Launching our new Wine Collection next week!
No one is more deserving of this success than Philip Togni, who has made some of the all-time great Napa Valley Cabernets going back to the late 1960s. His daughter Lisa appears to be poised to do the same as she takes over the family estate from her parents.”
—Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media
There are few winemakers still living with the kind of history that Philip Togni has under his belt. Long before his eponymous winery was even conceived, he was crafting some of the most iconic wines in California. After a year at Mayacamas (1959), he became the founding winemaker for Chalone, worked at Inglenook for a year, became the founding winemaker for Chappellet (producing the acclaimed 1969 Cabernet Sauvignon that is still regarded as one of the greatest ever produced in California), and finally finished out the 1970’s at Cuvaison.
In 1981, while still employed at Cuvaison, Philip began planting his own vineyard on Spring Mountain and it is here that he has cemented his legacy. Starting with the 1983 vintage he has produced an unbroken string of world class wines; age-worthy, classic, and incredible. Although Philip is still very involved, since 2007, his daughter Lisa has taken the lead more and more. The good news is that she shares her father’s gift for winemaking and shows no interest in changing anything at this venerable estate.
The Estate vineyard at Togni is 10.5 acres (divided into 20 blocks) planted to 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The vines are co-planted and the wine is co-fermented. The soils are a mix of rocky volcanic and clay.
From this single vineyard Philip and Lisa produce three wines: the flagship Philip Togni Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, a second label Cabernet Sauvignon, Tanbark Hill, and a rare dessert wine, Ca’ Togni.
The Cabernet Sauvignons are made using barrel selection and are otherwise handled exactly the same. All fruit is 100% destemmed, fermented in stainless steel and aged for 20 months in 40% new French oak. At this point the decision is made of which lots are blended into the “Estate Cabernet” and the “Tanbark Hill”. The Ca’ Togni is a wine unique to Napa, made from Black Hamburgh, Togni’s quarter acre of vines produce an aromatic, concentrated, sweet red wine unlike anything else we have come across. A true estate, the wines are made, bottled, and stored just feet away from the vineyard.
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In turn, the Togni wines have gained a reputation for astonishing endurance. They are tensile and savory, dark-fruited and cedar-edged, showing the broad, ripe structure that shows mastery with this particular grape. They routinely last 20 years or more, matching the toughness of great old Bordeaux with a Napan generosity.”
—Jon Bonné, SF Chronicle
WINES
Philip Togni Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
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A true Napa legend, the Philip Togni Vineyard Cabernet is an ageworthy, classic style of California Cabernet. Each bottle has decades of potential and shows unmistakable high-elevation, mountain character. The estate Cabernet is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon with about 15% Merlot and Petit Verdot, cofermented. Vineyards are volcanic soils with some granite, quartz and clay. Aged in about 40% new Bordeaux barrels with the rest being 1 year old.
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Tanbark Hill Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
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The second label from Philip Togni Vineyard, "Tanbark Hill" comes from the same 10.5-acre estate vineyard as their eponymous wine and receives the same impeccable care in the cellar (20 months in 40% new French oak). The wine generally consists of fruit harvested from a 3-acre block (planted to 99% Cabernet Sauvignon) which has slightly richer soils. Added to the wine made from this block are barrels destined for the Estate bottling that are deemed more suitable for earlier drinking. "This is cabernet for those who don’t want training wheels. That acidity and food-friendly astringency are, in effect, coming through as black licorice to accent the tart blackcurrant flavors. It’s a growling, tough mountain cabernet, but decant it and try it over a couple of hours and you see the full magnitude of cabernet in its classic form." - Jon Bonne, Punch
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Ca’ Togni
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A truly unique Napa wine, this represents some of the only (possibly the only) Black Muscat vines grown in the USA. Grown in their 2000' elevation, estate vineyard, the resulting wine is delicious, rich, perfectly sweet, and beautifully balanced with acid. While there are many dessert wines, there are none as distinctive as this one.
Each bottle of Ca’Togni is wrapped in magenta tissue paper with the following story:
The year was 1768, and George III sat firmly on the throne of England, unperturbed by events still eight years hence in the far-off Colonies. He commissioned Capability Brown, the famous landscapist, to proceed with the planting of some new grape vines beside his palace of Hampton Court, on the Thames, just upstream from London. Capability Brown lived up to his name so well that one of these vines survives to this day, the world’s oldest and largest living grapevine…The variety… Black Hamburgh.
By the end of the 17th century, plantings of this variety, now under the synonym Red Muscatel, appeared in South Africa at the little farm of Constantia, just south of Cape Town. They were destined to put this place name on the world’s wine map for all time, for the sweet red wine Constantia would dominate dessert wine consumption in the courts of Europe for the next two hundred years. Michael Broadbent, in his 1977 “Great Vintage Wine Book,” describes one of the last sweet Constantias, that of 1922, as “...curious spicy nose, traces of Muscat…twist of lemon acidity…interesting.” This was after more then fifty years in the bottle.
A quarter-acre planting of this variety, believed to be the only one in Napa Valley, lies at the eastern end of the Philip Togni Vineyard, high above St. Helena. Its wine has been given the proprietary name of the ancient family halmlet in Italian Switzerland, Ca’Togni. Enough grapes are grown most years to fill one small barrel with this sweet red wine. Black Hamburgh is planted over a considerable acreage in northern Insia where it is called “Gulab,” the Sanskrit word for “rose.” Certainly, this wine smells more of roses than of muscat, which inspired the artist to decorate the Ca’Togni label with a wild rose from our woods on Spring Mountain. Yet as a muscat-type grape, Black Hamburgh’s origin lies in the Middle East. Following Mohammed’s edict against the consumption of alcohol, Arab hybridists worked in the development of grapes with interesting—muscat—flavors for eating. It is ironic that one result of all this serious work should be a wine, and that wine should have the charm and ready appeal of this Ca’Togni.
The Ca’Togni is bottled each year in June in half bottles (375ml.) only. The sugar level is very high; acid, alcohol and tannins are low. It is pleasant to drink young either in place of Port in the winter, or chilled as a summer aperitif.
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