Bill and Dawnine Dyer are not your average Napa vintners. Between them they hold three degrees in Philosophy, Biology, and Enology—a confluence of studies that reflect a very holistic view of the world and wine’s role in it. A cumulative 90 years of winemaking and consulting experience have embedded the Dyers in the tapestry of Napa’s history.
A native Californian, Dawnine’s first Napa job was in Robert Mondavi’s lab before transitioning to a 25-year career as winemaker for Domaine Chandon. Meanwhile, Bill’s path toward winemaking started in Charles Krug’s cellar. He was hired for Sterling Vineyards’ 1977 harvest and was brought on full-time to become their cellarmaster and then winemaker. Both have lent their experience to numerous other projects, including Sodaro Winery, Frog’s Leap, and the slightly farther-flung Church & State and Burrowing Owl vineyards of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Their colleagues will tell you what their resumes can’t: They are the best kind of people making extraordinary wine in the most honest and well-informed way possible. The result is a rare jewel in Napa’s plump repertoire of extraordinary Cabernets. This is Diamond Mountain wine with the focus, balance, and verve of Napa’s Old Guard classics and the polish of bottles costing three times as much. We’ve had a good run of well-priced, boutique-scale Napa reds on the site recently, and this is among the very best of them!
The Dyers are among those vintners who choose the adventure and quality of mountainous soils over the convenience of farming on the valley floor. Diamond Mountain District is a raw, vibrant 5,000 acres of land southwest of Calistoga—the northernmost mountain appellation in the Mayacamas Range. Only 450 acres are planted to vine, and Dyer Vineyard comprises a postage-stamp-sized 2.3 of those. It’s just enough to make the wine they’ve always dreamt of producing. Bill and Dawnine first purchased the property with the intent of building a home, but one look at those porous, volcanic soils changed their priorities. The Dyer vineyards are astoundingly rocky: it’s hard to believe anything grows here at all, let alone some of the Valley’s best Bordeaux varieties. The majority of their vines are 26-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon, with a little Cabernet Franc and even less Petit Verdot, all planted on hardy 1103P rootstock known for its drought tolerance. Merlot is a notable omission: these “upland” volcanic soils are too acidic, deep, and sparse for the variety. But Cabernet is literally tougher than rocks in this case, and they come very close to dry-farming, now watering no more than once per year as the roots bite deeply into the soil. This benefits both the quality of the grapes and the environment.
It’s important to mention that Dawnine and Bill founded Dyer Vineyard with a specific goal in mind: to listen to and learn from the land over a sustained period of time, carefully document the findings and in doing so, contribute to our imperfect knowledge of Napa’s wildly variable terroir. Diamond Mountain is one of the most extreme climates in the Valley, and their struggles and successes with sustainable farming practices have a lot to teach us about potential solutions for farming in a changing climate.
Dyer’s 350-case production is usually limited to a competitive mailing list allocation program. We are thrilled to scoop some of the 2014 estate-grown Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon, a spectacularly concentrated but accessible vintage. Eighty-one percent Cabernet was co-fermented with 14 percent Cabernet Franc and 5 percent Petit Verdot after a cold soak for good extraction of tannin and color. Oak use here is more for textural softness than flavor addition. New French oak barrels do provide a little toastiness to compliment those firm Diamond Mountain tannins, but the wood program never eclipses the purity of lively, savory fruit. 2014 was their 18th year of production, a warm season with an early bloom thanks to enough rain in March and April.
In the glass this is a wonderfully dense and aromatic wine. It definitely begs a good decanting: at least an hour before being poured into Bordeaux stems at 60 degrees. It’s an inky purple that tints the glass as you swirl it. Five years have gently unraveled the tightly wound primary fruit notes and they are really starting to blossom: lavender, wild mint, jalapeño, and mulberry. Tannins are fine and dusty, like running your hand backward over velvet. It’s classically structured with acidity that’ll happily go for another decade in the cellar. Most notably this is a savory, elegant wine in the tradition of Diamond Mountain Cabernets. The fruit is a little wilder, a little bluer, a little more mineral and saline than what you’d find on the Valley floor. Bill is an avid mushroom forager, and in his honor we suggest pairing the wine with a bavette steak with chanterelle pan sauce over wild rice. Something as satisfying and wild as this unforgettable Cabernet.
