Napa Valley’s Joseph Phelps Vineyards was established in 1973, at the cusp of a second ‘Golden Era’ of winemaking (the first being post-Prohibition). It was an era when the whole of California caught its big break on the world stage thanks to the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting.
Unlike many of those 1970s pioneering estates – Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Heitz and others – Joseph Phelps remains family-owned to this day. It is a winery carved from the vision and determination of Joe Phelps, an entrepreneur who found himself in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Many of Phelps’ contemporaries back then – such as Bob Travers of Mayacamas and Warren Winiarski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars – created seminal estates of their own. While in recent vintages they, like so many others in Napa Valley today, have transitioned to a more slick, modern style for their wines, Phelps is content to let vintage conditions shine through, avoiding an overly homogenous style.
In the beginning
Joe Phelps was born in Maysville, Missouri in 1927. During the Great Depression, his parents moved to Colorado where his father would enter the construction business, founding Hensel Phelps Construction Co, one of the largest in the US today. After studying construction management at what is now Colorado State University, and later serving in the US Navy during the Korean War, Joe would take over his father’s business in the late 1960s. When the company secured a job building a winery in the Napa Valley, Joe promptly fell in love with the area.
In 1973 he purchased a 243ha cattle ranch east of St Helena, and Joseph Phelps Vineyards was officially founded. He and winemaker Walter Shug soon planted 40ha of vines that included Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Gewürztraminer and Johannesburg Riesling.
The inaugural 1973 vintage was a ‘custom crush’ of sorts, with the wines fermented and aged at nearby wineries while Phelps’ own winery was under construction. It was completed just in time for the legendary 1974 vintage, which would see the release of two ‘firsts’ in California: a varietally labelled Syrah (a generally unknown grape in California at the time) and what would unintentionally become California’s first Bordeaux blend – a wine named Insignia.
Even though today it is renowned as one of California’s best Cabernet Sauvignon-based blends, Insignia was not originally meant to be defined by any one varietal, only to be the best wine possible in any given vintage. Phelps even thought it could be a white wine if the year dictated it. It ended up Cabernet-dominant almost by accident, and countless others have gone on to emulate it.
Vineyards and winemaking
‘One of the things that sets us apart from other wineries is Joe’s vision to purchase land early on,’ says winemaker Ashley Hepworth.
This is perhaps the single biggest reason Joseph Phelps is such a powerful force in Napa today, especially as land prices in the valley continue to escalate. The winery has nine estate vineyards covering 172ha throughout the Napa Valley, concentrated in the AVAs of St Helena, Stag’s Leap District, South Napa, Oak Knoll and Rutherford.
‘I love being able to work with the same fruit each year and see the vintage variation,’ says Hepworth. ‘I’m pretty non-invasive in the winery; I like to let the vintage show its true colours.’
Showing such transparency between vintages is not always the case among producers in Napa. Phelps is to be commended in its steadfastness to express the fruit it has, not the fruit it wished it had, or to make a wine taste like it did last year.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards: a timeline
1973 Joseph Phelps buys a 243ha former cattle ranch near St Helena, Napa Valley, plants vines and founds his winery
1973 The first harvest yielded Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Johannisberg Riesling bottlings
1974 Grapes were picked for the first vintage of Insignia, California’s first Bordeaux-style red blend
1979 Vineyards bought in Napa’s Oak Knoll District AVA
1983 Vineyards bought in Napa’s Rutherford and Stags Leap District AVAs
1996-1999 Vineyards bought in Oakville, Stags Leap District and South Napa Valley
1999-2000 The Phelps family buys land near Freestone on the western Sonoma Coast and plants Pinot Noir and Chardonnay
2007 A dedicated winery is completed in Freestone for the production of Joseph Phelps Pinot Noir and Chardonnay
2014-2015 Renovation of the original Joseph Phelps winery in St Helena
2015 Joe Phelps dies. His four children and grandchildren renew their commitment to family ownership of his winery
2019 Vineyards bought in the Oak Knoll District AVA
With the exception of the single-vineyard Backus Cabernet Sauvignon from Oakville, the best blocks from any of the estate vineyards are eligible for inclusion in Insignia. This blend is decided upon relatively early in the winemaking process, and spends 24 months in 100% new French oak. Insignia has become a cornerstone; a reference point for modern Napa Cabernet-based blends – as evidenced by its string of lofty scores.
