Hunnicutt

Justin Stephens spent much of his youth in the valley, weeding vineyards, catching gophers and scrubbing tanks at friends’ wineries. After Berkeley he went into commercial real estate, decided wine mattered more, and came back to learn it from the ground up: night classes in viticulture and enology, days at Miner, Saddleback, Venge Vineyards and Seavey, the last two as general manager. In 2002 he made the leap to his own label and asked Kirk Venge, a close friend, to make it. Kirk has made every vintage since.

The name is Justin’s middle name. As a boy he was teased for it, until his father told him about the great General Hunnicutt, a feared presence in the Wild West. Years later, introducing the first vintage at a dinner, his father mentioned Justin’s grandmother, Nora Hunnicutt. There had been no general; it was a tall tale to bolster a small boy. The name has now passed to a third generation, Justin’s daughter Parker Hunnicutt Stephens.

Seana Stephens, who came from advertising, joined in 2010 and runs the brand and the welcome. Early vintages were made in the caves at Venge Vineyards. In 2008 the Stephenses found fifteen hillside acres on the Silverado Trail between St. Helena and Calistoga, put in an offer within a day, and spent a year and a half digging 18,000 square feet of caves into the volcanic tuff. They crushed their first grapes there in 2011.

The top Cabernet comes from Beckstoffer Georges III in Rutherford, right beside Caymus. The land was part of the Rancho Caymus grant; George Yount gave it to his granddaughter Elizabeth when she married Thomas Rutherford in 1864. Georges de Latour bought it in 1928 and it became Beaulieu’s Ranch No. 3, under the care of André Tchelistcheff, before Andy Beckstoffer bought it in 1988. Hunnicutt has worked with it since 2005.

Their block sits on a small knoll west of the Silverado Trail, well drained and open to the afternoon sun, which gives long, even ripening. Justin named it for his mother, Christina Brinkman Stephens. The wine is all Cabernet, made in tiny amounts, fourteen barrels in 2022, and raised for twenty-eight months in French oak, 80 percent new. The winery thinks the 2022 will gain nuance over ten years and more. We would wait at least that long: this is a wine with a tannic architecture you feel more than taste, and it asks for time.

Our philosophy to winemaking begins with a strict approach to finding the perfect growing site.

Kirk Venge

The Napa Valley Cabernet, made since the first vintage in 2002, is the foundation of the house, blended from small sites across the valley; the 2023 draws on two Rutherford blocks including Brinkman, with Merlot and a little Malbec. The Zinfandel has come for more than a decade from the Luvisi family’s vineyard on the east side of Calistoga at the foot of the Palisades, first planted in 1908. Hunnicutt’s block was added in 1952, head-trained and dry-farmed, on gravel and old riverbed loam. Nine barrels of it were made in 2023.

The one white is Chardonnay from the Richard Dinner Vineyard, twenty-seven acres above Glen Ellen on the northern edge of Sonoma Mountain. The vines face north, at about 800 feet, in clay loam and gravelly volcanic soil, with afternoon shade and the breeze off San Pablo Bay. Hunnicutt’s rows are the Old Wente clone, the old California selection behind much of the state’s best Chardonnay. Only eight barrels are made, aged sixteen months in French oak, 44 percent new. It is a rich wine, but a cool site keeps it in line.

Fearless Red began by accident in 2007, when a friend offered Syrah from a vineyard they knew to be excellent and the crop came in abundant. They blended the surplus with Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, and have made a blend from tiny Napa and Sonoma vineyards every year since. The 2020 Glass Fire reached the property, damaging equipment on the crush pad and a small house by the drive.

A winery without vineyards lives or dies by its access to fruit, and access in Napa is about relationships kept over decades. Hunnicutt has kept its growers: Georges III since 2005, Luvisi for more than ten years, Richard Dinner vintage after vintage. Kirk Venge grew up in the valley’s cellars and makes his own label, Venge, as well as this one. The two friends have been making the same wines together for more than twenty years, and it shows in how settled they are.

The reds age. The Napa Wine Project found a 2001 Cabernet still holding its fruit and structure after ten years, and the Brinkman Block is built for longer. The Chardonnay and the Zinfandel are for drinking while you wait. Open the white first, then the Cabernet.