Bacio Divino / Janzen

Claus Janzen found wine at nineteen, working the ski seasons at an upscale restaurant in Switzerland. He went home to Canada and sold commercial real estate in Winnipeg, and kept tasting. Eventually the family sold nearly everything they owned, loaded the rest into a motor home, and spent three months driving west to Napa. His son Kyle still tells the story. Claus worked his first harvest at Caymus and stayed twelve years, building the winery’s international marketing.

In 1993 he got hold of some Sangiovese that had practically been thrown away. He fermented a single barrel, blended it with a couple of barrels of Cabernet made by the Caymus team, and released a hundred cases. He called it Bacio Divino, ‘divine kiss’. A Sangiovese-led blend, Pazzo, followed in 1999. The single-vineyard Janzen Cabernets came in 2004, timed to the first harvest from the family’s own vines, and a Sonoma Pinot and Chardonnay label, Lucie, in 2009.

Caymus also gave him the introduction that mattered most. Through it he met Andy Beckstoffer, who farmed the Georges III vineyard next door and began selling him grapes in 1995; the Beckstoffer heritage vineyards, To Kalon and Missouri Hopper among them, have supplied the family ever since. Diane Janzen runs sales and the customers. Kyle, the second generation, is now co-owner and general manager.

The estate sits well off the northern end of the Silverado Trail, on the eastern side of the valley where Dutch Henry Canyon cuts up into the Vaca range. It is forested, steep and quiet, with long views down to the valley floor. There are three vineyards. Sherry’s Acre is the smallest, 1.2 acres beside a creek, and every autumn the local bears come down to eat the fruit. Meadows Vineyard is ringed on every side by old-growth forest; it is cool, it ripens slowly, and the family says the pick often falls around Halloween.

Cloudy’s Vineyard is the one in our book. It is about two acres, under a hectare, of Cabernet planted in 1999 at the highest and steepest point of the property, facing northwest, on rocky volcanic soil with tufa and fractured shale. A northwest face turns the vines away from the worst of the afternoon heat, and the rock gives them almost nothing to live on. The berries stay small. The family describes the result as ‘mountain essence’: blackberry, cassis and a great deal of tannin.

The neighbourhood is a good one. Cloudy’s lies near the Blueline Vineyard, a source for both Hourglass and Switchback Ridge. On a map of Napa it is a small corner; in the glass it is a different wine from anything grown on the valley floor.

Beckstoffer’s share of To Kalon is about ninety acres in the heart of Oakville. Dozens of wineries buy from it, which makes it something like a Burgundian grand cru: one famous name, many hands, and the differences between bottlings come down to block and winemaker. Bacio Divino’s fruit comes from blocks closer to Highway 29; the Napa Wine Project, tasting the 2015, placed it in the B and C blocks in the central part of the Beckstoffer holding. The vines are now twenty-odd years old. The wine is pure Cabernet Sauvignon, kept on its lees for well over a year and in new French oak for twenty-eight months.

Kirk Venge farms the estate and makes all of it. He was born in Rutherford and took his degree in viticulture and enology at UC Davis in 1998, as his father had before him. His father is Nils Venge, who made the 1985 Groth Reserve, the first American Cabernet Robert Parker scored a hundred. It was Nils who introduced the Janzens to his son, and Bacio Divino was one of Kirk’s first consulting clients. He also has his own estate, Venge Vineyards, under the Palisades near Calistoga.

He has worked these vineyards for more than twenty vintages now, and the house style holds steady: ripe, dense, framed by oak, and built to last.

Full-throttle tannins chiselling into the palate, supported by bracing acidity, which brings lift and freshness.

Jonathan Cristaldi, Decanter, on the 2023 To Kalon

On the 2018s we carry, the critics split in an interesting way. Jeb Dunnuck gave the To Kalon 98 and Cloudy’s 95; Wine Enthusiast scored both 95; James Suckling put Cloudy’s a point ahead, 93 to 92. Decanter’s Jonathan Cristaldi, tasting the 2023s this year, gave the To Kalon 96 and Cloudy’s 95. In other words, the small hillside the family planted itself stands level with one of the most coveted vineyards in the country, and some years a little above it. These scores are the ones the winery publishes.

Put the two side by side and the difference is easy to taste. The To Kalon is broader and sweeter in the middle, with the cassis and cigar-box spice that Oakville benchland gives, and a long, fine finish. Cloudy’s is darker, wilder and more angular, with the grip of mountain tannin and a cool note of redwood and black tea that Decanter picked up too.

These wines are not for drinking young, and the 2018s have only begun to loosen. Give them air, give them a steak, and give the bottle the evening. I like to open them together for a table that thinks it knows Napa Cabernet: one shows what the valley’s most famous ground can do, the other what a family found on a hillside of its own.