Freemark Abbey: profile and 10 wines from this Napa pioneer

Throughout its 135 years and numerous owners, the one constant at Napa Valley’s Freemark Abbey has been a focus on classically styled Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.

Now titled ‘winemaker emeritus’, Ted Edwards joined the estate as assistant winemaker in 1980 and became head winemaker in 1985. He remained at the helm until 2020 when he passed the torch to his hand-picked successor, Texas-born Kristy Melton.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 10 current and older releases from Freemark Abbey

Melton, who worked at the National Institutes of Health before chasing a passion to make wine, applied her skills in science to graduate studies at UC Davis in 2005.

Since graduating, her wine jobs have included: internships at Iron Horse in Russian River Valley and Seresin Estate New Zealand; oenologist at Saintsbury in Carneros and director of winemaking at Napa’s Clos du Val. In 2016 she joined the California-based multinational wine company Jackson Family Wines.

Edwards and Melton worked together on the 2018 and 2019 vintages, and 2020 will bear Melton’s full stamp, working with vineyard manager Rafael Jiménez on all picking decisions.

Jackson Family Wines is most famous for its flagship Kendall-Jackson, but it is actually an umbrella company for more than 40 wineries across Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Santa Barbara and Monterey, plus Washington, Australia, South Africa, Chile, France and Italy. It bought Freemark Abbey in 2006.

A five-year renovation of the winery ended in 2016. A return to appointment-only visits sees guests welcome for more specialised experiences. A new addition is a bright, airy library room with old vintages on display, showing the slight evolutions in label design over the decades. More ambitious plans for an onsite 79-room inn, including a spa and two pools, are in progress.

As for Freemark Abbey’s current release wines, the Napa Valley designates and single-vineyard Cabernets show impressive depth, balance and structure. The Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier are fresh and layered.

The Jackson-owned Ahmann vineyard in Los Carneros supplies fruit for the Chardonnay. The Napa Cabernet, meanwhile, is sourced from three estate-owned vineyards: Keyes in Oakville, Colline on Howell Mountain, and Atalon in Calistoga. Freemark Abbey’s single-vineyard Cabernets are sourced from the Sycamore and Bosché vineyards in Rutherford.

Where did it all start?

When wealthy Pennsylvanian Josephine Marlin Tychson and her husband John moved to St Helena in 1881, they bought more than 60ha of land, planting Zinfandel and Riesling on the western hills of the Mayacamas. John Tychson, a Danish immigrant, had tuberculosis and hoped the temperate California climate would ease his pain. But nothing helped and he took his own life soon after the move.

Widowed at 31, with two infant children, Josephine built a redwood winery capable of producing 150,000 bottles. She named it Tychson Cellars and in 1886 it became Napa’s 16th bonded winery. But phylloxera hit hard and in 1894 Tychson had to sell her winery to her foreman, Nils Larsen. Larsen then sold it to Antonio Forni, an immigrant from Lombardy, Italy.

By 1899, Forni had replaced the old redwood winery with a stone one and, in homage to his homeland, renamed it Lombarda Cellar. Success seemed imminent, but Forni died in 1908. When he died, the winery was producing more than 1.7 million bottles. His widow, Marianne, inherited the winery and hired Antonio’s cousin, Charles Forni, to oversee operations in 1910.

During Prohibition, sacramental wine was produced, but it’s unclear if the Fornis were making any or simply leasing the space. In 1939, Marianne Forni sold Lombarda Cellar to three real estate developers: Albert ‘Abbey’ Ahern, Charles Freeman and Mark Foster. The name Freemark Abbey is a mashup of the three partners’ names.

For a time the trio made Bordeaux-style blends, but records are scarce, and when Ahern died in 1959, Freemark Abbey went dark.

How did Freemark Abbey bounce back?

In 1966, a group led by Chuck Carpy and Frank ‘Laurie’ Wood, bought the winery. Carpy and Wood owned Carpy-Conolly vineyard in Rutherford, and had sold grapes to Robert Mondavi but wanted to make their own wine. The pair brought in architect Dick Heggie, lawyer Bill Jaeger, realtor Jim Warren, venture capitalist John Bryan and Brad Webb, who became the consulting winemaker.

The seven partners decided to focus on single-varietal wines for Freemark Abbey. They opened a ‘sampling room’ that welcomed guests, and began ageing wine for restaurants.

In 1972, the partners had struck a long-term agreement with John Bosché for his Rutherford Cabernet, which had been sold to Beaulieu Vineyard as a component in its flagship Georges de Latour bottling. This marked the birth of Freemark Abbey’s first vineyard-designate wine, the Cabernet Bosché cuvée, produced ever since 1970.

In the mid 1970s, Bryan bought Sycamore Vineyard in Rutherford and it long supplied grapes for the winery’s Cabernet blends. But the team soon realised the quality and longevity of non-commercial bottlings and, in 1984, it became Freemark Abbey’s second vineyard-designate wine.

Impact of the 1976 Paris Tasting

Freemark Abbey was the only winery to contribute two wines for Steven Spurrier’s famous Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976 – and both scored in the top 10: the 1969 Napa Valley Cabernet, which placed 10th, and the 1972 Napa Valley Pinot Chardonnay, which placed sixth.

The latter wine caused a good stir. As The Judgment of Paris author George Taber recounts, one judge ‘was certain he had just sipped a French wine, when in fact it was a California one from Freemark Abbey’.

Current Freemark Abbey head winemaker Kristy Melton says the 1976 tasting ‘brought a level of credibility, because we didn’t really have wine critics back then’. And because American wineries couldn’t compete with the storied histories of French or Italian estates, the Paris Tasting proved pivotal.

Changes in wine style

In the 1980s and ’90s, ‘Ted Edwards had to use each tank during harvest three times,’ Melton laments. There was no time for cold soaks, slow fermentations or extended macerations, and wines from those decades are bright and fruit-driven, less extracted with ample acidity and in need of cellaring. By the early 2000s, Edwards began introducing more ripeness and oak, as was the fashion.

After the Jackson Family acquisition in 2006, production gradually shifted from St Helena to a new facility in Oakville. Suddenly, ‘grapes could be picked at the right time, and wines weren’t rushed through fermentation’, says Melton. It allowed for a great deal of polish.

The 2020 vintage was Melton’s first flying solo without Edwards. She didn’t make any reds that vintage because of fires, but she did make whites. Her style is for fruit-forward wines with good structural complexity and savoury elements.

‘I like a creamy middle, and tannins to be present, balanced by bright acidity,’ she explains. The single-vineyard Cabernets are getting ‘a little richer toast’ now, but she errs on the lighter side for the Napa Valley Cabernet to allow ‘more red fruit components to shine’.

‘Today, we have sheep in the vineyards to reduce carbon emissions and soil compaction, and add natural fertiliser,’ she says. ‘We’re looking at ways to automate labour because of shortages, and backup power because of fires or potential power outages. We’re still doing pump overs like we did three decades ago, only now, I can control them from my phone.’

Freemark Abbey: the facts

Founded 1886

Owner Jackson Family Wines

Annual production 35,000-40,000 cases

Key vineyards Sycamore, Bosché, Keyes, Colline, Atalon and Ahmann

Wines Of the 19 wines made, the key bottlings are the Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet from the Napa Valley AVA, and the Cabernet, Bosché Vineyard Cabernet and Sycamore Vineyard Cabernet from the Rutherford AVA.

Freemark Abbey: new releases and older vintages

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