Verticals (2019) s02e03 Episode Script

(gentle chimes)
- Well geez, how do you know
Napa wine without Clos du Val?
(gentle music begins)
- Clos du Val is a really
historic California winery.
- Clos du Val is certainly
one of the most important
wineries in Napa.
We don't talk about size,
we talk about reputation,
and so Clos du Val is in the top 10.
(gentle music continues)
- Legendary, legendary
chateau here in Napa,
Judgment of Paris, one
of the most recognized
wines in the world.
(gentle music begins)
- I first discovered Clos du Val in 1976.
We decided at L'Academie du Vin in Paris
that we wanted to do something
about California wine.
- Their first vintage was a 1972
and that vintage is very, very famous,
their Cabernet Sauvignon,
because it was one of the contenders
in the very famous 1976 Judgment of Paris,
where the very best of California wines
went head to head with the
very best French wines.
It was a big deal--
- And really put American wines on the map
and showed that they could
compete on a global scale
that you didn't just need
to drink from France.
- Nobody really believed
that these cute little
California wines could compete with
the likes of First Growth Bordeaux.
- You don't have Napa
wine without Clos du Val.
(dramatic upbeat music begins)
- Clos du Val was founded in 1972
by two Frenchman actually, John Goelet,
who is descended from a very
famous Bordeaux merchant,
and then Bernard Portet.
- I knew that it was French
owned by John Goelet.
- My family have been in the wine industry
really starting out as wine merchants
since the 18th century.
So we're talking
generations and generations
that have been involved
in the wine industry.
So my grandfather, John Goelet,
was really keen on continuing that passion
and that relationship with wine
and he wanted to go and embark on creating
something new somewhere else.
- John Goelet's not a wine maker,
he doesn't have a wine background per se,
he's a businessman really,
but loved wine to the highest level.
And that's where Bernard got roped in.
(upbeat music continues)
- I was born and raised in
France, in the Bordeaux area
and my father had been a vineyard grower
for quite a few years
in the Cognac region.
Then he was technical
director of Chateau Lafite
when I grew up so I moved out there.
And my father was very influential
in helping me discover the wines.
I went to interview with Mr.
Goelet, that was in July 1970,
and at the end of the
interview, Mr. Goelet asked me,
"When do you want to start?"
I've been working with Mr.
Goelet since September 1, 1970,
quite close to 50 years now.
- The brief he gave Bernard was,
"Go find a great place to make beautiful,
Bordeaux varietal wines
somewhere other than Europe.
And let's really do our homework
"nd find the right place to
go start a winery together."
- [Bernard] He sent me around the world.
- [Olav] So, let's go to Australia,
let's go to South Africa,
let's go to South America,
let's go to the United States.
- Of all the places I saw,
two or three retained my attention.
One was Napa Valley because
being raised in the Medoc area,
I was thinking of du Val in
terms of Cabernet Sauvignon,
Bordeaux red varieties basically.
- Bernard chose the
property in Stags' Leap
in a very, very scientific way.
- Driving down this Silverado Trail
in the afternoon or late afternoon,
every time I went past that hill,
which is about half a mile from here,
every time going down
that hill it was cooler.
- He started in Calistoga
and the weather up there,
he could feel.
And you could do that today,
if you drive up there,
it's probably six to 10 degrees
warmer than it is right now.
- [Claire] Bernard stuck
his arm out the window
as they drove through
Napa Valley, decided no,
this is too hot.
- He rolled down his window
because the air conditioning
was broken in the car and
with his arm out the window,
he felt these cool breezes
as he comes into Stags' Leap
and he actually pulled over and said,
"I wanna check out this area."
- He said, "This is
perfect, this feels right."
So very scientific.
(laughs)
- [Bernard] I thought,
well if I can't change
the temperature during the day,
at least I'll have cool nights
and that will give me the freshness
and the fruitiness that I was seeking.
(gentle music continues)
- [Olav] I think Bernard
had a great ability
to pick sight locations for what he was
envisioning in a wine.
- [Steven] He was having a start,
an absolutely ground level start.
I would not be surprised
if it wasn't Bernard
who chose the vineyard
because that would make sense.
- When you talk to
Bernard about Clos du Val,
it was all about the terroir
and the selection of this
property here particularly,
it wasn't just about being
in California or Napa Valley,
it was this specific spot.
He ended up calling the winery Clos du Val
which is, direct
translation is not accurate
but the mindset which is it's
the valley within the valley,
or little pocket within the valley.
And that pocket today
is Stags' Leap district
which is known as the
valley within the valley.
- I really didn't intend to stay long,
I thought I would go back home by the end
of December or something like that.
And in January, Mr. Goelet said,
"Why don't you stay a bit longer?"
And basically, I never decided to stay
but I stayed, it's been 48 years now.
(gentle music begins)
- Here we have a bottle of 1978
Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve.
The reason I chose this vintage
is because '78 was a
very interesting year.
It was between cool and normal
summer with slow maturation,
which was very good because it maintained
the acidity of the grapes.
But towards the end of September,
we had fairly warm weather.
