November 4, 2004
After 50 Years, Tiny Stony Hill Stays the Course
White wine house continues to be idiosyncratic

By Alan Goldfarb, Wine Editor

As Mike Chelini climbs over his graying and stained oak barrels -- some are as much as 31 years old, which is as long as he's been at Stony Hill -- he draws out some Syrah for a personal project he's working on.

This is significant because Stony Hill has been known for its minerally white wines for more than half a century and that's not about to change. But it is big news that Chelini -- who has been at one property for perhaps longer than any Napa Valley winemaker -- has planted five acres of Cabernet Sauvignon over a crest of a hill on vineyard land Stony Hill owns above Bothe State Park.

It hasn't been determined what, if anything, the folks at one of the valley's oldest wineries will do with that Cabernet, but one thing's for certain: Stony Hill will remain a white wine house; and a white wine house that utilizes oak barrels primarily as a vessel, as opposed to an ingredient.

Puncheons decades old
As evidence, the old and dank barn-like cellar that Stony Hill still uses and has ever since Joel and Eleanor McCrea founded it in 1950, employs puncheons from 1973 in which its Chardonnay still ages for 10 months. In fact, 90 percent of the barrels in that cellar are 10 years and older, with the average age being 20 years.

Chelini freely admits that he buys only a few new barrels every three or four years because, he said without cliché, "our style is letting the vineyard designate how the wine's going to taste."

It's a sentiment spouted over and over again by many a winemaker -- but one which few actually employ. Chelini, who worked under Fred McCrea before the latter died on New Year's Day of 1977, means it.

Didn't like new barrels
"Fred knew his wine didn't need those new barrels," he told me on one of those pretty but chilly late fall days recently. "He experimented with new barrels but he didn't like what it did to his wine."

Chelini remembered that in 1980, he believes it was, "we bought a few new barrels. It was kind of interesting. But after six months, you could taste that smoky oak but the fruit had gone out.

"Our fruit is so subtle, so subdued, to mask it with wood, is not what you want to do."

What manifests then, are Chardonnays that in the short-term are Chablis-like; and for the long-term resemble some of the best that Burgundy has to offer.

Patina of age
That is, they are austere and minerally early on in their lives, but then they take on a patina of age, 10 and even 20 years out, while the fruit retains a vivaciousness that only the world's greatest Chardonnays exhibit.

And save for several years in the late 1980s through the early '90s when Stony Hill was undergoing an extensive replanting program -- none of it amazingly due to phylloxera but to old age of its vines -- this property's Chardonnays have remained consistent. The fact that Chelini is only the second winemaker at Stony Hill (Fred McCrea being the first) goes a long way toward keeping the wine on a continuum.

One can say with assurance that it must be the winemaking process -- or lack thereof -- as well as the vineyard that are the palpable reasons for the almost laissez faire constancy.

Must be the grapes
Willinda McCrea, the wife of Fred McCrea's son Peter, both of whom run Stony Hill, had been thinking about the grapes the vineyard produces. And how they must be the single-most important factor that keeps Stony Hill's Chardonnays as similar year to year as one can imagine, given the capriciousness of a vintage's weather.

She thought about it just two weeks ago in fact, at a concert in San Francisco that she and Peter had attended. There, they saw the still-young violinist Midori whose technique and sound have serendipitously become a metaphor for Stony Hill's grapes.

"Our grapes have this wonderful character. Š They have very intense flavors and are very delicate at the same time," she explained over lunch at their home.

Watching and listening to Midori, McCrea was struck by what she had witnessed.

Parallel with violinist
"She plays with such extraordinary delicacy and authority. Who couldn't help but see a parallel with Stony Hill's grapes?" she asked.

Nevertheless, it begs the question as to why Stony Hill stayed the course all these years when seemingly the rest of the new world was falling all over itself crafting wines that appealed to a much less sensitive or perhaps even less sophisticated audience?

At first, Peter McCrea addressed the question with a pragmatic answer: "We had no choice," he said over free-range chicken, potato salad he had prepared, and of course, Stony Hill's four varieties of white wine (it also makes Alsatian-style Rieslings and Gewurztraminers, and an Italian-style passito late harvest Semillon).

Mailing list sales
"We have 2,500 people on our mailing list who expect the same kind of wine," he continued, further explaining that it's just about the only way to get one's hands on Stony Hill's wines. Save for a few retail shops, and a small number of restaurants, the mailing list at Stony Hill is a document that rivals that of the Magna Carta.

"It's (the list) has been a wonderful influence for keeping us from doing anything stupid."

Such as mucking up the Chardonnay with gobs of new oak and high percentages of malolactic fermentation (the latter of which is not introduced either at Stony Hill).

"It keeps you from being all things to all people."

'Done nearly everything'
McCrea, 65, conceded, however, that over the years, the folks at Stony Hill -- perhaps to show they're not so set in their ways: "We've done damn near everything."

In other words, at Stony Hill, experimentation was indeed in their ken. But in the end, McCrea concluded, "After 50 years Š this is the style that seems to work best with our grapes."

McCrea readily admits to tasting -- and even enjoying -- other people's differently-styled Chardonnays. But, and this is a big but, "We've all developed a taste for this style of Chardonnay, anyway."

Willinda seconded the notion with a succinct, "We like it."

Next generation
So, apparently are the next generation of wine lovers, many of whom were weaned on sweet Chardonnays, who according to Chelini, are beginning to somehow get their names on Stony Hill's precious mailing list.

Too bad Fred McCrea isn't around to experience the new renaissance at his winery. He died just as the California wine business was taking off.

The same thing can be said for Eleanor, who passed away in 1991 -- when the winery was undergoing its replanting program.

But it was Eleanor who was the one in charge when the wine boom was occurring. According to Mike Chelini, those were the heady days when "if you were in the know, Stony Hill was legendary. It was a hallowed place."

First after Prohibition
It was actually the first new winery built in the Napa Valley after Prohibition, despite local lore that has the Robert Mondavi Winery, founded in 1966, as the first new winery after 1933.

Peter McCrea quips that what they say now around the Robert Mondavi Corp. is that the Oakville winery was the first "significant" winery built after the 18th amendment was repealed.

Truth be told -- for a small number of those "in the know" -- it was the Stony Hill Winery too, that has achieved the status of significance.

In fact, there are only two other wineries in the Napa Valley that have retained its original ownership since Stony Hill was founded -- Charles Krug and Nichelini.

Which leads Peter to expound upon the Stony Hill culture that has grown up around him that produces only about 3,000 cases a year from 40 acres.

"It's the perfect economic unit," he said. "Mike can make the wine, and we have a few people in the office (next door to the McCrea home), who could sell it all. So, why would we want to make more?"

Alan Goldfarb can be reached at wines@sthelenastar.com