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 sta...
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 a...
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. ...
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...
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