Club Newsletter - July 2026
- Gary Parker
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
The New Napa Valley Wine
Winemakers are embracing balance, lower alcohol, less oak, and vineyard-driven expression as Napa enters a new chapter beyond scores, excess, and blockbuster Cabernet.
The era that arguably defined Napa at least to outsiders, is over.
Cabernet Sauvignon is still king, and it’s still possible to find opulent, high-octane examples with enough structure to run a kindergarten classroom. But it’s just as likely that you’ll run into a complex selection with moderate alcohol content, elegance and subtlety.
Beloved by some and maligned by others, the undeniably influential wine critic Robert Parker is broadly credited as having advanced a preferred Napa Cab style of dazzling but sometimes counterintuitively anonymous richness in the 1990s.
Cabernet Sauvignon is still king, and it’s still possible to find opulent, high-octane examples with enough structure to run a kindergarten classroom. But it’s just as likely that you’ll run into a complex selection with moderate alcohol content, elegance and subtlety.
“When a positive review from Robert Parker sold out your wine overnight, there was an impetus to move your viticulture in the direction toward his palate,” says Graeme MacDonald, a fourth-generation Napa Valley grape grower and cofounder of MacDonald Vineyards. “And that’s understandable. But it led, for a long time, to wines that inherently changed the style that Napa was known for.
Mondavi, and a few other pioneers that Pearson characterized as “stubborn,” continued to make the wines they wanted to enjoy with food. Many others in the Valley chased Parker’s palate.
“But we’re in a different place, and now all of us are looking beyond labels and scores, and seeking out the joy of wine and community,” says Pearson. “It’s about the pleasure of the moment.”
The general approach and consumer preference toward wine consumption has shifted. Now in favor are selections that offer low-to-moderate alcohol, elegance, complexity, and a more pronounced sense of place. Wine itself has evolved as well.
Pearson argues that the Napa wines that generate the most excitement are balanced and ready to enjoy upon release, but also ageable.
“It’s so much easier to make an opulent, big wine, because you really just have to hit the accelerator,” says Pearson. “Making a wine of balance and elegance is like walking a tightrope, with a lot more complication.”
Winemaker Matt Crafton, who leads the production team at Chateau Montelena, one of the wineries that bested France at the Judgment of Paris, is quick to acknowledge that “there were some very good wines made in that era,” but says that “some of the stylistic changes we see today are simply a reaction to the flood of overly opulent wines in recent memory.”
The pendulum does like to swing.
While much of the shift may be pushback of that overtly lavish and generous style, it also reflects changing consumption habits.
“Americans haven’t always cared what they ate and drank,” says Cathy Corison, winemaker and founding partner of Corison Winery. Corison has been a consistent producer of balanced and elegant wines for 40 years.
“People now want a wine with good, snappy, natural acidity and aromatics,” she says. “Wines that speak of time and place, wines that recognize that everything in the glass came from the earth and the sky. I think some of that change is due to the fact that [more] people aren’t drinking Coca-Cola.
They are eating a wider diversity of foods, with spice, and they need actual table wines to accompany them.”
That old chestnut about great wine being made in the vineyard is a commandment to a certain kind of winemaker.
“Modern viticulture here went so hard toward Vertical Shoot Positioning, which is great in Bordeaux where it originates, but terrible in sunny Napa if you don’t want to degrade varietal character,” says MacDonald. “Early on, my brother Alex and I decided we just weren’t going to go that route. We decided we’d make wines we actually wanted to drink, just in case they didn’t sell.”
Those wines looked a lot like the ones their grandparents drank, products of a vineyard that resembled a jungle more than a picture-perfect Better Homes & Gardens backdrop.
“My grandparents didn’t ‘farm’ their grapes,” says MacDonald. “Everything was frugal, and the vines just took care of themselves.”
“Napa has been painted with an exaggerated brush over many years,” says Kinsman. “It has always been more diverse than people give it credit for. I’m seeing more balance now, but also more diversity.”
Pearson agrees. “Napa became an exaggerated caricature of itself for a while,” he says. “We are still a young region, but we are learning how to age gracefully.”
Food & Wine Magazine
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