An interesting thing about this vintage
is that there was not much in plain
but every single lot of Cabernet Sauvignon
came at 23 and a half bricks,
every single lot.
It's unheard of really.
So this should provide us with
some good wine down the road
but I will see right now.
'78, I've got to think, whose room was I?
(laughs)
Okay, so the winery was
fully built by then,
the sales were doing very good
in part excited by the
Judgment of Paris tasting
and the winery was well equipped
and I had very good personnel.
Okay.
(humming)
Oh, got it.
Okay, so we have a little bit of
sediment there but it's normal.
The cork held its own.
Ooh, nice red color, ruby, nice ruby.
Okay, so I haven't had
that wine in a long time.
Typical round nose of Clos du Val wine,
very round, broad, good
freshness in the nose.
In terms of color was can
see that it's really ruby,
not much hint of any browning.
It's a tobacco, chocolate,
quite a bit of red fruit.
Ooh, I hadn't had that wine for a while.
So I see nice and round at the beginning
and then in the mouth, it's round,
very fresh, and a good, long finish
which means the flavors keep
going in the back of the mouth
and bouncing back to
the back of the palate.
That's really a good wine
to have with your dinner.
Because I was raised in a country
where food and wine are a necessity.
So I remember my father was
not a cook, not am I either,
but my father always asked my mother,
"What are you going to
have for lunch or dinner?"
And so he would choose the
wine according to the meal.
And now we're talking 50 years later
and I'm doing exactly the same thing.
I ask my wife, "What are we
going to serve tonight as food?"
And I choose the wine according to that
and on top of that, living
in Napa Valley is a blessing.
You can't have a climate
much better than that,
especially for grapes and
also for the pioneer spirit
that used to exist in those days
and communication between
the various wine makers
who were telling you exactly,
I just come back from Bordeaux
and I learned that, that, and that.
And you went into those technical meetings
and you are benefiting from that approach,
I call it the pioneering
spirit but it was beautiful
and that sense of
companionship, of comradery,
is the reason why I
never went back to France
because I enjoyed it so much.
- He just stuck to his roots
so he said I'm gonna make it in the style
that I would back in Bordeaux.
So that, I think, was a
little bit of a difference
in how the wine at Clos du Val was made
and the mentality and
the thinking for Bernard
versus maybe some of the other players
in Napa at the time in the early 70s.
Now, in my current
relationship with Bernard,
he's on our Board of
Directors at Clos du Val,
so I see him on a regular basis
when it comes to company wide goals
and part of that includes tastings.
So I'll bring him in and
taste barrels with him,
I'll taste current releases
and sometimes we'll go
over old wines for fun
and compare notes and taste together
and so he's still a part of Clos du Val,
he's kinda the cornerstone of Clos du Val
and he maintains a presence even today,
almost 50 years later
which is pretty amazing.
(upbeat music begins)
- Ted Henry is the fourth
winemaker for Clos du Val
and he started in 2016.
He really began pushing the winery
forward in terms of quality
and he actually decided that
he only wanted Clos du Val
to be producing estate wines,
meaning that all of the
grapes came from vineyards
on their estate that they
were managing and tending.
And then he's also really pushed forward
the organic movement.
A lot of the vineyards
are converting to organic.
- [Olav] When you look at
the history of Clos du Val
and you know, we're coming up on 50 years,
to be able to strike lightning twice
and to have someone who can take on
and take that baton and pass it on
and steward that wine and that property
the way that Bernard had
envisioned it back in 1969
when he was floating around this valley,
I think we're lucky.
- Ted henry certainly will follow closely
what Bernard Portet has left him
and I think he'll put his own twist on it.
- I picked the 2016
Hirondelle Cabernet Sauvignon.
This was the first year that I was here
for the entire growing
season at Clos du Val
so it represented a lot of changes.
It was when we were first
releasing the estate only wines
that Clos du Val was producing
and also kinda represents
when we transitioned to organic farming.
We really focused down
to our core principles
which for me and for what
Clos du Val represents,
is Stags' Leap district
where this winery was founded
almost 50 years ago and
also Cabernet Sauvignon.
So, this ticks off all those boxes.
It's 100% Cabernet Sauvignon,
100% from Stags' Leap Hirondelle Vineyard
where we are right now.
My previous history was making wine
for pretty small operations
that would be estate models
so I had a pretty good
familiarity with small vineyard
blocks and the importance of
bringing those into the winery
and focusing on the
very best estate fruit.
And what's kinda the reason
that I was drawn here
to the property is this
kind of focus on the past
and the estate fruit going
back to where we began
and these Cabernet vineyards
around where we are right now,
which we now call Hirondelle Vineyard,
is what was in the original
1972 Cabernet Sauvignon
that was the first wine
that was made here.
And so this wine right here,
the '16 Hirondelle
represents kind of to me,
going back to that estate only, handmade,
small quantity Cabernet Sauvignon
that was something that made Clos du Val
so special back then.
(upbeat music continues)
This is the wine that
I tell our customers,
"If you are gonna put
something down in the cellar,
the Hirondelle is the best choice."
Like I said, 100% Cabernet,
it's a little bit bolder and bigger
than some of our other wines.
