Chimney Rock's Elevage
How has winemaker Doug Fletcher's baby matured?

Jim Gordon

If Doug Fletcher's baby was the usual kind, that child would now be old enough to take a driver's test. But Doug Fletcher is a winemaker and the baby in question here is a wine that he conceived in 1990 at Chimney Rock Winery, in Napa Valley's Stags Leap District. At age 16 that wine, called Elevage, was ready for a vertical taste test of every vintage since the first.

The analogy may be a stretch, but you've got to forgive me because the French term elevage fits it so well. Elevage means "rearing" or "breeding" and in winemaking refers to what happens to the wine between harvest and when it's ready to drink. In France some wine merchants are called eleveurs to indicate that they raise or educate the wine before they sell it.

Fletcher began making Elevage with Chimney Rock's founder Hack Wilson as a high-concept wine in the spirit of many Bordeaux chateau wines. It is made only from grapes grown on the Chimney Rock estate on the Silverado Trail, and uses a blend of the five grape types known as the Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. Fletcher says that Wilson first wanted him to make a reserve-level  Cabernet Sauvignon, but recalls telling Wilson that all wines from Stags Leap -- roughly the area on the east side of the valley floor from Napa to Yountville -- are already reserve quality, and that they ought to try something more ambitious.

So Fletcher got the green light to do one of the most creative things a winemaker can do -- invent a whole new wine by blending together batches of wine made from different varieties. And Fletcher, a bit of an artist as well as enologist, biologist and grape-growing innovator, took full advantage of the creativity. While winemakers at Joseph Phelps, Chateau St. Jean and elsewhere have narrowed the focus of their Bordeaux blends over the years to mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Fletcher hasn't.

Merlot is the leading component of Elevage in most years, helping give the wine a gentler texture than Cabernet would, and making the flavors more akin to red cherry and blueberry   than the deeper tones of blackcurrant and Bing cherry more often associated with Cabernet Sauvignon. In 2002, for example, which was a great year in Napa Valley for Cabernet, Fletcher made Elevage from 83 percent Merlot, only 8 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 9 percent Petit Verdot. It's a wine of exceptional quality, as are both the 2003 and the newly released 2004

In the world of wine aficionados, California Cabernet has the upper hand on Merlot. Chimney Rock's two Cabernets are very good in their own rights, and the Chimney Rock Reserve Cabernet ($100) costs more than Elevage ($76), but it's hard to argue with the great flavors, easy-drinking texture and complexity of character in Elevage. You don't have to punish your palate when drinking this wine young, like you would with many young Cabernets, but the tasting showed that it also ages well.

The oldest Elevage vintages, 1990 and 1991, are still enjoyable to drink, and have gone through that transformation from young fruity wine to mature, fascinating wine with enticing bottle bouquet from the extra years of age. My overall favorite of the 16 vintages tasted last fall at the winery was 1999. It's an inspired wine with intense and distinctive cherry-currant aromas, rich, focused and long-lasting berry and bing cherry flavors, and slightly toasty, herbaceous accents. Close behind were 1996, 1994 and 1993. I liked but didn't love the 1997, which tasted jammy and raisiny, a bit blunt in texture and atypical of Elevage.

The years 2001 through 2003 were all exceptional, and 2004 will probably be too, although it tasted smoky and relatively tannic when compared to its older siblings. A barrel sample of the 2005 tasted sophisticated and deep, with plenty of cherry and blackberry notes, so it's a vintage to look forward to.

"This is the first time I've tasted all these vintages together," Fletcher acknowledged. In his view the earlier vintages had more olive and herb flavors than the latter, and attributed the change to a replanting of the estate vineyards in the mid 1990s putting in vines with different rootstocks and improving the vine spacing and trellising to take advantage of the latest scientific knowledge about fruit ripening.

The years saw a conversion from aromatic but rather light-bodied Cabernet Franc as the usual No. 3 variety in the blend to Petit Verdot, a deeply colored and often more concentrated variety. A slow change also occurred from 12.5 percent alcohol in the early 1990s to more than 14 percent now, largely due to better ripening of the grapes in the vineyard. More sugar content in the grapes gives higher alcohol in the wines.

Fletcher was a hands-on winemaker in his early years, working at the Martin Ray winery, then helping start Steltzner Winery in Stags Leap with owner Dick Steltzner. At Chimney Rock since 1987, he was promoted last year to vice president of winemaking for the whole Terlato Wine Group, a company containing California wineries Chimney Rock, Episode, Rutherford Hill and Terlato Family Vineyards in Napa Valley, Alderbrook and Terlato Vineyards in Sonoma County and Sanford in Santa Barbara County. The group is owned by well-known Illinois-based wine importer Anthony J. Terlato and his family.

Elizabeth Vianna is now Chimney Rock's winemaker. She recently developed a white version of Elevage with Fletcher's collaboration, the first new wine at Chimney Rock in 15 years. While Elevage red compares to a Bordeaux red, Elevage Blanc compares to a white Bordeaux, usually made with Sauvignon Blanc and or Semillon grapes. Elevage Blanc uses Sauvignon Blanc and the rare Sauvignon Gris variety.

Fletcher's wife, Janet, is a noted food journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and author or co-author of 18 books, as well as being a master gardener. You can imagine that she and Doug have well-developed opinions on culinary topics and must eat and drink well at home.

Doug says he's found that the red Elevage pairs slightly differently with food than the Chimney Rock varietal Cabernets do. He says that the flavors of Cabernet come to an intense peak on your palate, while Elevage is broader and more interesting to taste. For Cabernet he thinks hanger steak is a classic match, while Elevage is best with slow-braised meats. That leads you to dishes that are great in the colder winter months, like beef or lamb stews and osso buco.

He says the goal in making Elevage is to make it almost as smooth and approachable as the most elegant of all red wine types in the world. "If it's done right it's not as big or tannic as Cabernet," he says, "but more like Pinot Noir, except more complex. Every year, that's what we work for." And, as the tasting showed, that's what Fletcher and his team have consistently achieved with Elevage.


February 15, 2007