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SCREAMING EAGLE

Producer profile

Screaming EagleThe rarity and expense of this renowned and sought-after

Napa Cabernet blend means few have ever tasted the wine, let alone been granted entry into the winery. Decanter’s Adam Lechmere managed to do both

THE FIRST THING you notice on turning off the Silverado Trail at the leaning mailbox that signals the entrance to Screaming Eagle is its normality.

I don’t know what I expected. I suppose I thought the vines would be gilded, or perhaps the little groups of pickers standing around would be clad in gold braid and grey gloves, like hotel doormen. But it’s all very normal.

However, there was a certain magical quality in the air at 7.30am on this Monday in late October: mist hung in the valley, a soft white fleece over the vineyards. It sat in pockets on the deep, red soil of the tiny Oakville property – what the founder Jean Phillips called her ‘beautiful ranch with my precious little winery’ – and all was rather fetchingly serene as I drove up in my rental car.

Screaming Eagle isn’t the most famous winery in the world, but its wines are certainly among the most sought-after. The simple reason for the renown of this 20-hectare plot of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot is the sheer rarity of its

wines: the vines can yield a maximum of 800 cases (in 2005 there were only 500; the first vintage in 1992 was fewer than 200). The fact that Phillips guarded her privacy, giving no tastings and discouraging visits (to this day there is no sign on the property, the website gives nothing away, and we were asked not to photograph the entrance for fear of aiding its identification) only added to the mystique. There are dozens of great wine properties with a pedigree stretching back to the Middle Ages, producing arguably greater wines, but it’s not impossible to visit any of the top names of Bordeaux, Tuscany or Burgundy. Finally – and it seems no Napa success story is complete without him – US critic Robert Parker gave the first vintage, the ‘92, a perfect 100 points. Very quickly Screaming Eagle went from being a small hobby

Right: there’s no second wine at self-proclaimed Napa ‘first-growth’ Screaming Eagle – what doesn’t make the final blend is poured down the drain

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SCREAMING EAGLE

Screaming Eagle: a timeline

Pre-1986The Screaming Eagle Estate

has been a farm and vineyard since the early part

of the 20th century

1986Jean Phillips buys the

Screaming Eagle Estate and plants Cabernet, Merlot and

Cabernet Franc

1988Phillips starts making wine for personal use

from a few choice spots in the vineyard

1992The vintage destined to be the first commercial release of Screaming

Eagle is made. The winemaking team includes Phillips, Heidi Peterson

Barrett (above) and Gustav Dalla Valle

1995The 1992 vintage is

released, quickly made famous by strong reviews

by popular press

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three bottles per person. People tend to drink one, cellar one and sell the third, and the wine quickly finds its level in the secondary market – about £2,000 a bottle, with the 1997 fetching north of £3,000. There is no second wine: what doesn’t make the blend is poured down the drain. As this amounts to less than a barrel, it makes little odds.

The combination of Screaming Eagle’s rarity and expense makes it one of the least-known wines in the world. Many of those who sell it have never opened a bottle. The directors of London merchant Fine & Rare, which holds about 30 bottles from various vintages (worth more than £33,000) have never tasted it. It’s amazing how many people – veteran wine writers, sommeliers at world-class restaurants – have neither tried it nor visited the winery. A sommelier from Spain’s recently closed elBulli (a five-time winner of the World’s Best Restaurant) told me he’d been turned down for a visit, and had never even sniffed the wine. Even American rapper Jay-Z couldn’t get an invitation. ‘We’ll happily meet him and show him the wine,’ says general manager Armand de Maigret, ‘but we prefer to do that elsewhere, not at the winery.’

Pride of placeScreaming Eagle is the archetypal Napa cult wine. But just as you don’t hear the word ‘garagiste’ in St-Emilion anymore, the word ‘cult’, with its overtones of excess, now seems old hat. ‘No one calls us that any more,’ de Maigret says. ‘We’re a grand cru – a Napa first growth. Cults are wines that show the winemaker’s hand. But here it’s not the winemaker making the wine, it’s the place.’

The place is Oakville; the soils rich, deep red volcanic, dotted with the sizeable rocks they call corestones. On the top of the hill these are pulled out of the ground as big as truck wheels, but down on the valley floor they are more manageable.

