BV To Focus on Private Reserve

Posted by Alan Boehmer Jan 8, 2008

Napa Valley's historic Beaulieu Vineyards has announced its intention to create a self-contained winery devoted exclusively to its flagship Cabernet Sauvignon Georges de Latour Private Reserve, one of the earliest wines to put California Cabernet on the map.

Georges de Latour Private Reserve, created by legendary winemaker André Tschelistcheff in 1936, became California's first reserve wine and was considered the finest Cabernet Sauvignon in California until competition from Inglenook surfaced a few years later. Inglenook was by far the older winery and held some of the best vineyard property anywhere in Napa Valley. BV's Private Reserve inspired owner/winemaker John Daniel to develop a competing wine in 1941 to become known as Inglenook Reserve Cask Cabernet Sauvignon. Unlike BV's Private Reserve, Inglenook's was a blended wine loosely based on the Bordeaux model. These two wines were held in the highest esteem up to the 1970s, when an explosion of enterprising new winemakers set up shop in Napa Valley and began to make Cabernets that would be rival the best in the world.

BV's new facility will be a $7million dollar state of the art winery with stainless steel and oak fermentors, equipped with heating and cooling jackets; and barrel racks with rollers that allow the barrels to spin in place, fostering gentle cap management.

The new facility is scheduled to be up and running by the Spring of 2009.