Heitz Cellar: Producer profile

The wine world is a difficult one in which to hold your ground. Constantly shifting and being altered by context, public opinion and Mother Nature, there are few wineries that deserve to be thought of as mainstays. Napa Valley’s Heitz Cellar is one of them. Since its founding in 1961, Heitz has drawn its own ideological line in the sand and consistently delivered wines of authenticity, poise and complexity.

Considering the style of many modern Napa Cabernets, Heitz feels almost rebellious in its disregard for external factors. This is a direct result of the spirit of Joe Heitz himself. ‘You have to understand Joe Heitz’s experience as a winemaker to understand the Heitz style,’ says Master Sommelier Carlton McCoy, Heitz Cellar president and CEO.

‘He was unapologetically American, a very “steak and potatoes” kind of guy. He took an enormous amount of pride in what America, and in a more specific sense the Napa Valley, produced. He hated the perspective and attitude that Europe showed towards Americans during his time – as if they were just a bunch of backcountry Californians trying to make quality wine.’

Background story

Joe Heitz was born in 1919 in Princeton, Illinois. Initially wanting to become a veterinarian, the outbreak of World War II drove him to enlist in the US Air Force, where he would end up servicing aircraft in Hawthorne, California.

While looking for an additional source of income to supplement his military wages, he found a night job working at Italian Swiss Winery near the airbase. It was here that his interest for wine would spark, being taken under the wing of winemaker Dale Mills. After his discharge from the Air Force once the war was over, he enrolled in the viticulture and oenology programs at California’s UC Davis, graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1948 and his master’s degree three years later.

There were very few operational wineries in Napa during this time, but the undoubted centerpiece was Beaulieu Vineyard. BV, as it is still known today, was under the direction of André Tchelistcheff, arguably the single-most influential winemaking figure of America’s post-Prohibition era. Tchelistcheff was headhunted from France in 1938 by owner Georges de Latour, and brought with him myriad European winemaking techniques such as the use of colder ferments and French oak barrels.

In 1951, after stints at a few wineries including Gallo, Joe Heitz joined BV and became Tchelistcheff’s assistant winemaker. Heitz had no qualms in disagreeing with his new mentor. For example, Tchelistcheff was an ardent proponent of malolactic fermentation, but Heitz felt this practice was being forced upon him; he was steadfast in his ‘just because it’s European doesn’t mean it’s better’ mindset.

Heitz Cellar’s blockage of malolactic fermentation continues to this day. ‘The Napa Valley is a warm region,’ says McCoy. ‘We don’t need to “soften” anything.’

Heitz Cellar: the facts

Founders Joe and Alice Heitz, in 1961

Current owner Gaylon Lawerence Jr

Location St Helena, Napa Valley

Production 25,000 cases annually

Vineyards 40ha of estate vineyards throughout the Napa Valley, 13.8ha of purchased fruit from Martha’s Vineyard in Oakville AVA

Wines Grignolino Rosé, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Quartz Creek Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Trailside Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Linda Falls Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

Beaulieu Vineyard to Martha’s Vineyard

In 1958, Heitz would leave Beaulieu Vineyard, initially working with Fresno State University to develop its oenology curriculum. He would officially establish Heitz Cellar with his wife Alice in 1961 by purchasing the property of Leon Brendel. Brendel was a well-respected Alsatian winemaker whom Mexican President Francisco I Madero hired to make his Casa Madero wines in Coahuila.

When Prohibition was repealed, Brendel moved north to the Napa Valley, eventually becoming cellarmaster at Freemark Abbey. He owned a small ranch south of St Helena where he had planted Grignolino, and it is this site that Joe and Alice Heitz would purchase. A handshake deal was made that these nostalgic Grignolino vines would remain, explaining the seemingly-out-of-place varietal in the winery’s portfolio.

At first, Heitz Cellar was set up as mainly a négociant business, with Joe purchasing wines already in barrel from Hanzell Vineyards in Sonoma, bottling and releasing them under the Heitz label. The operation would continue in this way until 1964, when Joe and Alice purchased what is still the current Spring Valley winery outside St Helena, a building dating back to 1898.