Oakville soils are notably varied, and the Screaming Eagle terroir is no exception. ‘The main sub-classes of soil include Perkins Gravelly Loam and Bale Clay Loam, comprising igneous alluvium,’ explains winemaker Nick Gislason who came from Craggy Range in Marlborough, New Zealand, via Harlan Estate down the road in Oakville. ‘There is a

Above: the original stone winery on the Screaming Eagle Estate, in which Heidi Peterson Barrett made the inaugural 1992 vintage

2005A tiny harvest forces a

limit of only two bottles per person on

the mailing list

2000No vintage was declared this year, but

at the 20th Napa Valley Auction, a jeroboam (six-litre bottle) of the 1992

was auctioned for $500,000

winery to an American sensation. Parker’s notice also propelled Phillips’ winemaker, Heidi Peterson Barrett, who was also working at Dalla Valle Vineyards, from respected consultant to seer.

Allure and mysteryPhillips sold Screaming Eagle in 2006 (for an undisclosed price estimated at around $30 million) and it is now wholly owned by US property billionaire Stan Kroenke, who has a majority share in London’s Arsenal football club, as well as a clutch of basketball, hockey and American football teams. He was estimated to be worth US$3.2 billion in 2011. Also part of his portfolio is the 240ha winery Jonata in the Santa Ynez Valley, which produces six high-end wines in the $75 to $170 range.

At Screaming Eagle, Kroenke has augmented the tiny brick fermentation shed with a new winery building with 45 stainless-steel fermenters and barrel cellar. He’s also undertaken a comprehensive survey of the land, but otherwise things continue much as they did. The release price of Screaming Eagle is $750 a bottle, with strict allocations of

Life after Screaming Eagle

Charles and Ali Banks (pictured) are best known as former owners, along with business partner Stan Kroenke, of Screaming Eagle but their love affair with wine began long before their brief partnership in the Napa estate.

In 2000, Charles Banks was offered a partnership in Jonata. With Andy Erickson as consultant and Matt Dees as winemaker, the first Jonata vintage, 2005, earned encouraging reviews.

In 2006, Charles was offered the chance to buy the Screaming Eagle property but needed a partner to help with funds. He found Kroenke. The alliance was brief but intense, ending four years later. Banks, having accomplished his goal of replanting the vineyards and building a new winery, parted ways with Kroenke noting, ‘Stan likes to work alone; he’s not a guy who needs a partner. I wanted to do other things in the wine business and Stan wanted to get more involved in Screaming Eagle. He’s the right man for the helm. Stan won’t compromise and the wines will get better and better.’

After walking away from Screaming Eagle in 2009, the couple found themselves with some lessons learned, a clean slate and a tidy sum. ‘It was a great combination,’ says Charles. But, he confesses, ‘There were things we loved about Screaming Eagle and things we hated. We loved the giving back part’ – that is the sums the wines would fetch at charity auctions. ‘But we didn’t like the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses aspect, where suddenly you’re spending too much money for all the wrong reasons and start getting away from the wine itself.’ They were also

frustrated at not being able to share their wine. ‘If we wanted to open a bottle for friends, we had to pay retail!’

Altruistic ventureThe concept of giving back formed the soul of their radically different wine venture: Cultivate Wines. ‘Creating a wine program that allows people to give back every time they buy (rather than only at auction) was my goal,’ says Ali Banks. With Cultivate, 10 cents in every dollar earned is donated to causes that people can vote for on the company website, and funding is open to most causes. There are four wines in the portfolio: a Californian Chardonnay, Italian Pinot Grigio, Argentinian Malbec and Californian Cabernet-Merlot blend, ranging in price from $12.99 to $28.99. Cultivate is on track to give away more than $800,000 this year; remarkable given that the wines have only been on the market six months.

Meanwhile, Charles also has a share in Sandhi Wines, a small production California winery co-owned with Rajat Parr, wine director for Michael Mina Restaurants, and winemaker Sashi Moorman. He’s also the founder and managing partner in Terroir Capital, a fund that invests in, develops and operates wineries and luxury hotels around the world. Several South African wineries are part of the fund, including Faithful Hound, Fable and Stellenbosch. The future includes ownership in an as-yet-unnamed Washington State winery and a partnership in a new Burgundy négociant called Maison L’Orée.by Katie Kelly Bell

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‘We’re a grand cru – a Napa first growth. Here it’s not the winemaker making the wine,

it’s the place’ Armand de Maigret

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considerable gravel and clay content, going from cobbles and gravels on the east side of the property to loam and clay on the west.’

This is some of the finest Cabernet Sauvignon land in Napa, and the team – de Maigret and Gislason, vineyard manager David Abreu, and Bordeaux’s Michel Rolland as consultant, control the vines with forensic attention.

