Calder Wine Company
In the past few years, a handful of Napa winemakers have been rediscovering the grapes that shaped the valley’s history before Cabernet took over. One such winemaker is 34-year-old Rory Williams, who founded Calder Wine Company in 2011.
When you grow up in Napa as the eldest son of John Williams, the founder of Frog’s Leap, and Julie Johnson, founder of Tres Sabores, maybe it’s only a matter of time until you hanker for your own label. Rory is his father’s assistant winemaker and vineyard manager, and also helps to run his mother’s property; both of which are farmed organically.
‘What caused me to want to make wine,’ Rory explains, ‘was an Inglenook Charbono from an old cellar that I tasted in 2007. It had so much flavour and intensity without weight – a wow wine.’ There are now only 28ha of the grape variety left in California.
Rory’s juicy, minty, earthy Charbono comes from old vines in the Meyer Vineyard in Calistoga; his succulent Riesling from a block of gnarled head-trained vines in the Rachel Rossi Vineyard in Rutherford, where the grape flourished back in the 19th century. Add to that a chalky, lemony Chenin Blanc (the grape was once the third most-planted variety in Napa) and a mineral-toned Petite Sirah. All cost $30 (£23) or less.
Like many in his generation, Rory wants Calder to be an ‘exploration of cultural terroir, of wines that can transport you to a place, of wines that taste like home.’