In another handshake deal, this time with Tom and Martha May in 1965, Joe started to purchase grapes from their Martha’s Vineyard in Oakville. After just one vintage of blending their fruit into his own Napa Valley Cabernet, Joe Heitz made the decision to bottle the Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon on its own, making it one of California’s first vineyard-designate wines – Ridge’s Monte Bello was the first, the year prior in 1965. Time has proven Martha’s Vineyard to be one of the world’s great, long-lived Cabernet Sauvignons.

While Martha’s Vineyard is the pinnacle of the Heitz portfolio, the Trailside Vineyard Cabernet is every bit its equal in terms of complexity and expressiveness, making it an impressive bargain. First produced in 1989, it is planted in alluvial gravel on the eastern bench of the Rutherford AVA, and is softer and dustier than the powerfully tannic but brilliantly showy Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet.

The single-vineyard Cabernet lineup is rounded out by the 2013 introduction of the Linda Falls Vineyard from the Howell Mountain AVA. Heitz bought this 16.2ha property next to the Linda Waterfall and planted 2.8ha of Cabernet Sauvignon in 2002. The rest of the land was returned to the Napa Valley Land Trust. This is the most hard-edged and gritty of the three single-vineyard wines; its mountain origins rugged against the softness and svelte texture of the valley floor Cabs.

Heitz Cellar: a timeline

1948 Joe Heitz graduates from California’s UC Davis

1951 Heitz is hired as assistant winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyard under André Tchelistcheff

1958 Heitz leaves Beaulieu Vineyard to develop Fresno State University’s oenology curriculum

1961 Joe and wife Alice buy 3.2ha south of St Helena and establish Heitz Cellar

1966 Heitz bottles a Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, creating one of the first vineyard-designate wines in California

1974 Joe’s son David Heitz begins to take over as winemaker, producing the legendary 1974 Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet

1976 The 1970 vintage of Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet appears in the Judgment of Paris

1984 Heitz adopts organic practices. Trailside Vineyard is introduced

2000 Joe Heitz dies

2018 Heitz Cellar is purchased by Gaylon Lawrence Jr. Carlton McCoy is brought in as president/CEO

2019 Heitz begins work to convert all vineyards to biodynamic farming

Cellar practices

Much of Joe Heitz’s cellar practises survive today under current director of winemaking Brittany Sherwood. Pre-fermentation maceration is where a lot of Napa Cabernets start to veer off a balanced and lifted course. Heitz, however, takes a mellow, pump-over-only approach at this stage, eschewing punch downs to achieve a light ‘infusion’ of skins and juice. McCoy explains: ‘An “extraction” is something you squeeze out, an “infusion” is something you gently do. It really sets the tone for understanding how we make wine.’

The grapes are fermented at relatively low temperatures of 20°C-22°C degrees, retaining a greater level of freshness and energy than the warmer, more common 28°C-38°C found in more extracted styles of Cabernet. The wines are pressed off their skins before fermentation has finished completely, leaving about 2.5g/L of residual sugar when the juice is transferred to the 60-year-old, 20,000L American oak vats. They will finish fermentation here and stay in these vessels for one year before being transferred to French barriques for up to three years for the Trailside and Martha’s bottlings. The wines will then see more ageing in bottle: two years for the single vineyards, and one year for the Napa Valley blend. Even with a global perspective, this extreme commitment to pre-release ageing and conditioning truly sets Heitz apart.

The Chardonnays follow the old-school Napa style pioneered by Stony Hill Vineyard: the grapes are whole-cluster pressed, fermented in stainless steel and, staying true to Joe Heitz’s distaste for the process, do not undergo malolactic fermentation. For the 18-month maturation, the whites are treated with ‘the Roulot method’, as McCoy calls it: one year in oxidative vessels (rarely more than 10% new oak is used) then six months in stainless steel to ‘tighten the wine up’. The result with both the Napa Valley and the Quartz Creek single-vineyard bottlings is a clean and focussed style of Chardonnay that is all but extinct in Napa today.

Going forward

In 2018, the Heitz family decided it was time to hand over the legacy of this historic establishment, and Heitz Cellar was purchased by agricultural businessmen Gaylon Lawerence Jr. Whenever a seminal winery like this changes hands there is cause for concern as to what route the new owners will take going forward. But tasting the new vintage releases, it seems that Heitz is in good hands, continuing to take inspiration from the balanced and terroir-driven wines of the past.

‘The future of Napa is site-specific and lot-specific,’ says McCoy, whose team is focussed on bringing freshness and a sense of place back to the valley.

Heitz Cellar: Tasting the range

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