Howell Mountain AVA celebrates 40 years
By Virginie Boone
ST. HELENA, Calif. — The creation of every wine appellation on earth probably involved the consumption of a lot of wine. Howell Mountain might be the only one that involved a lot of wine and a hot tub.
Its origins in a 1980s-era hot tub among friends was just one of the stories told at the Howell Mountain Vintners & Growers Association’s anniversary seminar and tasting held Monday, Aug. 14. The occasion marked 40 years of Howell Mountain’s designation as an American Viticultural Area.
The hot tub in question was on Mike Beatty’s property and involved fellow Howell Mountain winemaking pioneers Bob Brakesman and Randy Dunn. Together they came up with the region’s boundaries and raison d’être, gathering enough support from neighbors and the federal government to give it a go.
Held at Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, the event was attended by about 100 members of the trade and media, including winemakers there to pour their wines in a walk-around tasting of 20 Howell Mountain wineries.
Some of the participating wineries included such noted names as Arkenstone, Clif Family Winery, Dunn Vineyards, Howell Mountain Vineyards and La Jota Vineyard Co., alongside newer wineries like Almacerro, Paravel, Tobias Vineyards, Ink Grade Estate and two from the Mondavi sisters’ collection, Aloft and Dark Matter Wines.
A panel discussion about the appellation’s early days opened the proceedings, including several mentions of the hot tub, moderated by Elton Stone, President and CEO of Robert Craig Winery.
Stone led a discussion on the history of Howell Mountain with some of its pioneering winegrowers and winemakers: Beatty of Howell Mountain Vineyards and Beatty Ranch, Brakesman of Summit Lake Vineyards, and Dunn of Dunn Vineyards, all three of whom helped found the AVA. Also on the panel was winemaker Chris Carpenter of La Jota Vineyard Co., which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
Brakesman was the first of the three appellation founders to find himself on Howell Mountain back in the early 1970s. He bought a dilapidated house and barn on 28 acres of mixed zinfandel, carignane and petite sirah that had been abandoned for some time. It cost him $45,000 per acre. Brakesman put four acres of pre-Prohibition grapes back into production and produced his first vintage wines in 1974.
Randy Dunn and his wife Lori came along in 1978, buying the original five-acre property that has since grown to 35 acres. Their first harvest was in 1979. Dunn likes to make his cabernet sauvignons in an old-world style that are known to age.
“I despise high-alcohol,” he said to the crowd. “Ageability is acidity plus tannin, it’s what Howell Mountain gives you.”
Carpenter added that what he gets from Howell Mountain is “a depth of dark fruit with a mineral component, the wines have a Bordeaux-like undercurrent with California fruit, with a textural component you can’t beat in the Napa Valley.”
La Jota is on land originally owned by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo who sold it to George Yount. The winery was built by Frederick Hess, who ran it until Prohibition. In the 1970s a man by the name of Bill Smith came along and rebuilt it, planting vines in 1976 that still exist, including cabernet franc on St. George rootstock that Carpenter still works with. Jackson Family Wines has owned La Jota since 2005.
“The amount of iron in the soils, the separate soil types and the cold air flows make Howell Mountain one of the wettest and coldest appellations,” Carpenter said.
The Howell Mountain AVA was established in 1983, only two short years after Napa Valley became the first AVA in California (and only the second in the United States).
East of St. Helena in the Vaca Mountains, Howell Mountain is defined by its elevation, with anything using the Howell Mountain designation on its label required to exist at an elevation of 1,400 feet or higher.
The elevation is important because vineyards remain above the fog when the valley floor below gets covered in it. This keeps the region sunny and cool with daytime temperatures that are typically cooler than at lower elevations and nighttime temperatures that are generally warmer than below. Grape growers like this because the grapes enjoy a gradual growth period, resulting in concentrated wines that tend to be robust, yet complex and well-balanced.
And while rainfall numbers are typically double what the valley floor gets, the soil is well-draining and porous.
Vast at 14,000 acres in total, only 1,500 to 2,000 acres are planted to wine grapes, with the highest vineyard, Black Sears Estate, sitting at 2,500 feet. There are 40 growers and 63 wineries in the AVA.
Howell Mountain stakes its reputation predominantly on cabernet sauvignon, but zinfandel has also played an important part in its history, and today there also exist rarer varieties like St. Macaire and petit verdot. It has two main soil types: decomposed volcanic ash (also called tufa) and red clay high in iron content, with soil depths varying from 12 to 24 inches deep and vineyard slopes from 10 to 30 degrees.
In addition to Hess, pioneers of the area include Jean Adolph Brun and Jean V. Chaix, who planted hundreds of acres of vineyards in the 1880s, becoming one of the area’s most successful wineries of their era. They made their wines at the current site of Napa Wine Co. in Oakville. W.S. Keyes is another important Howell Mountain name to know, the founder of Liparita Vineyards, who built the stone winery known today as La Jota.
Today wines of great concentration and complexity are made from this land, still very much surrounded by wildlife and forest, where black bears, coyotes, deer, mountain lions and giant jack rabbits are as common as grapes. In such a young wine drinking culture as the United States, it’s a real testament to the early vision of three guys in a hot tub to see the potential of Howell Mountain early on.
Virginie Boone is senior contributing editor for The New Wine Review and has written about and reviewed the wines of Napa and Sonoma for more than a decade. Follow her Instagram @virginieboone or visit virginieboone.com.