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History

 

 

As Dr. Kliewer crouched to inspect the soil on the Smith family parcel, he looked more like a miner than the Dean of Viticulture at UC Davis. He picked up a handful of crushed rock and dry, red-brown dirt. “Hambright,” he muttered. Jeff Smith had no clue what Dr. Kliewer meant, but learned later that finding Hambright was like striking a vein of viticultural gold.

Dr. Kliewer explained the intense, fractured bedrock soil would starve plants of nutrients and water, causing them to focus their energies on survival, thus intensifying the grapes. Jeff’s thoughts drifted to the year his father, Ned, bought the property in 1976 and tried to plant fruit trees on the hillside. They died shortly thereafter. “These soils aren’t good for much, but they are magic for Cabernet. With some luck, this site could become one of the signature Cabernet sites in Napa Valley. Should you plant Cab, here is what I’d do…,” and Dr. Kliewer proceeded to map out the strategy for what would indeed become one of Napa Valley’s most acclaimed vineyard sites.

 

When Ned Smith purchased the 6-acre parcel 14 years earlier, his goal quickly shifted from fruit trees to his favorite wine, Zinfandel, with the lofty hope of supplying grapes to local wineries in exchange for finished wine. His plan worked well in the following years until misfortune derailed Ned’s plan in the early 1990s. Phylloxera, the hungry root louse that was ravaging Napa Valley, caught up with the Zin vineyard, bringing production to a halt, and in 1990 Jeff’s father succumbed to cancer. After losing her husband, Jeff’s mother, Marge, had no desire to replant the dying vineyard and was ready to sell.

Jeff grappled with how to proceed. The land had potential, and the challenges would be many: farming for world-class grapes, raising the capital to start a wine brand, learning how to make wine—let alone good wine, or even great wine for that matter. But Jeff knew these difficulties would sort themselves out. His real challenge lay in convincing his mother not to sell and that his plan to replant the vineyard and develop a single-vineyard brand was not completely crazy. Except that it was, and his mother knew it. Jeff needed a stamp of approval to convince her, and it would need to come from someone who actually knew what he was talking about.

 

The Fated Meeting & The Birth of Hourglass
Enter Kelly Maher, Jeff's childhood friend a talented student in the Masters Program of Viticulture at UC Davis, a protégé of Dr. Kliewer. At Jeff’s request, Kelly orchestrated the fateful meeting with Dr. Kliewer. Beyond identifying the soil profile, Dr. Kliewer went on to explain that the valley is shaped much like an hourglass. The Smith’s hillside vineyard lay precisely at the “pinch,” or narrowest point: a bedrock outcropping of the Mayacamas Mountain Range that protrudes out to the middle of the valley thus creating the pinch. That little bedrock toe, with its unique geography, microclimate, Hambright soils, and hillside slope, provided a site unlike any other in Napa. It was in this moment, as the crouching Dr. Kliewer looked up to explain the nuances of the site, that the idea of “Hourglass” took shape, its name flowing effortlessly from its terroir.

In 1992, Jeff followed Dr Kliewer’s prescription and replanted four of the vineyard’s best acres to Cabernet Sauvignon. He then enlisted his family friend—and former rock band cohort—Bob Foley as winemaker for the new venture. Like so many aspiring guitarists, Bob had kept his day job over the years, making wine and garnering countless accolades and rock-star status for such labels as Robert Foley Vineyards, Switchback Ridge, Pride Mountain, School House and Paloma. Bob continues to make all the Hourglass wines and has the deep purple-stained hands to prove it. The calluses, however, are as much from guitar playing as his meticulous cellar work.

Hourglass’s inaugural release came with the 1997 vintage, a seminal Napa vintage by many critics’ standards. The new brand was catapulted to instant renown at a tasting held just before the 2001 Napa Valley Wine Auction. Organized by David Stevens, then wine director of Tra Vigne restaurant, and now the proprietor of 750 Wines, the “cult tasting” featured a flight of 1997 vintage Cabernets that critic Robert Parker, Jr. had scored 100 points: Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, and Bryant Family. Driven by David’s mischievous sense of humor, he threw Hourglass into the lineup as a precocious ringer. To the astonished tasters who had never heard of Hourglass (as none had yet been released), Hourglass held its own alongside the cult giants. The buzz was immediate, as news of the tasting hit the Internet. Within days, a wine that was not even for sale was sold out. Since then, the Hourglass Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon has built a steadfast following and affirmed Dr. Kliewer’s intuition.

