Wine Personality of the month!

 Claude Blankiet / Proprietor of Blankiet Estate /Yountville, Napa Valley

Claude and his wife Katherine purchased the estate above Dominus Estate and Napanook in 1996. Claude grew up in France with a family deeply rooted in the textile industry. His grandfather invented weaving looms and his father owned factories manufacturing military uniforms before World War II
 
What inspires you the most in wine?  
The discovery of a great bottle and sharing the emotional effect with friends

From which vintage of your wines, you are particularly proud of and why?
2010: It was the first year we worked with Denis Malbec, the former Winemaker at Chateau Latour. 2010 was challenging for Napa Valley vintners, with a wet spring with cold temperatures that lingered until July. Many estates opted to de-leaf their vineyards in August, hoping to accelerate ripening. Unfortunately for them, a brutal heat wave in late August burned their fruit. Others harvested early to save their crops and made wine with ripened fruit. Having a French Winemaker accustomed to late-season weather challenges was a blessing. We did not de-leaf and waited. Finally, the weather changed, and we got several weeks of perfect ripening. We were rewarded for making wine rated among the three best Cabernets of the Napa Valley in 2010.
 
What have been the most recent innovations that you have implemented in viticultural practices and vinification processes? 
 
Viticulture: To mitigate the effect of climate change. We use twenty-five kilometers of shading material draped in front of the fruiting zone to mitigate excess solar radiation. After the weather cools, the fabric is raised and clipped to the top wire of the canopy. This acts like a curtain, and it works!
 
The second innovation to mitigate heat spikes is the installation of little misters just above the fruiting zone. One mister every meter vaporizes a fine mist of water between the rows of vines. The evaporation lowers the ambient temperature around the clusters by 10 degrees C. 
 
Winemaking: We are particularly proud of our sorting line. We can micro-harvest fruit at the optimal phenolic maturity we want. Picking is done at night and stored in little stackable baskets. We hold the pallets for a few hours inside a custom-made freezer that brings the berries to minus 5 degrees C. This firms up the berries and protects the skin from cracking during the sorting process. Our sorting line assembly has two Weco optical sorters. It takes four minutes to sort our fruit, eliminating immature berries, raisins, or unwanted fruit.
 
Name one wine that has really impressed you? 
Taylor vintage Port 1935
Blankiet Estate Mythicvs 2016
 
 What wine you wished to enjoy on the last supper?
 Chateau Haut Brion 1989 in magnum
 
How was the Napa Valley Vintage 2022?
Vintage 2022 in Napa Valley was challenged by a heat wave on September 4th that lasted for several days with temperatures from 100° F to 114° F. Our shade cloth and mister system prevented our fruit from dehydration, which was not the case for our neighbors where we saw rows after rows of dried raisins. Our two optical sorters sorted out any berries showing some puckering that went for our Port wines. Our winemaker Graeme MacDonald was vigilant during fermentation as higher sugars triggered an Acetobacter strain growth throughout the valley. Our wines have another fifteen months of barrel maturation, and we will rack them again shortly. Several vintners who visited us in September 2022 to see our systems told us that our fruit was the best they tasted in the valley. At present, the wines are still primary.
 
All the best,
Claude

When walking on the well-manicured vineyards belonging to Claude and Katherine Blankiet while listening to their passionate description about the terroir of the Blankiet Estate, one cannot help but conclude that this winery truly is one of the top estates in Napa Valley.

The couple established a 16-acre Blankiet Paradise Hills in 1996 after finding a dream spot just behind Dominus Estate in Yountville, in the steep foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains. They followed the pattern that some of the top wine estates had used and asked the most famous viticulturist in Napa Valley, David Abreu, to develop the vineyards, while superstar winemaker Helen Turley was hired to make the wines. The recipe worked well. Abreu planted the vineyards with different four varietals and specific clones according to the different microclimates that he discovered on the property. The alluvial clay sites were planted with Merlot, while the volcanic and rocky parts were chosen to host Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

The perfectly manicured vines are cultivated using sustainable farming and focusing on protecting the grapes from excess heat and sunlight. In order to achieve this, the Blankiets’ use an extensive misting system and shade cloth strips protecting the fruiting zone of the south and western rows of the vineyards.

“As much I love the sun of Napa Valley and the ripeness our climate is capable of producing, we sometimes need to protect the vibrancy and freshness of the fruit. Power and elegance is what defines our wines,” Claude Blankiet explains.

The first seven vintages of Blankiet Estate wines were made by Helen Turley. After her, respected oenologist Martha McClellan Levy became in charge. She was assisted by the famous wine consultant Michel Rolland, who was hired to create the flagship blends of Blankiet Estate. He introduced the practice of fermenting each micro harvest individually and aging each lot separately for one year before blending them.

Following Rolland’s recommendation, starting with the 2006 vintage Blankiet released two flagship wines: The Estate Proprietary Red Wine is a blend of predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The Rive Droite proprietary Red is a Saint Emilion or Pomerol style wine is based on the finest barrels selection of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

The oenologist behind Blankiet wines for the past three years is Denis Malbec, former Château Latour cellar master.

“After twenty years we are still learning and discovering the intricacy of our vineyard. It is a complex site but the vines have matured, and we know where the sweet spots are located. We are confident that we are finally harnessing the full potential of the estate," Claude Blankiet says. 

