A Drink in the Clouds

Wines, like stocks, have insider opportunities. And, this once, you want a low yield rather than a high one. So what would you do if a friend sidled up, hissing, “Pssst, interested in a California Chardonnay that comes from 40-year-old vines with a painfully low yield of just one ton to the acre?” And then comes the kicker: “By the way, the current offering is trading at $18 a bottle.”

The stock in question (in bottled form only) is Mayacamas Vineyards, which may be California’s most spectacularly overlooked Chardonnay producer. Situated at the 2,000-foot elevation in Napa Valley’s Mt. Veeder district, Mayacamas has an unrivaled record of making California’s longest-lived Chardonnay.

So why isn’t Mayacamas Vineyards the darling of the wine set? After all, it’s been in business in the same lofty location since 1941, with the same dedicated working owners since 1968. You probably know the answer already: fashion and marketing.

Mayacamas is classic old shoe, although far from footsore. For Bob and Noni Travers it is a sort of personal Brigadoon, unchanging and uninterested in change. (Not for nothing was Mayacamas chosen as an evocative location for the 1940s era depicted in the movie “A Walk in the Clouds.”)

Bob Travers has been making wines--Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, the odd late-harvest Zinfandel and a tiny amount of Pinot Noir--in the same supremely simple, unswerving fashion for almost three decades. Even the Mayacamas label is constant: It has not altered a jot since 1950.

The winery is almost laughably modest compared to the high-tech palaces that line the Napa Valley floor. Mayacamas still has--and occasionally used until quite recently--the same simple hand-turned basket press that was installed when the winery was revived in 1941.

Actually, the original stone winery--still used for winemaking--dates from 1889, when its German owner, John Fischer, a former sword engraver, established his combination sheep ranch-vineyard in a south-facing fold in the hills high above Napa Valley.

Bob Travers is an easygoing, understated guy, a former banker who chucked it all to pursue a modest but determined vision of enduring wine quality.

Usually, winegrowers as unwavering as he are as irascible as wolverines. Yet Travers is affability itself. “I don’t know why the world hasn’t paid more attention to us,” Travers, a boyish fellow in his mid-50s, muses in his soft-spoken manner. “It’s probably that our wines take a while to come around.”

Now there’s an understatement. Today, the 1975 and ’76 Mayacamas Chardonnays are stunning wines with vibrant freshness that belies their two-decade sojourn in the bottle. They bury the tired old assertion about how California wines don’t age.

Mayacamas Cabernet is even more long-lived. Longtime followers like to regale each other with stories of Cabernets from the 1950s that are still full-throttle. Such wines occasionally pop up at auction and fetch prime prices.

But Travers has a point: Mayacamas wines do take patience. And that, as much as anything, helps explain the lack of hoopla. Today’s most touted Chardonnays are usually about immediate gratification and accessibility: toasty new French oak; an additional rush of flavor achieved by stirring the lees, or sediment, while the wine is still in barrel; a softness brought about by inducing malolactic fermentation, through which hard malic acid is transformed into gentler lactic acid.

All of these techniques can create superb Chardonnays. But the raw material has to be right. Not all Chardonnays lend themselves equally well to the same winemaking manipulations. Travers believes that his Chardonnay grapes best reveal their high-elevation, earthy Mt. Veeder essence when handled least.

He does buy new French oak barrels, but only a few at a time. You won’t find “toasty oak” in a Mayacamas wine, because Travers believes an intrusive oak taste is an unnecessary cosmetic.

Travers prevents the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc from going through malolactic fermentation (which occurs after the primary fermentation that turns juice into wine). He seeks to preserve a firm acidity, the better to help the wine age gracefully.

And he doesn’t stir the lees (sediment from crushed grapes) while the wine ages in barrel, which is particularly Burgundian. “Muddies the taste,” he says.

For the immediate gratification crowd, such austerity leaves them cold. “I understand that,” offers Travers diplomatically. “Although I enjoy our wines even when they’re young, I can see how others might find them too austere or closed. But I do think they’re worth the wait.”

They are. Mayacamas has 52 acres of vines. Everything it makes now comes exclusively from its own vines, although before the ’93 vintage small quantities of grapes were purchased from nearby high-elevation vineyards. “What with the low yields, we just didn’t have enough grapes to make an exclusively estate-grown go of it until ‘93,” Travers explains. “But even before, we really didn’t buy much from the outside, maybe 10% of the production.”

Twenty-four acres are devoted to the estate’s signature Chardonnay, 18 acres of which were planted between 1950 and ’56. These old vines produce tiny, concentrated grapes in small, tight clusters.

The old vines give just three-quarters of a ton per acre. But even the youngest vines provide little more than one ton an acre, so stinting is the soil. In comparison, growers on the Napa Valley floor talk about three or four tons an acre as a low yield.

What’s more, all of Mayacamas’ old Chardonnay vines are immune to the new type of phylloxera root louse that is devastating vineyards everywhere in California. Where most vines are grafted to the nonresistant rootstock called AxR1, Mayacamas’ old Chardonnay vines are on a different rootstock called St. George, which resists the new strain of phylloxera.

Thanks to the dramatically low yields and the vineyard’s high elevation on Mt. Veeder, Mayacamas Chardonnay delivers a singularity of taste offered by only a few others. And those other Chardonnays, from Mt. Veeder producers such as Mt. Veeder Winery and Hess Collection Winery (as well as neighboring Hanzell Vineyards and Kistler Estate on the Sonoma side of the same mountain range), share similar taste characteristics.

All are rich, earthy Chardonnays that also convey a mineral taste. All are long-lived, but none more so than Mayacamas. None is more truly reflective of its vineyard source than Mayacamas, thanks to Travers’ insistent nonintervention.

A mature Mayacamas Chardonnay is perhaps more reminiscent of a great French Chablis--in a fleshy fashion--than any other Chardonnay grown in California.

The 1993 Mayacamas Chardonnay already reveals the distinction of its origins. The scent is slightly flowery and the aftertaste practically dawdles, reluctant to leave. Above all, the texture of the wine is dense, almost unctuous.

This feature, which derives directly from the low yield, contributes mightily to the wine’s longevity because such concentration enables a wine to reveal its virtues over a long span of time.

At $18 a bottle, the ’93 Mayacamas Chardonnay is a steal, especially considering its scarcity (just 1,500 cases are made in an average year). Although more than drinkable now, it will do nothing but improve for years if kept in a cool place.

Equally distinctive is Mayacamas Sauvignon Blanc. Styles for this grape variety are all over the map, literally and figuratively. Mayacamas Sauvignon Blanc, thanks to the high vineyard elevation and Travers’ pure, hands-off winemaking approach, is lean, crisp and almost achingly well-defined.

A recent feast of shellfish accompanied by the ’94 Mayacamas Sauvignon Blanc demonstrated the virtues of this pure, bright style. Little is produced, as Mayacamas has only five acres of Sauvignon Blanc planted. The ’94 is a bargain at $11.95 a bottle. It, too, ages well.

Mayacamas is commanding at Chardonnay and pretty swell at Sauvignon Blanc. More important, its wines defy time and make believers out of those who see California wine as mere Tinkerbells.

* Kramer is the author of several books, including “Making Sense of Wine” (Morrow, 1992).