 

Needle in a Haystack
After seven successful Hourglass vintages, Jeff and his wife, Carolyn, began looking for another equally expressive site—no easy feat in a small valley with the reputation and demand of Napa. After several years of evaluating vineyards, they abandoned their search in frustration. If it was meant to be, fate would have to intervene.

As it turned out, fate intervened in the guise of a trip to the dump, oddly enough, with Jeff’s friend David Stevens. “Out with the old, in with the new,” Jeff would later quip. A “for sale” sign caught his eye, nearly causing an accident as they passed the vineyard located next to the famed Switchback Ridge and across from Duckhorn’s Three Palms Vineyard. Not a bad zip code! Upon stopping the car, all they saw were piles of rock scattered among the vines, deposited by two majestic “blue-line” streams meandering the property. A truly alluring vineyard, that would eventually bear the name of its unusual terroir: Blueline Vineyard.

Together with their friends, Richard and Maureen Chilton and Michael and Pam Clark, the Smiths purchased the 41-acre property in 2006 and named it after the two streams that are the source of its magical soils. Over thousands of years, these gravel-strewn riverbeds have created the rocky, alluvial character of the soils that underpin the Blueline Vineyard and define its unique place in the world.

Significant replanting of the site was needed. The Hourglass winemaking team and new partners bolstered the existing Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot with new plantings of Petit Verdot and Malbec. Now Hourglass would be able to produce all five of the classic Bordeaux varieties. At present, each of these varieties is being vinified separately to explore all the possibilities of the new vineyard and to let each aspect of the Blueline terroir reveal itself.

 


The Estate Realized
To fully capture the benefits of being a true estate wine, the Smiths and their partners constructed their own winery at Blueline, building it into the hillside behind the vineyards. Designed by renowned modernist architect T. Olle Lundberg, its sleek lines, sparse design, and symbiotic relationship with the hills above echo the style of the estate’s wines. Jeff would later comment, “Olle immediately understood our aesthetic, driven largely by Carolyn—modern, simple elegance, with a sense of restrained drama.” As Olle noted, “It’s about taking away the clutter to reveal a pure essence. This is how the Smiths and Bob Foley approach making wine, and it is now reflected in the design and function of the winery. I like to think of it as the anti-winery of Napa Valley in its pure simplicity.”

With the christening of the winery at Blueline and its distinct single-varietal wines, Hourglass has entered an exciting new phase of its evolution. A brand synonymous with terroir-driven, modern Napa wines of the highest caliber, its goal is and will always remain the same: To capture the essence of two of Napa Valley’s most expressive vineyard sites in bottled form, and to have the honor of sharing them with you and your families for decades to come.

 

Provenance of place is more evident in wine than it is in anything else man endeavors to create from earth. Soil composition, wind, rain, heat, fog, aspect, drainage, vine row direction, and a host of complex environmental relationships constitute what the French simply call terroir: the stamp of place on wine.

 

 

If you stand across Napa Valley and look east into the mouth of Dutch Henry Canyon, you can see fan-shaped, bone-colored soils spilling out and down from the canyon’s mouth. Even from a mile away, the slope is evident, the soils distinct. As you approach the mouth, the canyon reveal becomes more pronounced, dramatically jutting up some 2,000 feet into the Vaca Mountain Range above. How did these soils get here? Two steep canyons with sparsely vegetated hillsides and magnificently beautiful blue-line streams are the raison d’être for the soils, climate, and ultimately the stunning wines that emanate from this small section of Napa Valley.

So how do dirt, weather, and the angle of a hillside manifest themselves in the wines from the Blueline Vineyard? How is it significant and what does this taste like? Wine grape physiology is highly complex and much remains unknown, but we are beginning to draw some conclusions about how the vineyard is reflected in bottled form. Geography is probably the best place to start.

 

The Convergent Edge
“There is no wine-growing region in the world like the Northwest Coast of California. We live on the convergent edge, and our wines reflect this dramatic landscape.” —Vintner and Proprietor Jeff Smith.

