Cakebread Cellars: A Napa stalwart

Nature opened her floodgates on Sonoma and Napa during April and May 2019, drenching the counties with more than 23cm of rain each month. This meant the vines went into the growing season with very wet feet: not what they like at all.

The team at Cakebread Cellars in Napa Valley’s Rutherford AVA wanted to see how the spring deluge had affected their nascent wines, so organised a tasting of the 2019 components.

These wines – nine white samples and six reds – are still babies, as yet not assembled into their final blend for release, and many not yet finished with their maturation in oak casks, barrels or 1,800-litre concrete eggs.

Cakebread has 13 of these eggs, standing over 2m tall, looking like sleeping aliens in rows.

Winemaker Stephanie Jacobs likes them because their shape imparts natural convection currents that keep the lees moving in contact with the wine. This increases complexity in aromas and flavours, seems to soften the tannins and imparts a certain delicacy.

This was really noticeable when comparing the 2019 egg-fermented Sauvignon Blanc from Cakebread’s Cuttings Wharf vineyard to the same vineyard’s fruit fermented in barrel.

The egg-fermented sample had such a lovely perfume that Lise Asimont, Cakebread’s director of vineyard operations, suggested it might best be bottled separately from the barrel-fermented sample (which had grassy aromas and a heavier extraction) with which it is usually blended.

Similarly, Chardonnay samples from the Cuttings Wharf vineyard tasted light and delicately lemony when egg-fermented compared to a more assertive lemon flavour when fermented in a large wooden cask, and even more lemony stuffing when barrel-fermented.

Advancements

Winemaking here was pretty old school when Jack and Dolores Cakebread, both of whom turn 90 in 2020, founded their winery across the street from Robert Mondavi’s place in 1973.

Bruce Cakebread, Jack and Dolores’s son who’s a part owner and board member, has seen the advancements the latest technologies have brought, but also how the fruit-forward, food-friendly style of old has been maintained.

‘The Sauvignon Blanc is on a nice track with the concrete eggs,’ he says. ‘It will be fun to see how it ages in bottle over four to six years. We poured the 2016 Sauvignon Blanc for a wine dinner in Belfast, Ireland, in January and it really opened people’s eyes to how it ages.’

Jacobs, who has been at Cakebread since 2004, was the winery’s Pinot Noir project leader at its two Anderson Valley Pinot vineyards in Mendocino County from 2012, bringing the program up to speed over five years before she took on the role of winemaker in 2017.

Wines from the Annahala and Apple Barn vineyards are blended to make the flagship Two Creeks Pinot.

‘Those 2018 and 2019 vintages will be well received,’ predicts Cakebread. ‘I’m also excited about our Suscol Springs vineyard where we grow Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. The vines are now more than 10 years old so we are seeing nice results in the wines on a consistent basis.’

A trio from Cakebread

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