Arietta

Arietta was founded by long time Napa Valley winemaker John Kongsgaard, his wife Maggy (died in 2020) and Fritz & Caren Hatton. Today Fritz and his wife are the sole proprietors as they bought out the Kongsgaard’s ownership in 2005. Fritz told us that he has enjoyed wine since the early 1970s when he was at college. He “grew up” drinking French wine. While earning a degree in Management Arts he began working in a wine shop in New York City and over time accumulated an impressive collection of European wines. Hearing about an opening at Christie’s Auction House for their first wine auction and appreciating “rare wine” – he interviewed and quickly earned the job of cataloging wine. He fondly remembers drinking a number of older vintages including a 47′ Mouton Rothschild. Soon his job was upgraded to “office manager” and then after Christie’s Director of Wine Operations left the company, Fritz took over his position.

Arietta was originally founded by a shared love of music and wine; Fritz plays piano and John along with making wine, appreciates classical music. Kongsgaard had a classical piece composed in his honor and oversees Chamber Music in Napa Valley, an organization which dates back to 1980 and hosts a variety of concerts and musicians each year. The word “arietta” is attributed to the great classical composer Beethoven. It was part of the original manuscript (the Arietta movement) in Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Opus 111. The label on each bottle depicts a couple of bars from this sonata. Music has always been a passion in Fritz’s life; he even took a sabbatical and studied piano in San Francisco for several years.

Fritz grew up in Michigan; his great-grandfather William Hatton was involved in Detroit’s early automobile industry (certainly not the first Napa Valley Vintner with strong heritage ties to Detroit). Hatton was born near Dublin, Ireland in 1864 and immigrated to the U.S. (New York City) in 1886. He became the General Manager of the Eagle Leather Company in Grand Haven in 1910. One of the company’s large contracts was to provide leather interiors to Ford Motor Company.

Hatton founded Eagle Ottawa Leather Works through a merger of two companies; in 1920 the company began manufacturing leather for shoes. He was the president of this company until 1936. Later he financed the Elizabeth Hatton Hospital, the first hospital in the area. William Hatton Park in Grand Haven, Michigan was named in his honor in the 1930s.

The first vintage of Arietta was in 1996, a red wine sourced from a small Cabernet Franc block on Hudson Ranch in Carneros (planted with cuttings taken from two iconic vineyards, Eisele and To Kalon) along with Merlot from the same vineyard.

Grand Haven, MI

Hatton Park, Grand Haven MI

Arietta’s wines are characterized by Fritz’s proclivity for enjoying European styled wines. The select Arietta wines we have enjoyed over the years all showcase wonderful aromatics and have been primarily sourced from premium vineyards within cooler climate locations, currently all in the southern part of Napa Valley. They use blending to create additional complexities and feature bright acidity to showcase harmonious and ‘fresh’ wines – thus ensuring they are food friendly. In addition, the winemaking team uses naturalistic wine-making processes including fermenting with indigenous yeasts. A critical part of their winemaking is their consistency in vineyard sources and both how their vineyards are managed as well as timing on harvesting.

Fritz is a well-known auctioneer of rare wine and was often associated with the annual Napa Wine Auction, founded in 1981 and operated through 2019. Over the years, it raised millions of dollars for local Napa County nonprofits including health care, youth organizations and affordable housing. Fritz was at the helm as its auctioneer since 1992. In 2008 he was the auctioneer that sold 6 bottles of 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon for $500,000 to a Chinese billionaire. Another highlight of his auctioning career was in June 2011 when the Napa Valley Auction hit a milestone of 100 million dollars raised since 1981 and the sparkling wine drenching/celebration that quickly ensued once this magic number was reached. He worked for Christy’s for many years; in 1981 he helped organize Christy’s first U.S. wine auction. He has worked for Zachys Wine Auction since 2002 and also does auctioneer work for a number of domestic charities.

He has lots of stories from his time as auctioneer at various auctions around the world including one time a bidder offered to double a $120,000 bid *if* Fritz made the flight to Asia to be at the auction. Needless to say, Fritz quickly caught a flight to the auction and the bidder went through with his word for a $240,000 bid!

Select Wines
Whites
Arietta’s first ever white wine was the 2005 On The White Keys, produced because Fritz wanted a white wine to complement their portfolio of reds. After tasting many Sauvignon Blancs with his winemaker he decided his favorites were Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon blends; we agree – some of our favorite Sauvignon Blancs in Napa Valley typically have been been those always blended with smaller percentages of Sémillon.

The 2020 Arietta On The Keys White (California White Wine) is a blend of 85% hillside grown Sauvignon Blanc on Sonoma Mountain and 15% old-vine low-yielding Sémillon farmed in Carneros by grower Larry Hyde. This wine is medium yellow in color; the bouquet is expressive and offers aromas of pineapple, melon, lime, orange blossom, passionfruit and chamomile. This wine offers a pleasing creamy and supple texture across the palate; it shows flavors of apple, papaya and light notes of lychee. It is very flavorful with a noticeable richness of fruit which persists for some time along with a citrus-like finish anchored by mouthwatering acidity. This wine was fermented in a combination of both stainless steel, neutral and new French oak barrels. The majority of the wine was prohibited from going through malolactic fermentation. The wine sat on its gross lees for 8 months before it was bottled. We highly recommend slowly drinking this wine while enjoying the beautiful sounds of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, the Arietta melody in C minor no.32 op.111, played entirely on the white keys.

The 2009 Arietta On The White Keys offers bright fruit on the bouquet along with baking spices, a floral note (perhaps sweat pea), and graphite. There is a pleasing weight to the mouthfeel with some mineralities present on the lively finish. The bright acidity makes this wine favorable for pairing with a variety of foods, especially fresh seafood.

