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2018 Wine Harvest Report: Napa Valley Wins with a Slow and Steady Year (Wine Spectator)

After the turbulent 2017 harvest, Napa vintners would have been happy with a simply quieter 2018. Instead, this year delivered an ideal growing season, followed by a long, slow-paced harvest. Winemakers are excited by the potential quality of the young wines.

Welcome to Wine Spectator‘s 2018 Wine Harvest Report, our coverage of Northern Hemisphere wine regions. (Our Southern Hemisphere 2018 harvest reports were published earlier this year.) While we won’t know how good a vintage is until we taste the finished wines, these reports offer firsthand accounts from top winemakers in leading regions.

A year for patience

Last year’s harvest was marred by devastating wine-country wildfires, including two blazes that scorched parts of Napa, destroying some wineries, filling the valley with smoke and making it hard for some winemakers to access their wineries during key moments. And while 2018 has brought more fires to California, including this week’s deadly blazes in Butte County to the north and Ventura to the south, Napa has been largely spared.

The near picture-perfect growing season began in late February. Spring was mild, with extended flowering yielding uniform grape clusters. Temperatures remained steady and warm throughout the growing season, without any significant heat spikes, making for a cool, unhurried harvest. The only mildly concerning hiccup came in the form of rain on Oct. 2 and 3.

For winemakers like Jeff Ames, that unhurried harvest felt like a marathon. In addition to being a consultant for several wineries, Ames is the winemaker for Rudius and Tor, and produces everything from Sauvignon Blanc to Cabernet Sauvignon. “The hang time this year was just nuts,” groaned Ames. “This is easily the longest harvest I have seen in a long time. We finished picking on Oct. 29—two to three weeks later than normal.”

For sparkling-wine producers like Domaine Carneros, picking started at the usual time, but then just kept going, thanks to cool temperatures that slowed ripening. “Temperature was a defining factor in this vintage,” said winemaker T.J. Evans, noting that 2018 was actually cooler than 2011, which many regard as the coolest vintage of the past decade. “I think I will remember 2018 as the year we picked Chardonnay in October.”

Courtesy Duckhorn

Duckhorn winemaker Renée Ary checks ripening grapes on Howell Mountain.

In the cellar, Evans said fermentations for both sparkling and still wines were clean, with vibrant flavors. Renée Ary, winemaker for Duckhorn Vineyards, thought highly of their white wines. “Most of our Sauvignon Blanc saw riper flavors at lower alcohols, which is ideal, and the quality is some of the best we have seen in over a decade,” she said.

The extended growing season meant Cabernet winemakers had to cool their heels before seeing any action. “The first 20 days of August were the hottest on record at Larkmead, and the last 11 days were the coolest,” said Dan Petroski, winemaker for Larkmead Vineyards. “September remained cool until the 8th, when a warming spell came over the valley, which coincided with the start of our red grape harvesting.” They picked all of their grapes over the next 26 days. But Petroski notes that they picked earlier than many because Larkmead is a warm site.

Other winemakers had to wait until October before things started progressing, and picking did not wrap up until the first week of November. “Patience has been the name of the game this year,” said Jeff Owens, winemaker for Odette Estate in Napa’s Stags Leap District. “It’s been cooler this year compared to recent vintages so I had to retrain myself to think like it was 2012 all over again.”

Promising results

Owens wasn’t the only one to evoke 2012. Many winemakers see 2012 as a benchmark for both quality and quantity. That year also delivered a mild spring and summer and an extended growing season, and the resulting wines showed balance and good concentration. Winemakers are seeing similar results in 2018. “Wines coming out of the fermentors are imbued with incredible flavor and density on the palate,” said Petroski.

Ary at Duckhorn echoed Petroski’s remarks, particularly regarding Merlot. “The Merlots are incredibly polished and focused,” said Ary.

Owens at Odette agreed. “The color and texture are magnificent, with a great sense of freshness. I think it’s one of the better lots of Merlot we’ve seen yet off of the property.”

Yields have been down for several vintages, due to several years of drought conditions. For 2018, winemakers reported that yields were much closer to normal averages.

Vineyard crews pick grapes in the early morning hours.

The improved yield was largely attributed to larger grape clusters. “Usually when we’re thinking about doing crop-load estimates, the average Cabernet cluster weight is somewhere around 0.25 pounds per cluster,” said Daniel Ricciato, who oversees 60 sites for winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown. “This year’s clusters are clocking in at around 0.5 pounds to 0.6 pounds per cluster.” Ricciato noted that they saw the large clusters coming, even before bloom, but despite aggressive thinning, some crop loads were still upwards of 40 percent above average.

While it will be some time before the finished wines can be judged, vintners are pleased so far. “We are very optimistic about the 2018 vintage in Napa Valley,” said Ary.

