Relic Wines Holds the Line: Small, Precise and Hands-On After 25 Vintages
By Tim Carl
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Relic Wine Cellars finished harvest a few days before the late-October rain. Inside their Soda Canyon cave, the entire operation fits into one glance — two owners, one employee, one intern, about 150 barrels and 2,200 to 2,400 cases a year. The wines read more like place than a business plan.
“We wrapped right before that last inch-plus of rain,” said winemaker and co-owner Michael “Mike” Hirby. “Cool summer, three moderate heat spikes and we picked ahead of them. We got 10 to 15 more days of hang time than 2024, and everything came in clean.”
Hirby runs Relic with his wife, Schatzi Throckmorton, co-owner and general manager, who handles the business, grower relationships and most direct-to-consumer work. They marked three milestones this year — Relic’s 25th harvest, 10 years in their Soda Canyon winery and their 20th wedding anniversary. They celebrated by leaning further into what got them here: small lots, hands-on decisions and a hard no on growth that would blur vineyard character.
Why Small Rules
“Great wine isn’t scalable,” Hirby said. “The smaller and more finite the site, the more character the wine carries. Once the tank gets big, character gets diluted and you have to lean on marketing. We built Relic to stay small enough that tiny, high-character vineyards still matter.”
They keep a broad but coherent range of wines: Sonoma Coast pinot noir and chardonnay; Napa old-vine and Rhône varieties; and Bordeaux reds led by single-vineyard cabernet, merlot blends and cabernet franc.
The cave’s stillness hides a restless craft ethos. Most white and pinot ferments use native yeast. For reds, Hirby often seeds lots with a pied de cuve built from the Kashaya Pinot Noir fermentation from Fort Ross–Seaview, a method he has refined over a decade in this facility.
Challenge your vocabulary with this week’s mystery word. Submit your answer in the poll, and check the bottom of the page for the correct answer.
This week’s term comes from science but carries weight for growers, winemakers and researchers alike.
Answer at the bottom of the page.
Pied de Cuve: The Mother
At Relic, the “mother” is an active starter drawn from a native pinot noir ferment. Kept under about 5% alcohol so the yeast stays reproductive, it is added to incoming lots to guide clean, aromatic fermentations. Think sourdough — a house culture that carries a consistent, site-first voice without packaged strains.
The oak follows the same logic. Hirby selects specific French forests and slow toasts to integrate — not flavor — the wine. That choice has gotten pricier.
“We buy about 50 new French barrels a year,” Hirby said. “Between euro moves and 3% to 10% tariffs — some importers absorbed a bit — we were looking at more than 20% increases in a couple of months. We haven’t raised prices. We’re absorbing it. That’s where this market is now.”
From Tent to Cave
Relic began small and stayed that way. In 2000, Hirby arrived in Napa without a job and lived in a tent while he looked for cellar work. Behrens & Hitchcock on Spring Mountain hired him, and he learned fast. Throckmorton had landed in the valley a year earlier, first at Folie à Deux and then at Behrens & Hitchcock, where she became the business manager — a role she still holds today. The two met through that Spring Mountain circle, married at the winery and in 2001 started Relic with a couple of barrels. Hirby later helped launch Realm, then refocused on Relic’s steady build. In 2009 they bought land off Soda Canyon Road and later cut a cave into the hill. The 2017 fires scorched the property, but barrels in the cave were spared. The lesson — build for resilience, keep lots small, control what you can — still shows up in the glass.
Old Vines: Loss and Persistence
Although long sold out, the 2022 Valdiguié illustrates Relic’s point of view. It came from the Alfred Frediani Vineyard in Calistoga — 100-plus-year-old, head-trained, dry-farmed vines at the end of Pickett Road. The core block dated to 1901, with petite sirah from the late 1930s woven through. After the property changed hands in 2023, the new owner ripped out the old vines and replanted to cabernet. Relic’s last Valdiguié was 2022 at 12.4% alcohol, picked ahead of the heat.
I photographed there with Hirby years ago, and I still mourn the loss. The wine ranks among my favorite bottles of the past decade from any producer. Hirby has been a steady advocate for hard-to-find heritage sites; losing one just as it was becoming viable again under careful farming and small-lot attention underscores the stakes. Old vineyards can deliver singular wines. Replacing them with more cabernet may pencil out but erases character that took generations to grow.
“That vineyard was just getting its breath back,” Hirby said. “We finally had a full barrel. Then it was ripped out for cabernet. There’s no getting that wine back.”
Relic still works with the other Frediani branch — old-vine charbono planted in the 1940s and a 1980 block that feeds cabernet franc — and keeps scouting mature material: Hyde (1989) for chardonnay, Cortese (1989) in Coombsville for syrah, Dutton-farmed late ’70s chardonnay in Russian River and the oldest syrah vines at Hudson.
Vintage Lens
For Hirby, there’s no recipe — just attention. Each vintage offers something distinct, so he stays on the floor, tasting, cutting presses by feel and changing course when the fruit asks for it. In 2025 he stopped presses earlier when uneven tannins showed up. In 2022 he cooled fermentations through the heat to keep freshness. For the 2023 Hyde Chardonnay he left the wine 17 months on lees and bottled unfiltered.
