Saint Helena

We have another easy trip today. We simply got in our wine barrels and rolled down Spring Mountain to the town and American Viticultural Area (AVA) of Saint Helena. For those who think I don't know how to alphabetize, I treated Saint Helena as St Helena, the way if frequently appears on wine bottles.

Immediately after the Gold Rush, the hills around St Helena were found to be rich in cinnebar. And, in fact, the Silverado Trail was built as a way to get the ore from St. Helena down to San Pablo Bay so that it could be distributed to the rest of the country.

As a wine region, unlike Spring Mountain just to its west, St. Helena is perhaps the hottest and driest of all the AVAs in Napa Valley. Boasting a record high of 115F/46C and having more frequent than we might like temperatures over 110 in Spetember, this is not just warm, this is hot. And over the period from June through September, the average number of days with measurable rain is just 2, but 0 is not an entirely infrequent number.

Despite those brutal daytime heatwaves, however, nightime temperatures can be quite cool, with diurnal temperature changes during growing season frequently being in the range of 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (22 to 28C). That's a big shifr. It creates wines with high acidity and allows a tremendous diversity of grapes to be grown in St Helena. In addition, since it lies neatly between a number of mountains, soil has been transported naturally from almost all of them and this AVA has 21 known soil types. So, with the exception of true cool or cold weather grapes, what you want to grow in Saint Helena, you can grow in Saint Helena.

All that said, the grapes of choice here are mostly warm weather grapes -- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, and a bit of Syrah. The wines from Saint Helena are known perhaps as much as anything for their structure and acidity, but given the diversity within the AVA, there is, of course, significant variation.


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