Pritchard Hill is home to a small group of wineries which produce some of Napa Valley’s best and most-expensive Cabernet Sauvignons. True, you may not have heard of all of them or seen their bottles on your wine merchant’s shelves...or even in the locked displays. In fact, many Pritchard Hill wines are on strict allocation, and their producers don’t rely on sales through distributors, even if they bother having one. That list includes Colgin, Brand, Continuum, Bryant Family, Ovid, AXR, David Arthur and Realm Houyi.
Even if these wineries may not be immediately recognizable to consumers, many of the top winemakers elsewhere in Napa Valley and wine collectors around the world will tell you that Pritchard Hill is perhaps the best AVA in Napa Valley. But there is one detail these winemakers are quick to add. Pritchard Hill isn’t an American Viticultural Area, and isn’t like to become anytime soon.
There’s a reason for that.
As you drive north along Silverado Trail, take a sharp right just opposite Conn Creek winery and wind up into the Vaca Mountains along Sage Canyon Road – not much to see except the scenery until you get to Lake Hennessey, which will be floating placidly off on your left. About here is where small roads start cropping up to your right, most not bigger than driveways, which a few actually are. They may not give
any indication of where they will lead you, but often it will be to the exclusive wineries listed above, most with no public tasting rooms and open by appointment only.
Right past Long Ranch Road, there is an opening to a winding road that will eventually lead you to Chappellet winery. Chappellet does have a tasting room, but don’t stop unless you have appointment. And it probably won’t work to pull over to the side of the road to call for one. “We recommend making your reservation 2-3 months in advance of your visit,” a note on the Chappellet website reads, and it warns to have your credit card ready. But if you do have an appointment and can follow the small signs, a scheduled tasting, which start at $125, is certainly worth the time and money.
Of course, Chappellet certainly belongs in the unofficial “Top Wineries of Pritchard Hill Club.” In fact, it was the founding member – the winery that first got other people interested in making winery up here. It is also the reason that there is no Pritchard Hill AVA, although Cyril Chappellet, the very friendly current leader of the venerable family winery, swears that he would love to have one if only....
The name Pritchard Hill isn’t on any geographic map I’ve seen, but everyone who’s in the Napa wine business understands it lies across a group of ridges west of Lake Hennessey and accessible primarily via Sage Canyon Road. How far it extends west and north and where it ends is anyone’s guess.
There isn’t any mystery, however, in where it got its name. A man named Charles Pritchard made wine there in the 1890s – Zinfandel and Riesling – but after Prohibition the area was largely unoccupied. Surviving Napa Valley family wineries and a wave of outsiders who started locating here in the 1960s and 1970s preferred the valley floor. Easier to farm and fewer rattlesnakes to deal with.
Donn Chappellet was one of those newcomers, a wealthy businessman who founded and grew one of America’s largest coffee vending business before he decided to turn his attention to his favorite beverage – fine wines. He met with Andre Tschelecheff, then Napa Valley’s reigning winemaker, who is said to have urged him to grow mountain grapes to make fine wines. Chappellet took the advice and in the mid-1960s bought the property on Pritchard Hill.
Although I started writing about Napa Valley wines not too many years after Chappellet’s first vintage in 1968, I never visited the winery during Donn’s lifetime. I finally got there a half-dozen years ago during harvest to meet with his son Cyril and the wine crew.
But it wasn’t until earlier this year, when I was working on a story about Napa Valley’s 16 sub-AVAs for another publication, that I became curious as to why Pritchard Hill wasn’t one of them. I made an appointment to call Cyril, who is not only heads of the winery but is also board chairman of Napa Valley Vintners, which represents 539 of the valley’s wineries.
“For the first 25 years or so, no one else was located up here,” Chappellet explained to me on our call. “Meanwhile, Chappellet began using “Pritchard Hill” on some of its labels. “My dad decided to trademark the name ‘Pritchard Hill’ in 1970 or ’71 because our trademark attorney said we needed to trademark Pritchard Hill or someone else might trademark it and take it from us.”
It took some time until the next winery appeared on the hill. “David Arthur was our first neighbor [establishing a winery in 1985],” Chappellet says, “then, with more wineries, came the idea in there would be value in turning Pritchard Hill into an appellation. We had been talking with our neighbors about it for some time. Tim Mondavi [co-owner of Continuum] was a big advocate of the idea, as he and his father had worked on the Oakville appellation.”
At first, the informal meetings seemed promising. As is the case with the formation of any potential AVA, they discussed geographical boundaries and who gets in and who doesn’t. With a renowned name like Pritchard Hill, there were plenty of lesser terroirs where wine producers would have loved to have been included. And the AVA process encourages inclusion.
“There is a lot of area between Howell Mountain [to the north] and Stags Leap [ to the south],” Chappellet points out. “An appellation is okay if you can keep it in the room, but if it’s too big, it gets watered down and doesn’t mean anything.”
“When last we met – Ovid, Brand, David Archer, Colgin, Byant – everyone brought their attorneys,” he continues. “And we brought our trademark firm. The question became what would it cost to defend the appellation [if it became Pritchard Hill], something we’ve been doing with our trademark for 50 years. Generally, $50-$70,000 per year, but no one can tell you how much a real battle would cost. P&G [Procter & Gamble] spends millions to defend its trademarks.” So, potential cost of protection was too much of a risk, plus they wanted to keep it small. Chappellet says, people can use Pritchard Hill as a geographic location on labels, but not as a wine name.
Other AVA names have been considered, Chappellet says, but a Pritchard Hill AVA without the Pritchard Hill name made no sense. It would be like calling the Champagne region “Big Bubbles.”
And so, Pritchard Hill becomes an elusive place, even magical and mystical in the minds of some. I suppose “Camelot” AVA might be stretching things too much.
