Quintessa: When the Whole Is Better Than the Parts

Posted 02/14/2008 at 06:45 AM by Ben

A map of the Quintessa Vineyard

It always amazes me how with certain wines, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. My recent tasting in Washington, DC of Quintessa, a high-end Meritage blend from the Napa Valley, was a graphic demonstration of this interesting phenomenum.

Winemaker Charles Thomas, who joined Quintessa in June of 2007, brought with him four barrel samples of Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2006 vintage. Although the samples all showed the deep purple color and effusively fruity/oaky bouquet of an unfinished wine, they differed from each other in one important respect. They were from different blocks of the Quintessa vineyard.

In fact, the 170 acre Quintessa vineyard has 26 separate blocks planted to the classic Bordeaux grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon (129 acres), Merlot (26 acres), Cabernet Franc (7 acres), Petit Verdot (4 acres), and Carmenere (4 acres). These blocks are set upon a diversity of soils and microclimates, which the winery classifies into several types, called Valleys, Terraces, Hilltops, Foothills and Riverside. A total of 40 very different lots are produced from these diverse terroirs. These lots are then blended to produce Quintessa, a so-called "Meritage" wine modeled on Bordeaux, which is typically a blend of grape varieties..

The four lots that Thomas brought were from blocks called Cruz del Sur, Dragon's Terraces, Limelight and Bench. With the exception of Limelight, which I didn't much care for owing to a pronounced eucalyptus note (which will soon be gone, as the winery has removed the nearby eucalyptus trees to keep this flavor out of the wine), each of these would have made an excellent single vineyard bottling, which the winery probably could have sold individually for a lot of money.

But that's not the Quintessa philosophy. It believes that the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts.

Thomas went on to demonstrate this by pouring the 2003 and 2005 Quintessa wines. As good as the individual barrel samples were, the finished Quintessa was the better wine. Both the aroma in the flavors were more complex and layered. The different blocks had married in to create something that was, indeed, greater than the sum of the parts.

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