On the 2024 Vintage
Dear friends,
Harvest is slowly coming to a close here in Napa Valley, and so far, I have to admit, it's been exceptional. The late spring and early summer were mostly hot and bright, forecasting strong vegetative growth for next year. Towards the end of July the temperatures began to cool, and we had a generally mild and temperate August. Despite about a week and a half of particularly hot and arid temperatures in mid-September, the end of the summer has been classic, dry, balanced, and moderate, allowing even ripening in all of our vineyards.
We harvested our estate Sauvignon Blanc on September 4, with great sugar and acidity, and a near perfect pH of 3.2. Chardonnay was harvested on September 12, and from the beginning we were incredibly excited about the potential in this year's fruit -- juicy, peachy, tropical, everything I was hoping for. We pressed the Chardonnay to mostly new French oak barrels and the wine spontaneously began fermentation within three days. We followed Chardonnay in the Petaluma Gap with Pinot Noir on September 19, from our La Tâche clone in limestone-laden deep Haire loam soils.
Returning to Napa Valley on October 2, we harvested Merlot from Block 3, followed by Block 2 Merlot on October 4, together with our Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. A portion of Block 2 Merlot, and all of the Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot were co-fermented due to the excessively low yields we received, both as these vines are still quite young and have yet to set a full crop, as well as because we dropped about 30% of the fruit set to support and encourage full development of the remaining crop and thus maximize quality throughout the vineyard.
We started to harvest Cabernet Sauvignon on Saturday, October 5, together with all of our estate olive trees. As our fermentation tanks were then full, and the wonderful, sweet aromas of fermentation greeted us every morning for the past three weeks, we took this moment to let the balance of our Cabernet Sauvignon continue to ripen in the vineyard. Our next harvest came on October 18, with our Clone 337 Cabernet Sauvignon, which in recent years has formed the backbone ("structure") of our Reserve Cabernet program.
While the Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir have all finished primary fermentation, both the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir are continuing through malolactic fermentation now. As is customary, malo was halted in the Sauvignon Blanc after three weeks. We are continuing to stir all of these barrels weekly. As a side note, it's a great time to visit the winery to taste these "bright young things" from barrel, as they are still so pungent, racy, and yeasty.
The Merlot tanks, as well as the co-fermented Merlot/Cabernet Franc/Petit Verdot tank, are still struggling through the end of fermentation -- these are truly the nail-biting moments for me personally, as we check the sugars every morning to see if they are still "moving." We are keeping the tanks hot, and pumping them over each day briefly, to encourage the wines to finish dry. All I can say is, it's in God's hands now, and I find myself praying a bit more than usual.
As many of you know, our winemaking style has continued to evolve over time. There is an old saying in this industry that winemaking is a journey, not a destination, and it could never have been more true than it has been for us. In the beginning of this adventure, I was interested in making the most balanced wines, led by the wines I had loved when I first started working in wine retail in college -- wines like Ridge Vineyards "Monte Bello" Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. I was interested in making truly "American" wines, so like they did at Ridge, I played with a lot of American oak, and these are still some of the most interesting wines we have ever made -- and some of our favorites come from this period.
Over the following years, we experimented with a number of different styles. From 2012-2016, our wines became a bit more flamboyant, robust, juicy and full. 2017 was a classic vintage, but 2018 was very much in this style; I think of these as a sort of plateau during that period in style. Contemporaneously, however, the Pinot Noirs we were making became more and more restrained. During this period we saw the creation and release of the "Sean W. McBride" wine label -- something that I think I had to do in order to better understand my goals as a vigneron. 2019, the off-year of 2020, and 2021, were a return to a more balanced, elegant, and leaner-style of winemaking, influenced as I had been in the previous period by the winemakers I had been moonlighting for (I'll leave out any name-dropping, as insightful as that may seem).
And then, with the 2022 vintage, we had the revelation of what direction Crosby Roamann would be going in the future, and this happened to coincide, perhaps not incidentally, with the purchase of our own vineyard in 2020, and the release of our first estate white wine.
The vintages of 2022, 2023, and now 2024, have been marked by what I might refer to as a modest style of winemaking -- I have tried to take my "ego" entirely out of the winemaking process. This isn't about me, after all is said and done, it's about the wines, and I think that's what I learned by developing a brand under my own name. Crosby Roamann isn't about me, it's about great wine, and that's all, and that's what I am committed to, each and every day -- truly great wines.
And with that in mind, some thoughts on what to expect from the 2024 vintage wines: I am already drinking them from barrel, and enjoying them, which is saying a lot, I think. Young wine, you have to understand, usually needs time in barrel to develop, to mature, to soften, to come together -- that's why we spend so much money on barrels and wait so long for the wines to develop in them. And the fact that I’m enjoying them while they’re still so young, is rare.
By way of example, when Chardonnay is young, it is usually tight, reductive, and yeasty, with angular flavors. When I was first starting out, I remember learning from a trade magazine, perhaps even the Wine Advocate, that John Kongsgaard, the veteran and legendary winemaker of his eponymous wine label, said of Chardonnay that you needed to let it die, and then you needed to resurrect it, and in some ways I believe this may be true, that's why you need to stir the barrels and let it age, often for up to 18 months -- but all I can tell you today is that I am drinking this damn thing right out of the barrel at about six weeks of age and it is the most intriguing Chardonnay I have ever tasted so young, and I simply cannot express my excitement about the wine it is going to mature into by 2026!
The Sauvignon Blanc is robust and sumptuous, with our peach-syrup estate flavors but a strong backbone of acidity. The Pinot Noir is balanced and elegant, even as it is finishing malolactic fermentation and developing that warm, buttery flavor that malo always has when it's young. It's spicy with some concentrated herbal notes that herald a nice complexity.
And it's still too young to truly discuss the estate red wines, but by all measures, they stand to be some of the most complex and voluptuous wines we have ever produced, God willing.
Just a couple more final thoughts: Thanksgiving selections are available online. Please find them here.
Also, the Fall/Winter 2024 Membership is still available for a limited time. Please join the Membership here. Joining as a Member is the best way to support our winery. Receive FREE Shipping, 10% discounts, the annual Member gift, and FREE Tastings when you join the Membership.
I'll end it there. It's been quite the morning, and a bit of a trip down memory lane.
With love from Napa Valley,
Sean W. McBride
PS: You might have noticed that the format of this email is a bit different from those of the past, and perhaps a bit of an explanation is due, if only to give credit where credit is due -- Some friends/members of the winery visited for a tasting recently, as they have been every autumn for the past couple years, and they suggested that we send this simple text email, and make it more personal, such as it is. So we decided to try it this time around. Let us know what you think? Personally, we still kind of enjoy designing the more visually exciting announcements, but they do tend to lend themselves more to a "marketing" style of communication, and I've always personally found I prefer the direct communicative style.
