A Napa favorite goes back to the future
ST. HELENA, Calif. — Through almost 70 tumultuous years of California wine history, one thing seemed never to change: Stony Hill Vineyard, a pioneer of California chardonnay since its first vintage in 1952 and perhaps Napa Valley’s first cult wine producer.
As fashions came and went, Stony Hill clung to its old-school methods and austere style of chardonnay, seemingly taking little notice of the extravagant, oaky and alcoholic styles that gained popularity in the 1990s or the accelerating Napa red wine culture growing around it.
Then, in short order the ground began to shake and the firmament shifted. The Mccrea family, owners of Stony Hill since Fred and Eleanor Mccrea bought the 168-acre Spring Mountain property in 1943, sold the winery and vineyard in 2018 to Long Meadow Ranch, another family-owned Napa winery. A year later, Mike Chelini, the winemaker and vineyard manager, retired after 45 vintages.
In December 2020, scarcely after Long Meadow began converting Stony Hill to organic viticulture, it turned around and sold Stony Hill to Gaylon Lawrence Jr., an agricultural magnate from Arkansas, who, with his chief executive, Carlton Mccoy Jr., has put together a portfolio of historic Napa properties, including Heitz Cellar, Haynes Vineyard and Burgess Cellars.
Mccoy then made an unconventional but inspired choice: He named as the winemaker Jaimee Motley, whose experience was in the vanguard of young California producers, not the typical Napa Valley pipeline.
Motley was known for her small label, Jaimee Motley Wines, based in Sonoma, which made fresh, savory wines from grapes that she purchased, including a wonderful mondeuse, a grape originally from the Savoie region of France, and a terrific cedar-scented cabernet sauvignon from the Santa Cruz Mountains. What would be the result of this combination of youthful, forward-pointing energy and this historic Napa estate?
I had pondered this question for more than a year when finally, in late March, I was able to drive up the winding hillside road to Stony Hill for a visit with Motley and two other members of the new Stony Hill team, Michaela Louise Kelly, the estate director, and Renee Berkus, the cellar master.
It felt a bit surreal to enter Stony Hill’s headquarters, the ranch-style residence that had housed members of the Mccrea family for decades, with no Mccreas present. I had never met Fred, who died in 1977, or Eleanor, who died in 1991. But I knew their son, Peter, and his wife, Willinda, and Fred and Eleanor’s granddaughter Sarah Mccrea. Their presence still seemed to suffuse the property.
Longtime fans of Stony Hill might be disquieted to learn that major changes are afoot. The cellar is being completely rebuilt, much of the vineyard is being replanted and a conversion is underway to biodynamic and regenerative viticulture, promoting soil health and a permanent cover crop rather than tilling or plowing. Even the wines will be changing, though not stylistically.
Stony Hill will continue to make chardonnay, along with small amounts of excellent riesling and gewürztraminer, as it has always done. But after the replanting, the vineyard
will include 14 acres of cabernet sauvignon, and 8.5 acres of chardonnay, far less than the roughly 20 acres of chardonnay in 1990, much of which had been pulled for various reasons before the new ownership arrived.
The vineyard will also have 5 acres of cabernet franc and smaller amounts of riesling, malbec, merlot, syrah, gamay, gewürztraminer and petit verdot. Stony Hill, the longtime bastion of white wines, will soon be a red-dominant producer.
This should not be entirely shocking. Stony Hill has been making small amounts of cabernet sauvignon since 2009 in a restrained, classical style
that I love. Fred Mccrea had always grown some red grapes for family consumption — pinot noir and zinfandel — in a small plot, called Fred’s Reds.
“Transitioning to cabernet just makes sense with climate change,” Motley said. Chardonnay and the other whites, which don’t do as well as cabernet in the heat, will continue to grow in cooler sites at Stony Hill, which rises on a hillside from 600 feet to 1,600 feet, nestled among redwoods and firs.
Most important, of course, are the wines. The Stony Hill chardonnay was one of a kind, lean and subtle, yet full of energy and character. As California chardonnays were becoming softer, oakier and more ponderous, Stony Hill’s never changed. They could age and evolve for years.
The chardonnay was made idiosyncratically, without malolactic fermentation, a process in which tart malic acid is converted by bacteria into softer lactic acid. This was the old California style until winemakers in the 1970s began to adopt the methods of Burgundy, chardonnay’s native land, where malolactic fermentation is encouraged.
Motley is hesitant to make major changes. She will continue to use big, older barrels, rather than the smaller barrels of new oak that became a signature of California chardonnay, but she said the 2021 chardonnay had gone through malolactic fermentation.
“They wanted to go through malo,” Motley, who has always made wine without overt intervention, said of the wines. “It would have taken a lot to block it — cold aging, lots of sulfur dioxide.”
I tasted a rough blend of the 2021 — the final wine had not yet been set — and it was fresh and savory, energetic with herb and mineral flavors. As a longtime fan of the Stony Hill style, this was lovely.
“There’s so much tradition and history, it would have been easy to do the same thing,” said Kelly, the estate director. “I admire Jaimee for listening to the grapes and feeling where they wanted to go. It’s not a new recipe.”
With the vineyard replanting currently underway, Motley said 2021 did not yield enough riesling and gewürztraminer to make varietal wines. She is instead experimenting with what she calls a heritage blend, the two varieties mixed with a little chardonnay. The blend I tasted was pure, expressive, refreshing and dry, with pretty floral aromas.
The 2021 cabernet was also not finished, but the very young sample I tasted was fresh, savory and balanced, very much in keeping with a 2010 cabernet that we also tasted, dry with aromas and flavors of red fruits and herbs. The
’21 is 100% cabernet sauvignon, but Motley plans to add other Bordeaux varieties as the vines mature.
Mccoy told me he knew Motley was the right choice after he tasted her wines.
“Those wines contain so much purity and energy and life without sacrificing density and pedigree,” he said. “I knew that the marriage of Jaimee and the terroir of Stony Hill could equal magic.”