The Vaca Mountain Range, with its creased and twisted topography, formed in stunningly violent convulsions more than a million years ago. During this period the North American, Farallon and Pacific tectonic plates collided forming the convergent edge, causing rock to act like butter as they smashed into each other pushing the mountains up from the sea. Much like a ripple effect in water, this grand design of nature formed a wave of mountain ranges that span from the Pacific Ocean’s current edge to the Sierra Nevada. The Vaca Range became uniquely positioned as the eastern border of Napa Valley and ultimately the parent to the eventual vineyard below.

As the Vaca Range lifted up to the sky, two canyon folds formed in the mountain above creating a pair of watersheds with two streams that would converge and become the source for alluvial soil deposits. These two “blue-line” streams meandered back and forth for thousands of years carrying fractured soil material from the bedrock of the mountains above and decomposed hillside vegetation down to the valley floor. Together, these streams formed gravel beds of mineral-rich, nutrient-poor soils - an upturned riverbed which underpins the Blueline Vineyard today. Its soils contain little of the nutrient rich organic carbon found in clay and loam soils in other parts of Napa, rendering depleted soils with low water-holding capacity and fewer nutrients to support plant growth - ideal conditions for growing world-class Bordeaux varietals. Starving vines of the materials needed to grow redirects their energy to survival and results in wines of deep concentration and lifted aromatics. As such, wines from this part of Napa Valley exhibit spicy and high-toned floral aromatics along with fine minerality. All the Bordeaux varieties planted at Blueline Vineyard express these characteristics in different ways, but for subtle aromatic varietals such as Cabernet Franc (crushed rose petals and violets) and Merlot (dark sour cherry and Mandarin orange blossom), not to mention more dominant Cabernet (black cassis and blackberry bramble) it is an especially magical place.

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Vineyards

Blueline Vineyard lies in a warm pocket of the Valley near Calistoga. The vineyard’s Bordeaux varieties benefit from the extra warmth here, especially Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec, which traditionally thrive in warmer climes where the sun can overcome the plant's propensity for vegetal characteristics. In viticulture, the accumulation of heat over time is referred to as “growing degree days,” and the eastern side of the Calistoga appellation generally has a higher count than other Napa subappellations. The accumulation of heat builds phenolic maturity in grape skins and seeds, eventually leading to deep, explosive flavors in wine.

Geography again plays a vital role in influencing climate. The two canyons which reach upwards of 2,000 feet above the vineyard cause a thermal dynamic. As warm daytime temperatures rise through them, they pull in cooler air in the afternoon to moderate the heat during the summer months. The “push/pull” of temperature change aids to balance the complex grape maturation. (See the Hourglass Vineyard Description for information on the effect of hot and cool temperatures on grape phenolics.)

As a product of this environment, Blueline wines develop deeply concentrated fruit characteristics in a range of dark red (dark sour cherry, dried cranberry, candied raspberry in Merlot) to black fruit (blackberry, cassis, and fig in Cabernet and Cabernet Franc). The density of these wines is intense, with explosive flavors and lingering finishes—what we like to call wide, mouth-coating yum! The unique riverbed soils deliver a spicy aromatic and a mineral laced zesty brightness to balance the deep fruit concentration. The layers and complexity can all be traced back to Blueline Vineyard’s terroir: the inimitable mix of geography and climate that have converged here, putting its indelible stamp on the personality of our wines.

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Winemaking

Hourglass has always been heavily influenced by a sense of place, what the French deem terroir. As we have expanded to encompass two dramatic vineyards (the original Hourglass Vineyard & the new Blueline Vineyard), our objective remains the same - to craft highly expressive wines reflective of their unique sense of place. But it is more than just a sense of place. It is the human interaction with that place that makes wine unique and special. Vines do not simply grow themselves into amazing wines. They must be coached and encouraged along the way by ever talented people such as our winemaking team of Tony Biagi and Justin Carr, and the vineyard management of people like Kelly Maher and Josh Clark, whose collective wisdom has a dramatic affect on the outcome on what you experience.

The convergence of soil, weather, geography and the human hand are what you taste every time you pull the cork from one of our wines. Part splendor of nature, part art, part science, wine is a complex web of relationships that yield the final result. Change the web and you change the profile. But what exactly does all this mean and how does human interaction work in concert in this dance with mother nature? What does that yield in our wines?

