Berger: An unknown, but great wine

There are a lot of great wines that fly well below the radar of wine lovers.

One reason for this is that a wine may be made in a style that the owner believes won’t appeal to many wine reviewers, so the producer doesn’t send samples to most reviewers.

Another reason: the company making the wine has little or no understanding about how to market wine, and thus its distribution is largely by word of mouth.

Both of these scenarios apply to a Napa Valley wine called Leo Joseph Cabernet Sauvignon, and it is a story that started some 15 years ago when George Vierra, one of the Napa Valley’s best winemakers, was playing bocce ball one Friday night.

Another player began chatting about a dream she had to make a great cabernet to honor her father. After a brief chat, Carolyn Harrison Lawrence knew Vierra could help with that dream.

“George made me go to a UC Davis vineyard management class,” Lawrence told me. “We researched every element of how to plant the vines - trellising, the right clones...”

George had said a vertical trellising system might reduce the chances of making a classic cabernet where Lawrence’s old dry riverbed vineyard would be planted. So Carolyn chose an older method of growing grapes called Double Guyot, widely used in Bordeaux.

Planted in 2002, the small vineyard produced its first commercial grapes in 2005. And Vierra was poised to make a classic.

I have known Vierra for more than 30 years. As a former winery owner (Vichon, Merlion) as well as Napa Valley College instructor and wine consultant, he has long preached that structure is essential to great cabernet sauvignon.

So he picked the 2005 cabernet three weeks earlier than anyone else in the area of Sulphur Springs Avenue in St. Helena. And the resulting wine was a startling throwback to an era when cabernet smelled and tasted like cabernet.

It was aged in used barrels that were fitted with new heads, so George could control the amount of oak it received. Just 270 cases were made from the 0.8-acre vineyard.

The wine was structured the way cabernets from the past (1960s and 1970s) were made - to be savored with a meal and to be aged in the cellar. It also was a surprising look back to decades past when lower-alcohol cabernets ruled. The 2005 wine had 13.8 percent alcohol, an aroma of tea, red and black currants and dried herbs, and a startling complexity, especially nice with food.

Moreover, it didn’t deteriorate with air and only improved as it sat.

Despite the classic nature of the wine, it sold slowly. Part of the reason was that Lawrence never developed a sales system. Nor where samples sent to most wine writers. As a result, the only place to find the wine is direct from the winery.

Over the years, she and Vierra made cabernets in 2006 (still fresh and appealing), 2007 (called Lillian’s, and a more approachable wine), 2008 (with a silky finish), and 2010.

The latter wine has just been released and it is one of the most dramatic young cabernets I have ever tasted. Loaded with complexity, depth, nuances of tea, dried herbs, black cherries, and subtle spices, it is structured just as was the 2005, with lower alcohol, terrific acidity for pairing with meals, and superb potential to age.

In the face of literally dozens of Napa cabernets that sell for $100 and more, the 2010 Leo Joseph is a relative bargain at $65 a bottle. But because all of the wines in the history of this project never really sold well, all are still available from the winery! And all are still $65 a bottle!

Those who began this project were the late widow of Leo Joseph Harrison, Lillian Harrison, who died in 2013 at 106; her daughter, Carolyn; granddaughter Donna Lee Lawrence-Costa, and her great granddaughter, Erika.

To order any of the wines, log onto www.leojosephwines.com, or call 707-963-0521

Chances are Carolyn will pick up the phone in her kitchen.

Sonoma County resident Dan Berger publishes “Vintage Experiences,” a weekly wine newsletter. Write to him at winenut@gmail.com.