Blankiet Estate has been the pioneer in the USA in providing collectors the best method to authenticate their purchases. For the past seven vintages, we have applied a special seal called a Bubble Tag™ to each of our flagship bottles guarantying their origin and integrity. Thanks to this seal, consumers are able online via internet or via mobile smart phone to access detailed information concerning the bottle, the vintage and its ratings from Robert Parker.

Our Paradise Hills Vineyard is farmed organically and great care is taken to maintain the balance of the soil. Nutrients taken from the land during the growing season and harvest are replaced using green manure. A mix of winter grasses and legumes such as clover, winter rye, sorghum and sweet peas, are seeded between rows. When spring comes, the grasses are mowed down and spaded back into the soil.

Grape vines regenerate from seed or from vegetative offshoots of the canes. Seed reproduction is a complicated path and Mother Nature seems to prefer the easiest method of vegetative growth to create new vines. As vintners, our goal of course is to produce wine, therefore we need to entice the vine to grow fruit as the preferred method of reproduction.

To coax the vines to focus on growing fruit instead of canes and leaves, we limit their potential vegetative expansion. Our guiding principle is inspired by ancient Greeks and Romans: “Bacchus amat colles” or “Bacchus loves the hills”. Vineyards planted in nutrition-depleted, well-drained hillsides will produce better wine.

To further enhance our wine’s concentration and complexity, we limit the number of clusters a vine will be allowed to ripen. During the growing season extra buds, flowers, clusters and leaves are carefully thinned out, allowing each vine to produce a metered amount of fruit according to its age and specific weather conditions of the season.

Water needs are carefully monitored by checking the amount of moisture in the leaves to prevent the vines from shutting down. Diminishing sunlight by mid-summer tells the vines the end of the season is in sight and all their energy is to be spent in ripening the berries.

Two decades of farming at Paradise Hills has taught us that because we grow four varietals of grapes — planted in many different soils with an array of sun exposure — our berries ripen sequentially, requiring up to seventeen mini-harvests to be picked at their optimal state of maturity.

While sugar levels, acidity and pH provide the guideline for our harvest, the picking decisions are assessed subjectively by tasting the berries during our daily walk through the vineyard.

When a particular area is deemed ready for picking, the fruiting zone of each vine is de-leafed in the late afternoon and any bird-damaged clusters are dropped to the ground.

Harvesting begins at 4:00 am the next day. The crew is mindful not to pick leaves or bruise the berries, which are collected in mini stackable trays that are palletized and transferred to cold caves.

Inspection and sorting begins at 7:00 am. Grapes are handpicked from their trays and individually evaluated. Ideal clusters proceed onto the elevator belt of the de-stemmer while the rest are dumped into compost bins.

The selected clusters are fed through a small machine equipped with rubber fingers that gently knock the berries off their stems.

The fruit is then transferred onto a vibrating table with two inspection conveyors. The sorting assembly is fifty feet long and operated by 18 to 28 people who remove immature green berries, dry raisins and bird-damaged fruit.

Carbon dioxide ice is then added to the collecting bins to maintain the fruit at a cold temperature while displacing oxygen. Finally, the bins are gravity loaded into small fermentation tanks to begin their cold maceration cycle.

Great wine comes from great grapes. We take extra care in preserving the flavors of the fruit during our winemaking process. Each pick is fermented separately  in small custom made stainless steel tanks. First, a week of cold maceration allows enzymes to soften the cellular structure of the berries while alcoholic fermentation remains inhibited by low temperature. Color and water soluble aromatic compounds are extracted during this period. Next, the mass of fruit is slowly warmed and the yeasts start transforming grape-sugar into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. It is an exothermic reaction so temperatures are closely monitored to maintain an optimum environment for the yeasts to thrive.

Each tank is tasted twice daily and pump-over protocols are established for the day. Grape-juice is already a complex aqueous solution but its transformation into wine creates many more compounds: Glycerin, other types of alcohol (propyl, butyl, amyl) and several new acids (succinic, acetic, propionic and traces of valerianic acid). Esters, aldehydes all combining and interacting with each other to create flavors and aromas in the wine.

When the new wine has reached its peak of balance it is transferred into new French oak barrels. The casks are then moved to a warm cave to go through a full malolactic to lactic acid transformation. Within a couple of months the wine loses tartness and excess acidity and the barrels are moved to the cold aging caves where they will mature for the next two years.

The underground aging caves are vibration free, cooled to 54 degrees and 95% humidity with constant air movement. Some of the wine evaporates allowing a metered amount of oxygen to penetrate the oak barrels. This controlled breathing is essential for the chemical transformation occurring during barrel maturation when tannins, alcohols, acids and esters further create complex aromas and flavors. A couple of years later the wine is bottled on location without any filtration or fining.

Winemaker Graeme MacDonald is a fourth generation Napa Valley wine grower who resides on his family property within the famous To Kalon Vineyard. He studied Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis before founding MACDONALD in 2010, where he serves as winemaker and vineyard manager. Robert Mondavi used to refer to his family as “the best grape-growers in the Napa Valley,” a commitment that resonates today.

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Vineyard Manager George Avina is one of those blessed individuals who has a soulful connection to their work. He truly loves what he does. He is at peace when he walks the vineyards and the vines are his friends and surrogate family: he talks to them and cares for them. George was trained by viticulturist David Abreu for many years and has been tending the Paradise Hills Vineyards exclusively for almost a decade. Nothing goes unnoticed by George.