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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL REVIEW Going Underground in Napa Tres Sabores owner-winemaker repurposes equipment for small, handcrafted lots By Tim Patterson The Tres Sabores crush pad and cave entrance P ulling up to Tres Sabores Winery during the off-season, you might think your GPS has crashed again. Sure, just off Whitehall Lane in Napa there are nicely tended vineyards stretching up and down the hillside, but where's the winery? If you scour around behind the less-than-im- posing main building, you'll find a stray carboy or two, maybe some cleaning brushes and what looks like winemak- ing equipment covered (barely) with a tarp—as if a home winemaker hadn't quite finished cleaning up. You probably wouldn't guess that this modest, mostly underground facility pumps out 3,000 cases per year of first-class Zinfandel, Cabernet, Petite Sirah, Sauvignon Blanc and a popular proprietary red blend, wines that hold their own against bottles from the edifice wineries just down the road that employ parking monitors for the bus traffic. Owner-winemaker Julie Johnson has been in and around the Napa wine scene since the modern pioneer days (the 1970s), and she has devoted herself to Tres Sabores since 1999. Like most small producers, she wears a lot of hats—grower, winemaker, marketer, tasting room manager, resident philosopher and more—with a staff of 46 WINES & VINES SEPTEMBER 2012 Highlights • This 3,000-case winery breaks the Napa mold with its winemaking philosophy, techniques and equipment choices. • Owner-winemaker Julie Johnson runs an organically certified, dry-farmed vineyard and no-fuss winemaking facilities. • Johnson chooses her technology care- fully and does sterile filtration, but she prefers native yeast and homemade or hand-me-down punch down tools. three: one in the vineyards, one in the cellar and one utility infielder. Like most small producers, Johnson has to hustle to sell her wines, but she also still remembers the wine she never got a chance to sell: The entire inventory from her first five vintages (1999-2003) was destroyed in the Wines Central Warehouse arson fire in 2005. Johnson is happy to confer about a long list of topics, but bankers and insurance companies are not among them. Tres Sabores could be the poster facility for "less is more"—not exactly the Napa norm. The space is minimal, the equip- ment is mostly used and/or re-purposed, and nothing is done just for show—unless you count the label design copied from a Oaxacan cocktail napkin as showing off. The wines themselves are not textbook (above) appears much tidier than at crush time. Napa either, with Zinfandel as the flag- ship grape instead of Cabernet, and with the small-production Cabernet Sauvignon not built in the usual power-packed style. On the other hand, Johnson did splurge for several years on three additional wine- makers, sharing the Zinfandel crop and producing an intriguing mixed case from a single vineyard. The three-winemaker project (four including Johnson) is one of several layers of meaning wrapped into the Tres Sabores name. (The "Sabor" part comes from the popular Latin song "Sabor a Mi" and also refers to the winemakers.) Johnson says the three tastes are those of the vine, the terroir where the grapes are grown and the artisan touches that make the wine in the glass bring people to the table. There's also a little nod to the Latin American workers so essential to the Napa Valley. Talk to Johnson for a while and you'll discover the most interesting reasons behind the smallest things. Vineyard focus Every winery claims it's all about the vine- yard, but with Johnson's acreage, it rings true. The 34-acre property was purchased in 1987 by Johnson and then-husband John Williams (Frog's Leap) for its Zin- fandel vines, which were planted in 1972.