“Some years you’re not trying to force a blockbuster,” Hirby said. “You’re trying to catch what’s most beautiful about that year. Consistency for customers matters, but so does not crushing the soul out of the vintage.”
“We might get about 40 vintages of making wine in a lifetime,” Throckmorton said. “Each one is different, so you have to stay engaged and keep learning but also celebrate each year as a singular event.”
Four Current Releases
2023 Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay (Carneros) — About four barrels, $85. Native ferment and native malolactic, about 17 months on lees in about 50% new French oak. Late pick, citrus-framed, fine texture, bottled unfiltered.
2022 Scarpa Syrah (Coombsville) — Cortese Vineyard, north-facing volcanic rock, about 20% whole cluster. About 68 cases, $75. Purple-fruited, floral and pepper-laced in a warm year without a maple-syrupy weight.
2022 “The Prior” Cabernet Franc (Calistoga) — Frediani block planted 1980 on river-pebble alluvium. 108 cases, $125. Thick skins, dense midpalate, lifted aromatics; cooled ferments preserved freshness through the heat.
2022 “Artefact” Cabernet Sauvignon (Calistoga — Kenefick Ranch, Block 7) — About 290 cases, $125. Valley-floor bench with deep volcanic soils near Eisele, across the road from Frediani’s former Valdiguié vineyard. Native-guided ferment, gentle press cuts. Cassis and black plum over graphite and warm stone; supple but not heavy, with that Calistoga mineral line.
Two of the current releases come from Calistoga near Pickett Road, the area hit by August’s Pickett Fire — about 6,800 acres burned north of town and along the Silverado Trail. Hirby keeps circling back to the end of Pickett Road — deep, rocky benches between Kenefick, Frediani and Eisele. The alluvial wash off Simmons Canyon gives drought-tolerant vines, thick skins and a volcanic mineral line that shows even in warm years.
“It’s hillside character on the valley floor,” he said. “You get power and freshness without forcing it.”
Market Reality
According to Hirby, Relic sells mostly direct, with tiny wholesale in four states. Texas is growing through a three-person distributor focused on small California producers. The mailing list shows attrition, but they replace departures by meeting people where they live — about a dozen small in-home dinners this year.
“Being small helps,” Hirby said. “A hundred new customers can move the needle for us. The big wineries are facing a different problem. A lot of the ‘boutique’ masquerade is cracking. People want to see real work by real people in a real place.”
Throckmorton sees the same from her seat with Napa Valley Vintners and from 25 years of community ties, including her long stint as business manager at Behrens Family Winery.
“If we didn’t know what was in every barrel, it would be disappointing,” she said. “We’ve made hard calls — in 2020 we bottled only chardonnay. We’ll never release something we don’t believe in.”
How They Make It
Ferments: Native for chardonnay and pinot; pied de cuve from Kashaya Pinot for most reds.
Pressing: No automatic fractioning; cuts by taste to keep rough tannins out of the core wine.
Cooperage: French oak throughout; woods from Vosges and Jupilles are common for pinot/chardonnay; selective Allier on cabernet for integration, not overt oak.
Scale: About 2,200 to 2,400 cases across about 150 barrels; three to four people doing the work.
What Survives
The path forward is measured — be scrappy, stay nimble, keep showing up for customers, add precise vineyards when they’re available (Oakville Ranch joins in 2025), and keep mentoring young cellar hands and interns.
“We’re working harder and not raising prices,” Throckmorton said. “If you do the same things you did five years ago, you’ll have a hard time in this market. We just need to grind through the next couple of years to a new equilibrium.”
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Tim Carl is a Napa Valley-based photojournalist.
Wine Discovery:
If you had to pick just one from the lineup, the 2023 Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay from Carneros is a compelling choice at $85, with only 48 cases produced. Sourced from Old Wente vines planted in 1989 in Hyde Vineyard’s pebbly clay-loam soils, this native-yeast chardonnay spent 17 months on lees in 50% new French oak and was bottled unfiltered. Pale gold in the glass, it opens with aromas of crème caramel, spiced pear, wet stone and candied Meyer lemon. The palate is layered — golden apple, citrus custard, mango and saffron — with a lithe texture that carries through to a long lemon curd and sandalwood finish. Medium acidity and moderate alcohol support its detailed structure. Serve with seared scallops, roast chicken with preserved lemon or saffron risotto. Contact the winery for availability.
Today’s Polls:
This Week's Word Challenge Reveal:
The correct answer is C: “Classification by ancestry.”
Cladistics is a system of classification based on shared ancestry and evolutionary relationships. In viticulture, it’s used to trace the lineage of grape varieties — helping growers identify traits tied to resilience, flavor and climate adaptation. For producers such as Relic, who work closely with old vines and site-specific lots, these genetic insights can guide planting decisions and preserve diversity that might otherwise be lost.
The word comes from the Greek “klados,” meaning branch. Cladistics took root in biology in the mid-20th century through the work of German entomologist Willi Hennig. Today it shapes how botanists and geneticists map out plant evolution — including the tangled, fascinating family tree of wine grapes.
Mnemonic: “Cladistics = CLAD = Common Lineage And Descent”
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Barbera is my go-too; the most successful Italian Transplant in CA, versatile at the table, great color and acidity with low tannins.
I like Cinsault.