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A Marvel Of A Man: Stan Lee Dead At 95

Comic book legend Stan Lee poses at the opening reception for "Stan Lee: A Retrospective" presented by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art on Feb. 23, 2007 in New York City.

Lee gave us over six decades’ worth of superheroes we could identify with, characters like Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, who reacted to superpowered crises in believably flawed, human ways.

(Image credit: Mat Szwajkos/Getty Images)

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We Drove All 3 Rolls-Royce Black Badge Models And Went to the Dark Side

The Dawn in Black Badge.

Black Badge is a modern styling theme that Rolls-Royce offers on its sportiest models, the Dawn, Wraith and Ghost, in which the traditional chrome brightwork is swapped out for more menacing black chrome. 

Rolls doesn’t do anything as gauche as branding this trio as a “collection,” but the purveyor of classic British luxury cars did provide us with an opportunity to try all three versions of Black Badge during a tour downtown Nashville and the surrounding countryside.

And by the way, the blacked-out chrome is not just for the small trim bits, but also for the cars’ towering Parthenon grille and Spirit of Ecstasy power-retractable hood ornament.

The wheel hubs and spokes are 44 layers of folded black carbon fiber, fastened with titanium bolts to aerospace-grade forged aluminum rims. The carbon fiber treatment extends inside the car too, with a carbon fiber dashboard panel in place of the expected fine wood.

Rolls makes this piece distinctive by weaving aluminum thread into the carbon fiber to add some sparkle. Even the chrome air vents are blackened with tarnish-proof vapor deposition technology.

The roof-lining headliner also glitters thanks to installation of the Rolls-Royce black starlight headliner, which employs fiber optics to create a nighttime starscape inside the cabin of hard top Black Badge models. 

 Convertibles like the Dawn have the option of providing a view of real stars by folding the thickly insulated canvas roof at the touch of a button.

Black Badge was created in acknowledgement of the fact that Rolls-Royce posh image could actually be a mild deterrent to some younger, active customers who see themselves wanting to project a dynamic image with their cars. 

It has worked, as Black Badge models are selling to customers who are 20 years younger than the average Rolls-Royce customer.

“In creating Black Badge, we were conscious of satisfying the different demands of these new customers,” explained Giles Taylor, Rolls-Royce Director of Design. 

“Not only did they demand an alternative image for themselves, they demanded authentic Rolls-Royce engineering substance to underpin it,” he continued.

That means a pumped up engine room in all three Black Badge luxury liners.

The plush Darkest Tungsten Ghost limousine’s 6.6-liter V12 engine enjoys an extra 40 horsepower in Black Badge guise, bringing the total to 603 horsepower, and an added 44 lb.-ft. torque boosts that rating to 620 lb.-ft. 

The eight-speed automatic transmission is also programmed to deliver sportier gearchanges, with less focus on preserving the imperceptibility of usual Rolls-Royce shifts.

The muscular $420,000 Salamanca Blue Wraith grand touring coupe’s power holds steady at 623 horsepower, but it muscles up with an additional 52 lb.-ft. torque, bringing its total to 590 lb.-ft., ensuring that it can back up its sinister looks with equally impressive performance.

The $430,000 Cherry Red Dawn is a plush four-seat convertible in the grand tradition, so its mission of comfort for all four occupants is intact, though our drop top was a bona fide speedster, thanks to its 593 horsepower and 620 lb.-ft. torque.

We put the Dawn’s acceleration to the test when we found an upcoming on-ramp was a left turn and not a right exit, while we sat in the front row of cars waiting for the light to change in the far right lane of three. 

When the light turned green, our red missile rocketed away, sweeping easily across the three lanes make the left turn for the on ramp ahead of the other cars.

All three cars retain the familiar Rolls-Royce above-it-all detached feeling in the driver’s seat, wafting effortlessly along with only the mildest hints of events in the outside world. 

They continue to use Rolls-Royce’s older steel platform from before the debut of the new Phantom and the all-aluminum Architecture of Luxury chassis that also underpins the fabulous new Cullinan SUV.

While the Cullinan has consciously put the driver in touch with the road, these traditional models retain that characteristic Rolls-Rolls ability to float above the road more than roll over it.

The selection of materials and the execution of every detail in the Black Badge cars serves to remind us of how Rolls-Royce became “the Rolls-Royce of cars.” 

The appearance of feel of every surface illustrates why Rolls-Royce says that its cars don’t compete with other luxury car brands, but with vacation homes and artwork. It is because traveling in a Rolls-Royce is a vacation in its own way and absorbing its aesthetics is an artistic experience.

The Black Badge models only underscore those traits and provides a contemporary spin on the traditional Rolls values. We’ll be curious to see in what ways Rolls is able to apply this concept to other models and to stretch this brand as it recruits the next generation of customers.