For many of my readers, Cathy Corison needs no introduction (see Tasting Integrity: 25 Years of Corison Napa Cabernet). Quite to the contrary, for many of us, this legendary winemaker and her wines sit firmly in the pantheon of Napa’s greatest talents and greatest expressions of place.
All of Cathy’s wines are excellent, but one of them stands apart from the others and always has. It comes from a special place that itself stands apart from the rest of Napa Valley—one of the region’s oldest and most regal plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Cathy is about to release the 26th vintage of her Kronos Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, and so she decided it was time to take a look back on her first 25 years working with this remarkable vineyard, and she invited a lucky few of us along for the retrospective.
The Story of Kronos Vineyard
“We had started the winery a few years earlier, and it had gotten to the point that we were selling what we made, and land prices had leveled off,” says Corison. “It was probably the only time ever that there was a little bit of a downturn in the Napa economy. So I sent out my husband William Martin with the soil maps between Rutherford and St. Helena, looking for Bale gravelly loam, which is the alluvial soil of the Rutherford Bench that made all the most wonderful wines historically, and most of which is up against the hills with trophy homes on it. And then one day William came home and said, ‘You know that place on the highway that has been for sale for 8 years?’”
The Kronos vineyard with the Corison winery in the background. Photo by Grace Corison Martin.
Just south of St. Helena on Highway 29 sat an old farmhouse and barn that had the distinction of being the first property to be denied a use permit by the County of Napa. At the time these permits had been newly instituted by the county as a check against what some saw as the unfettered growth of the wine industry. The French owner’s plans included knocking down the house and the barn, putting 100 parking spots along the highway, and some water treatment ponds on the back of the property.
“The neighbors didn’t like it, the county didn’t like it, and they just shut it down,” recalls Corison. “So the Frenchman, he took his ball and went home and put the property on the market and it just sat there because everyone thought it was too expensive. We stumbled onto it 8 years later.”
According to the soil maps, however, the property had a significant amount of Bale gravelly loam, and Corison and Martin quickly realized that while the real estate listing stated the vineyard was planted on AXR-1 rootstock (which Corison did not care for due to its excessive vigor) the front vineyard was planted on St. George rootstock, and the vines dated to 1971. The listing also noted that the old farmhouse had been condemned.
“That sounded like ‘bare land’ to us,” chuckles Corison, “so on a complete whim, we put in an offer for what we thought was a much fairer price. And, well, it’s been a bit of a miracle. The vineyard was 24 years old when we bought it in 1995, and now it’s about to turn 54 years old. It’s one of the last old Cabernet vineyards in Napa on St. George rootstock. I knew it was going to make great wine someday but to be honest, it was great right from the start. The combination of the soils and the climate in our little corner of the valley means we can make Cabernet as well or better than anyone in the world, and these old vines, well, they are a gift.”
Corison’s objection to the then-newly-developed AXR-1 rootstock was mostly about its yields and vigor, both of which tend to be much higher than St. George, “which has the tendency to set scraggly clusters of tiny berries,” says Corison.
The other primary selling point of AXR-1 was its supposed resistence to Phylloxera. Unfortunately, that claim proved disastrously false, resulting in the wholesale replanting of much…
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2024/12/the-majesty-of-time-25-years-of-corisons-kronos-cabernet