Working backward from the table where an open bottle first reveals itself, we seek to deliver a unique experience. Aromatically, any bottle of Hourglass must intoxicate and beguile. It must arouse your senses and draw you in. Aroma is a signature and a critical one at that. Whether it is the dark sour cherry and Mandarin of our Merlot, the floral violets and rose petals of Cab Franc, the earthy, minty, cassis and black licorice of Cabernet, the game and spice of Petit Verdot, or the high toned citrus notes of Malbec, all our wines are punctuated by dramatic aromas. This is both mother nature’s gift of rocky mineral rich soils as much as it is a concerted effort to manage the vines to deliver smaller berries (yielding higher skin to juice ratios and elevating flavor and aromatic concentration), the decisions regarding optimal ripeness, the thought process governing fermentation protocols, the nature of what barrels to use, how long to age, etc.

On the palate, a young Hourglass wine must jump and sing, an older wine must tease and intrigue. In either case, all things must be in their right place with the right dimension - balance, balance, balance. Explosive fruit must be framed, layered with earthy dimensions and polished textures, to create a seamless integration start to finish.

This is the art of winemaking and why Tony Biagi is so well suited to it. In our opinion he is one of the most balanced left brain / right brain individuals we have ever happened upon. His personality influences his decisions, which in turn flow through his wines. It is no accident that the younger wines exhibit explosive fruit driven flavors yet are balanced against the framework of acidic structure making them both intense and light on their feet at the same time. The grip of tannin is there, but polished on the edges for a silky texture, the result of patience in the field to allow seed and skin maturation to arrive at that perfect moment. We make no quarrel with modestly “higher alcohol” wines, as they are relative to deeper phenolic concentration and explosion of flavor and aromatics, yet this must be balanced against good natural acidity. Oak must be judiciously considered so as not to tread too heavily on the nuances of the vineyard. As it is with each decision, careful consideration is paid to balancing the web of complex relationships.

 

All of this sums to wines with beckoning aromas, a concentrated fruit core, structured and defined framework, depth of flavor, silky texture and an enduring finish, all in seamless balance. We are fortunate to have two very special vineyards uniquely suited to yield wines of this dynamic and a winemaking team experienced in walking the razors edge in their pursuit of balancing the complex relationships between mother nature, vineyard and winery. .

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Inside information

Peering through the glass turret of a helicopter hovering at about 400 feet, you can see how two parallel mountain ranges—the Mayacamas to the west and the Vaca to the east—funnel together in dramatic fashion to form the hourglass-shaped Napa Valley. It is from this unique vantage point that we can begin to understand the magic of the vineyard that lies precisely at the narrowest point between the constricting mountains.

It was in 1992 that Dr. Kliewer first described the singular positioning of the vineyard to Jeff Smith and its equally exceptional geography. Dr. Kliewer knew the “hourglass effect” would play a significant role in defining the yet-to-be-planted Cabernet vineyard, but he could not articulate exactly how. He explained to Jeff that the Smith family’s vineyard defined the pinch of the hourglass-shaped valley and advised him to pay attention as he farmed the vineyard over time. In 10, 15, or 20 years, maybe they would figure out what it meant.

A Cool Breeze
Some 10 years after replanting the site, Jeff and his mother took a walk in the vineyard together on a summer afternoon. Jeff commented on how hot it was, and his mother replied, “Yes, but this little knoll will start cooling around 4:00 p.m. You can mark your watch by it.” “How’s that?” Jeff replied. “We get a nice, cool breeze here just about every day in the late afternoon,” she explained. “It really cools the knoll and makes it a very pleasant place to live.” Dr. Kliewer’s intuition revealed.

The constricting mountains were the cause of a thermal dynamic. As the northern region of Napa Valley warms, it creates an inversion that draws cooler bay air up from the south. The larger air mass gets pinched by the constricting mountains, and eddies at the narrow crossing where the Hourglass Vineyard is planted. In turn, the back-flowing air creates a cooling breeze that tempers the late afternoon heat.