Selection is keyThe vines – 11.7ha of Cabernet, 4ha of Merlot, 2.5ha of Cabernet Franc, a tiny ‘blend experiment’ parcel of Petit Verdot, and some Sauvignon Blanc I was told they drink in-house (but has since, apparently, been released commercially*) – are planted across all soil types, at an average density of 7,000 vines per hectare. Merlot and Cabernet are planted on gravel and clay-based soils. ‘Parcels from both sides, as well as the middle, make the blend,’ Gislason says.

Final yields range from a tiny 14hl/ha to 42hl/ha, depending on the block. (At neighbouring Mondavi-Rothschild joint venture Opus One, they reckon on between 28hl/ha to 40hl/ha.) ‘The blocks are so small and variation within them is key,’ says de Maigret. They are picked in up to five different passes. ‘We pick on taste, and use the refractometer (a tool to measure grapes’ sugar levels) afterward to confirm what we’re tasting.’

The estate is divided into 45 parcels, each with its own fermenter. That way, ‘we can select just the top lots for the blend, and are never forced through logistical constraints to combine lots earlier in the process’. So they select, and select, and select, from vineyard to barrel to bottle. ‘By definition, blending lots too early results in an average,’ Gislason says. ‘And here, average simply will not do. We are looking to select only the top end of that bell curve,

And the wines? The 2008 (88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 5% Merlot) has a fresh spearmint nose with plum, blackcurrant, hints of smoke and musk. All repeated on the palate: bright and juicy with spice, lifted black fruit, liquorice, sandalwood and parma violets. Fine, earthy and chilli-spiced tannins are perfectly integrated with fresh acidity. Very long. £1,350 Vineyard Cellars

The 2009 (just bottled) is the exact same blend. Dense aromas of blackcurrant, with hints of mint and capsicum. This weight follows through on the palate with powerful tannins, giving a serious edge to the fruit. There is a note of spice and cedar, but the overall impression is of great precision allied with perfumed fruit. Hugely complex and very young. I wouldn’t touch either vintage for at least five years. £925–£1,779 Fine & Rare, Vineyard Cellars

* In June, it was reported by Tyler Colman on his Dr Vino wine blog that Screaming Eagle had released 600 bottles of its Sauvignon Blanc for $250 a bottle, to ‘active members’ only, with the proviso they not resell it. Six bottles found their way to auction, where they sold for ten times the release price.

Adam Lechmere is the news editor for Decanter and Decanter.com

2009Stan Kroenke becomes sole

proprietor

2011Nick Gislason (above)

succeeds Erickson as winemaker

Screaming Eagle: a timeline (continued)

2007Replanting of some blocks begins, followed, in 2008,

by the construction of new winery

2010Erickson hires Nick Gislason as his assistant; first harvest

in new winery

2006Phillips sells the estate to Stan Kroenke

and Charles Banks (below) for an estimated $30 million. Andy Erickson is winemaker, David Abreu is vineyard manager and Michel Rolland consults

cedar, and firm backbone with extraordinarily fine grain tannin, and holds acidity remarkably well’.

With Merlot, the difference between the east and west side is pronounced: the west (more clay, picked a day after the east in 2010) is rounder and lighter than its gravel-grown sibling, its tannins more giving. ‘The best Merlot typically comes from the gravelly east end of the property, and it’s very atypical in character for Napa Merlot,’ says Gislason. ‘On that site, it picks up amazing floral characters and minerality, and seems to have a spirit that lies somewhere between the minerality and perfume of Bordeaux and the richness of Napa.’

The result is a wonderful wine. Whether it’s worth even its release price is another question. I’ve certainly had wines quite as good for a fraction of the cost. But that’s beside the point. What I was not prepared for was the elegance – ‘cult’ and ‘Parker’ seem linked with ‘blockbuster’. It is perfumed and delicate, with a deep mineral backbone and splendid, exotic fruit. The outlandish sister of the more bookish Opus One, perhaps. As a confection of Napa and Bordeaux it is pre-eminent. All great wines aim to capture the spirit of place but to find a wine that seems to contain the essence of two great regions is gratifying. Two great wines for the price of one. It’s almost a bargain. D

and that’s only really possible after the true character of each plot has revealed itself.’

Tasting the 2010 vintage in barrel (the wines spend about 20 months in 75% new French oak), the different soil types come through. Cabernet Sauvignon from different blocks runs the gamut of flavours from blackcurrant, earth and tar to cedar, sandalwood and parma violets. Gislason reckons Cabernet performs particularly well on ‘the more clay and loamy soils, giving floral tones, a lot of

‘Blending lots too early results in an average. And here, average simply will not do’ Nick Gislason (right)

Above: Screaming Eagle winemaker Nick Gislason says selecting the best grapes is only possible ‘after the true character of each of the 45 vineyard plots has revealed itself’