Napa Valley
$75 (Wine Club Reorder: $61)
As a high schooler from Wisconsin, Casey Stringer traveled with his parents to California to visit colleges in the Bay Area. During a gap intheir schedule, they wound up in Napa Valley, a place that they had
all certainly heard about but knew little about. Taken with Napa’s laid-back lifestyle, vineyard-filled landscapes, and excellent wines, Casey knew his path in life.
Casey went to college in California – at Santa Barbara to study photography. Landing a job as a cellar hand at a local winery, he soon realized he wanted to spend his time in the cellar and vineyards and not in photography school. Through the years he worked at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa, Archery Summit in Oregon. Moving to New Zealand, he gained a formal winemaking education and worked at wineries in Central Otago and Hawke’s Bay. Upon returning to California, Casey worked in the cellar at the esteemed Santa Ynez cult winery, Jonata.
While visiting family in Wisconsin, he met a girl, and decided to stay and get married. While this seemed like a detour in his winemaking journey, the wine bug was still firmly planted. Casey began shipping premium West coast fruit to Wisconsin and making what was arguably Wisconsin’s best-ever wine produced in a garage, but that wasn’t a sustainable business model. Casey and his young family eventually relocated to California, where Casey makes wine in Napa and Sonoma.
The wine consists of a mix of valley floor and mountain vineyard sites, making this a great representation of Napa Cabernet. Each vineyard was picked by hand then fully destemmed, meticulously sorted, and moved to a combination of closed-top stainless tanks and new 60-gallon French oak barrels for fermentation. Specific barrels from each lot were tasted and then designated for Napa Valley Cabernet bottling. Each of the wines stayed on its skins for an average of 21 days before being gently pressed at dryness. After 13 months of aging separately, the barrels were blended and then returned to barrel for an additional 6 months before being bottled unfiltered and unfined. 450 cases produced.
Amy Ryan – January 2022
Bacchus & Venus Wines 