If Hobbits were Wine Makers they would Live in East Napa, Caldwell, Palmaz, Frazier, Jarvis, Del Dotto
The Coombsville section to the east of the city of Napa is home to a surprising number of cave based wineries. From Caldwell to Palmaz, to Frazier and Jarvis, and we can’t forget Del Dotto, just to name the big ones. At the far eastern edge of the district is Mount George, which is the southern end of the Vaca range that makes up one border of the Napa Valley. That’s where Palmaz is dug in with the world’s biggest, reinforced underground structure serving as their fermentation room.
So, when I say these are caves, I mean BIG CAVES, carved out of the hillsides and housing the entire wine making process. One of the biggest challenges for wine makers is maintaining the correct temperatures. Fermentation heats up the juice and high temperatures destroy flavors. Old time wine makers used clay urns buried up to their neck in the earth as a way to maintain the correct temperatures. This is still done in some places in Europe, most notably in Georgia, which has maintained this tradition for their ‘country wines’.
In modern wineries you’ve probably seen the popular stainless steel tanks with their puckered sides encasing the cooling jackets, but even the big wooden fermentation tanks that are becoming popular have cooling jackets inside. While it is critically important to keep the juice in the correct temperature range during fermentation, it is actually more expensive to keep the wines cool during their long aging process from one to two years. That’s why aging caves became so popular in Europe and then later in the New World wineries.
So why have wineries decided to move their entire operations inside caves? This really is a Hobbit-like move. Of course, the generation that has done this grew up reading that Iconic book, and also reading about the good energy sense that caves make. There are some very good practical reasons for using a cave for the process.
A cave naturally maintains a temperature, summer or winter, of about 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s pretty close to the ideal temperature for aging wines. It is a lot cheaper to cool a tank down if the ambient temperature is cool already. They also have naturally high humidity, which inhibits costly evaporation from the barrels. A cave also protects the wines from damaging sunlight, although it means that the wine maker and cellar rats (as they call the helpers) are not getting good tans anytime soon. Compared to buildings, caves are relatively inexpensive to ‘build’, at about $100 per square foot. Finally caves are beneath the surface of the ground, and most tax assessment systems are focused on improvements above the ground.
Now the only disadvantage that East Napa suffers from is that most of the wineries date from 1990 so they are only open by appointment. But they more than make up for that with gorgeous scenery, a very convenient location, and of course, wonderful wines.
From the wine hospitality side there are a couple of significant benefits, a cave tasting is a unique experience for most people. Having dinner in the cave, with the candles and mood lighting is a romantic and engaging experience. When we are in the midst of the high season and its 90 and 100 degrees outside being able to spend some time in the coolness of the cave is a delightful respite, even for a tour guide who has seen it all before.
Ralph & Lahni de Amicis are authors of the Amicis Winery Guides (Find them on Amazon), and owners of Amicis Tours that takes people on tours of the wineries of Napa and Sonoma. They are authors of over twenty books on health, design, business and travel. Their iPhone Apps, The Napa Valley Wine Tour, and The Sonoma Winery Tour are a tour guides approach to these beautiful area, complete with 1000’s of photos and insights. Their articles and products can be found on the sites http://www.amicistours.com and http://www.spaceandtime.com
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