It's just great, like, the
black cherry and blackberry
kind of condensed in there
but then also has this really cool, like,
I normally think it's like a cocoa powder
but it's more like a fresh baked brownie.
Like if you think of brownies
and those black fruits,
spice, and like a cigar box note.
And one thing that's cool,
you get it just at the top,
it's sort of like a smaller component
but this menthol hint
that is kinda classic
for Stags' Leap where we are.
Some of the Clos du Val's that I've had
going back to the mid, early
70s have that component too,
like a chocolate mint kind of character
and it's still coming through.
I love this wine.
To me, Stags' Leap is texture
and Clos du Val Stags'
Leap is about texture.
There's a lot of great
fruit components in here,
and don't get me wrong,
there's a lot of things
happening here but what I
think you can't replicate
outside of Stags' Leap Cabernet
and Hirondelle Vineyard
is this texture to the
wine where it has the term,
iron fist in a velvet glove.
If you think of something
that's firm and very powerful
but soft at the same time.
And the term that I just started using,
which I think works too is
the wines are rock soft.
Instead of rock hard tannins,
they're like rock soft tannins
and it's something you
don't see in Oakville,
you don't see it up in
mountain fruit areas
but this to me represents
that first vintage
and my whole first year, twelve
month period on the property
where this wine was made intentionally
with the idea of what
ended up in this bottle.
Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley
is basically one of those perfect matches.
And it's not the same way in Bordeaux
and if you're in Bordeaux,
you're gonna see a lot more
Merlot than Cabernet Sauvignon.
You're gonna see Cab Franc
and you're gonna see different blends.
Cabernet Sauvignon is really
suited to our weather.
What a lot of people
probably don't realize
is it's considerably warmer here
and drier here than in Bordeaux,
which a lot of people think of
as like the father land of Cabernet.
And so that's what this represents, too,
that's why this is 100% Cabernet.
When I made this wine, you know,
I could have done whatever blend I wanted,
it could 10% Merlot or whatever,
but consciously I wanted
to do 100% Cabernet
to really focus on Cabernet
Sauvignon as a grape
and how it excels within Napa
and more specifically within Stags' Leap.
You know, it wasn't like
a challenge-free vintage.
No vintage is a slam
dunk for the most part.
There's always something that comes up
but overall, it was actually really even,
great vintage, especially
here at Clos du Val.
But it's a bit of pressure when you have
that kind of history and,
you know, the Paris tasting
and the background and
all these other pieces.
(gentle music continues)
- I think Ted Henry confidence
actually relieves that kind of pressure
and I also think it's the relationship
that he's been able to build with Bernard.
I really applaud both of them
when they sit and they talk about wines,
whether it's old wines that were
from library collection
here or Bernard's wines
or current wines with Ted,
there's a very open and humble discussion
and it's not about
criticizing someone's skills,
it's about making sure that the wine
is shown as best as possible.
- Olav Goelet is the third generation,
he's the grandson of John Goelet.
He joined the company about
18 months ago, I think.
And he has taken the helm of the company.
And he does it very well.
I like him because he's reserved,
he's young but he's wiser than his age.
And that's very exciting for me
to have dealt with John
Goelet, his children,
and now his grandchildren.
So, I love it.
- So, I chose this bottle here today,
Cuvee Charlotte Dumay of
Corton, Burgundy 1953.
And really focused in on
the familial relationship
that this wine has with
my family, the Goelets.
When I look at this wine,
what it really makes me think about,
in some ways it grounds me
in thinking about how long
of a history my family has
had a connection with wine.
It's something that I think a lot of times
can be very easily taken for granted.
It puts into perspective how
young the Clos du Val story is
compared to where the family
started out in the wine space.
(classical music begins)
I think we should give it
a shot and open this wine
and I'm gonna do my best to
ensure that we get it in tact
and enjoy this beautiful wine.
(classical music continues)
The color looks beautiful.
It's definitely got a nose.
Pleasantly surprised.
You know, I get a freshness
in especially the front
side of the palate.
There's definitely some nice earth
and sort of tobacco components.
It's fairly elegant, I
think in its structure
and it's weight, it's nice and light.
I think a beautiful
expression of Burgundy.
So what makes this wine
specially appealing
and interesting to me is
when I think about 1953,
it would have been the latter
years of Daniel Guestier IV,
so a descendant of Daniel Guestier
who started B&G Wine
Merchants with Hugh Barton.
So this descendant was my
great-great-grandfather
and it's just fun to
think about how his career
and passion for wine passed
down to my grandfather,
and now two generations
after my grandfather,
I'm sitting here today enjoying this wine.
- He knows he has to succeed.
I think that he knows
what he has to achieve
and he's going to get there
and I can vouch for him
that he will get there within a few years.
- Clos du Val has a style on its own
that can't be framed within
French or California.
If you were to lean, you know,
some people would say it's
more of a Bordeaux style
but I think really what
we're trying to achieve here
on a continuous basis is
a style characteristic
that is going to show
a beautiful expression
from where we sit,
which is in Stags' Leap.
(classical music continues)
(gentle chimes)