At the Winery
Our winemaking team — Master Winemaker Kirk Venge, Director of Winemaking Derek Taylor, Co-founder Jim Borsack, and General Manager Curtis Strohl — was hard at work last week with a three-day blending session—focused on finalizing wines from the ’24 vintage and then getting their first overall look, and taste, of the ’25’s.
The first day was spent checking on the 2024 vintage, wines that will be bottled in a little over a month. This is the last big blending session prior to that bottling date.
The next day was a blind tasting of every single Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2025 harvest, nearly 40 harvest and fermentation lots! Tasting blind allows them to evaluate each lot objectively, without any preconceived bias. They take notes on the intensity, flavors, structure, and overall quality of each wine.
After that, they reveal the wines and discuss the next steps in the cellar. For instance, which wines should be racked and which ones should be left alone. And they begin to build the first, broad, base blends. For instance, they will create a base blend for wines like Blend 24 and 25, or Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon. Or they will combine separate blocks from a single vineyard.
At the end of three days, Derek and the cellar crew have a long list of work orders and wines to move. And the next time the winemaking team will look at these 2025 lots will be in December, after the 2026 harvest is put to barrel in the cave.
From Our Kitchen to Yours
100 Point Wine
2023 Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
In his annual report on Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons, Jonathan Cristaldi awarded our 2023 Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon a rare and remarkable 100 points. For a critic as knowledgeable and passionate as Cristaldi, and one so visibly excited about the 2023 Napa Valley vintage, to be moved by this individual wine in such a significant way is truly gratifying.
Sourced from Beckstoffer Las Piedras in the western reaches of St Helena, this wine was fermented and aged for 28 months in 100% new French oak. Sourced from a new block because their typical block is being replanted. In 2023, Kirk Venge and the B Cellars team show what’s possible from this hillside, warm site. It carries the power and unctuousness that Venge is known for, balanced by the freshness and energy of the 2023 vintage. The bouquet is ultra-fresh, with loamy earth, spring flowers, and graphite minerality, alongside early-summer fennel and beautiful blackberry fruit. On the palate, this wine is silky-satin, with more scorched-earth and graphite, framed by ultra-fine tannins that carry through to a beautifully full-bodied and energetic finish. B. Cellars was founded in 2003 by business partners Duffy Keys and Jim Borsack. Winemaker Kirk Venge has been crafting the wines for B. Cellars since 2004. This vintage marks the 20th harvest for B. Cellars from their Beckstoffer Heritage sites.
-Jonathan Cristaldi
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