impressed. These were extraordinary wines.
Of course, they are also incredibly (some might say ridiculously) expensive. Which is why we didn’t load up the car with a case or two.
But wine is like a Richter scale. A 4.0 is enough to catch your attention. Then a 5.0 comes along and it’s 10x more powerful. Then a 6.0 is 10x more powerful than that. In the same way, taking a wine with a solid rating of 90 to an amazing wine rated at 99 isn’t just a 10% increase….it’s a 100% increase. Maybe a 1000% increase. Pardon my math, but you get the idea.
Or here’s another way to think of it. Some wines are pizza and a movie at home wines. Some are good pasta worthy, and others are saved for a great steak. Or you can link it to special events — the wine set aside for your birthday is nicer than what you might serve when your old college buddy visits.
And Ovid? Well, Ovid is the wine you open on your 50th wedding anniversary when it aligns with your 75th birthday to celebrate the birth of your 10th grandchild at your retirement party as NASA lands a man on Mars. Yeah, it’s that kind of pricey.
But it’s also that kind of wine.