Fruit for the Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon bottling is typically sourced from the younger estate sites, and ages for 18 months in a mix of French and American oak, 50% new.
The winemaking style at Joseph Phelps leans toward the modern, polished and forward style now common in much of the Napa Valley. But one can still detect a measure of the pure-fruited, terroir-driven styles that established Phelps as a leader of the pack in the late-1970s and ‘80s.
No producer in Napa remained immune from the challenges of the 2017 vintage, both in terms of September heatwaves and October wildfires. Production was hit hard across the Phelps portfolio, with the Estate Cabernet down by more than 60% and Insignia bottlings halved as fruit was sold off in bulk due to smoke taint.
Thanks to its substantial holdings across Napa, Joseph Phelps was still able to release 2017 wines that weren’t affected by smoke taint. But the warmth and ripeness from the heatwaves is apparent – more so in the Estate Cabernet than the refined Insignia.
Expanding to Sonoma
In 1999 Joseph Phelps Vineyards expanded into the Sonoma Coast, creating Freestone Vineyards. While Phelps has always produced Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the Napa fruit sources it had historically used never quite delivered the desired Burgundian style.
The family bought an 80ha dairy farm outside the town of Freestone, a remote and lightly populated area of the ‘true’ Sonoma Coast. Half of the land was planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – 80% and 20% respectively. The 2007 vintage saw the first releases from the Quarter Moon and Pastorale estate vineyards.
As with Napa back in 1973, the vision to buy land relatively early on in what is now an established region will surely be seen in future as a maverick move as the Sonoma Coast landscape continues to change.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards: the facts
Founded Joe Phelps in 1973
Current owners Phelps family
Location St Helena, California
Annual production 60,000 cases
Vineyards 172ha of estate vineyards in Napa Valley, 80ha of estate vineyards on the Sonoma Coast
Wines Napa Valley: Estate Sauvignon Blanc, Estate Viognier, Estate Syrah, Larry Hyde & Sons Vineyard Syrah, Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Backus Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Insignia. Sonoma Coast: Estate Chardonnay, Pastorale Vineyard Chardonnay, Estate Pinot Noir, Pastorale Vineyard Pinot Noir, Quarter Moon Vineyard Pinot Noir
Joseph Phelps Vineyards is in a commanding position among its Napa peers, owning and farming nine estate vineyards covering 172ha in the valley. Many family wineries in a similar situation would have cashed in years or even decades ago.
The commitment of Joseph Phelps Vineyards to remain a family operation entered another chapter in 2015 with the passing of Joe Phelps. While his four children – son William (Bill) and daughters Leslie, Laurie and Lynn – were encouraged to seek out their own paths in life, by 2008 they were all serving on the board of directors, with Bill taking on the role of president.
Bill’s involvement dates back to working on the construction crew of the winery in 1974 while on a college summer break. In 1998 an unofficial transfer of power commenced as his father began to hand over the reins of day-to-day winery operations. In 2016 he was appointed executive chairman, focusing on maintaining the heritage and influence of Joseph Phelps Vineyards.
While the wines have undeniably shifted into riper, more slick territory, they seem to still be rooted in heritage and Joe Phelps’ vision for a vintage and terroir-led style. As increasingly more Napa wineries are seeing the writing on the wall in regards to ripeness and formulaic winemaking, Phelps has shown that there is a place for balance – and championing ripeness only when the vintage dictates it.
Matthew Luczy’s top Joseph Phelps wines
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