Temperature & Grape Ripening
But how does this translate to bottled wine? First, we must consider that temperature is a key component in grape ripening. As the accumulation of heat over time increases (known to winegrowers as “growing degree days”), grape chemistry changes. Red grapes turn from green to purple (a transition called veraison), sugars rise, acidity falls, pH changes, polyphenols (complex grape chemicals affecting flavor, aroma, and texture) continue to develop, and seeds lignify as their tannins mature. Pick the grapes at the moment when all these elements reach the perfect balancing point, and wine magic is achieved.

The trick is achieving the perfect balancing point, and vineyard characteristics play a significant role in defining this dynamic. Once the skins have turned purple, the first sign of maturity in grapes is the arrival of sugars driven by heat and sunlight over time - the more heat and time, the more sugar. In reverse proportion is the decline of acidity. As sugars rise with heat, acidity falls. Consider this phenomenon the front end of the grape maturation cycle.

The back end of the cycle is where the magic of Napa often happens. You may hear winemakers refer to “physiological ripeness.” What they are referencing is the “back end” of grape maturity, when polyphenols develop and tannin is mastered. Often the back end happens weeks after sugars arrive, thus the warmer the climate, the greater the propensity for chemical imbalances. If there is no cooling effect to offset heat, sugars will continue to rise and acidity will fall as you wait for the back end to catch up. The results are either wines with high alcohols, high pH levels, and low acids, or more tannic wines with green herbal characteristics and less explosive flavors, depending upon when the grapes are harvested. Needless to say, balance is a critical component to farming great wine.

Napa’s Diurnal Climate
Napa is a magical place to grow grapes as most of it benefits from a diurnal climate. This unusual climate is a function of mountain ranges uniquely positioned between the cool Pacific Ocean and the warm interior valley of Sacramento. Warm daytime temperatures, which often reach the mid-90’s or higher during the growing season, draw in coastal fog at night. It is not uncommon in a 12-hour cycle to witness a 40- to 50-degree temperature swing! This dramatic “push/pull” diurnal cycle has a natural balancing effect on grape physiology, making Napa Valley one of the best places in the world to grow wine grapes.

The specialized geography at Hourglass Vineyard enhances this diurnal swing. The site’s position at the pinch of the valley helps draw in cool air, allowing the cooling effect to begin earlier in the day and the warming effect to begin later in the morning. Both work to shrink the vineyard’s growing degree days (heat over time) and to slow the front end of the ripening process, allowing the back end more time to catch up and achieve that magical balancing point. This delicate balancing act translates to slightly lower sugars (and therefore alcohols), slightly higher acids, deep phenolic concentration, and mature tannins in the wines. For this reason, Hourglass wines have always maintained a feline grace, with silky textures (due to bright acidity and polished tannins) balancing explosive aromas and deep flavors (from phenolic ripeness). All can be traced back to the vineyard’s unique geography.

Fractured Bedrock
The toe of fractured bedrock that juts out from the Mayacamas mountain where the Hourglass Vineyard sits is the result of massive volcanic activity more than a million years ago. It is an inhospitable place to grow anything but heartily rooted plants. The depleted, rocky Hambright soils here restrict a vine’s ability to grow by starving it of water and nutrients—one of the counterintuitive keys to farming world-class wine grapes. Its composition is a cobbled breakdown of fractured bedrock mixed with a thin patina of iron-laced soil. Modest clay concentration renders the soil poor in nutrients and causes it to be excessively well drained. When soil test pits were attempted at the site, the backhoe dug no deeper than 24 inches before being turned back by the stubborn rock below.

It has taken years for the root systems of the vines at Hourglass to become established. The stress from poor soil conditions inhibits the plants’ ability to size their berries in early spring, resulting in smaller grapes with high skin-to-juice ratios and wines of deep concentration. Similarly, the smaller leaf canopies that grow here indicate the plants have redirected their energy to focus on survival and developing their reproductive organs—their grapes—building deeper levels of polyphenols and more flavor in the process. Lifted earthy aromatics are also a result of the thin, intense soil series at Hourglass, which is generally found not on the valley floor, but in higher elevations where bedrock was pushed upward with tremendous force.

Just as a thumbprint is unique to an individual, so too is terroir unique to a great vineyard. Wind, rain, sun, and soil have defined the Hourglass Vineyard, which in turn defines its wines.

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