For many years Caren wanted an Arietta rosé. She kept reminding Fritz that their portfolio was missing a rosé but he never took action. So unbeknownst to Fritz she requested their winemaker produce a rosé. One day she presented their first bottling to Fritz; he was surprised but pleased by its aromatic and flavor profile. Arietta continues to produce the very limited production Rosie’s Rosé each year, named in homage to their Bernese Mountain dog, Rosie. This wine is a multi varietal blend made by saignée. And the catchy label on the front was painted by Fritz and Caren’s daughter when she was 12 years of age.

Reds
The 2019 Arietta Merlot Hudson Vineyards is deep ruby in color and opaque with an amaranthine rim. The bouquet is dark and brooding. It offers scents of dried meats, a gamey character, dried herbs, damp soil, mushroom, white pepper, plum and violets. As the wine evolves in the glass it reveals a note of sweet tobacco spice. Despite its savory characters, the darker fruit tones are at the core of its aromatics. Richly endowed on the palate in terms of flavor it is darkly fruited including plum, cherry, blackberry and boysenberry accompanied by crushed peppercorn. Its dark spiciness including toasted oak continues to persist on the long and flavor filled finish. There is a certain fleshiness here; the tannins are dense and gravely textured. Their grip and a light note of heat from the alcohol continue to persist. This wine spent 22 months aging in French oak barrels of which 40% were new.

The 2008 Arietta Quartet is their Bordeaux styled blend (the only principal Bordeaux variety missing in this vintage is Malbec). The nose is full of fruit and is deep, dark and inviting with a bit of spice showing up later in the bouquet. This wine is hand crafted to be approachable early on and it certainly is that. Its soft upon entry with a wide range of flavor and is anchored by fine grained tannins lingering on the pleasing and supple finish. And the artistic label featuring two violins, a cello and a viola was drawn by Fritz and Caren’s daughter Libby when she was only eight years old.

The 2020 Arietta Cabernet Sauvignon is 100% varietal, sourced from a 1.7 acre block within the well-regarded Meteor Vineyard in Coombsville (east of the city of Napa). This wine is deep ruby in color and nearly opaque; the bouquet is dark-fruited with aromas of blackberry, boysenberry and a floral violet undertone. One hallmark of Arietta’s wines are their beautiful aromatics and this wine is a good example of this. The focus here is clearly on the purity of the fruit. The palate is layered and savory with flavors of crushed peppercorn, plum and blackberry. The tannins are dense, complex, grainy and linger with a dusty/drying character for quite some time. This wine has plenty of life ahead of it with the proper cellaring. It was aged for 20 months in French oak barrels of which 75% were new.

The Arietta H Block from the Hudson Vineyard is a blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, a Napa Valley homage to Bordeaux’s ‘Right Bank’ and the wines produced in Saint-Émilion. 1996 was Arietta’s first vintage of this wine. The 2019 Arietta H Block Hudson Vineyard is a blend of 70% Cabernet Franc and 30% Merlot. These grapes are harvested together and then co-fermented. Deep ruby in color the bouquet offers aromas of plum, dark cherry and violets with the influence of oak a supporting character. This wine offers both depth of flavor and texture. The densely packed and grippy tannins linger with a drying character on the finish along with a note of pipe tobacco spice. This bottling is Arietta’s most muscular and perhaps most age worthy bottling.

When crafting the components for the H Block in 2008, the Cabernet Franc really stood out by itself in the tasting trials. As a result this was Arietta’s first 100% varietal Cabernet Franc bottling. In 2009 they returned to creating a blend from these two varieties. The grapes for this wine have been sourced every year from the same small block (H) within Hudson Vineyard in Carneros since their first vintage. The bouquet is somewhat dusty, almost earthy initially but as it breathes a beautiful classic Cabernet Franc nose emerges showing elegant and floral aromatics. The wine has a pleasing texture, integrated tannins and a finish that is extremely well balanced.

While Arietta focuses on producing wines from Bordeaux varieties, there is one wine which is blended with a non-Bordeaux variety. That is the appropriately named Variation One which is always led by Syrah with Merlot completing the blend. Kongsgaard eventually convinced Hatton that it would be a mistake to not make wine using Merlot from one of California’s best sites for this variety, Hudson Vineyard. Fritz told us he refers to this wine as, “the marriage of opposites” and also calls it his ‘Katharine Hepburn – Spencer Tracy wine’. They tried a number of different blends of these two varieties over the years but ultimately decided that Syrah will always dominate the blend.

The 2019 Arietta Variation One is a blend of 61% Syrah, 39% Merlot with both varieties harvested at the same time and then co-fermented together. This wine is deep ruby in color. The nose is a bit inward initially and needs time to open or a decant. We spent over an hour with this wine and its aromatics evolved wonderfully. The Syrah asserts a greater aromatic presence then the Merlot. The nose is dark fruited including plum, ripe blackberry and cherry along with a note of Graham cracker. There are also some lighter savory touches at play here including white pepper and dried herbs. Layered, with rich mouth-filling flavors, the palate showcases blackberry, plum and dark cherry. The tannins sport a long-lasting gravelly/dusty character which ultimately outpaces the fruit on the juicy finish. This wine was aged 22 months in French oak of which 40% were new barrels.

An extremely limited production wine, only sold in 3-pack wooden boxes is the Arietta 88 Keys, named in homage to the number of keys (both white and black) on a piano. This is a two barrel selection of the best barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2017 Arietta 88 Keys (tasted 6 year post vintage) is deep ruby and opaque in the glass. The nose offers a sweet aromatic union of both fruit and baking spices including dark cherry, chocolate, caramel and toffee. This is a robust but a simultaneously balanced bottling. The palate reveals flavors of plum, dark cherry, boysenberry and chocolate. The densely packed, rounded and dusty tannins are almost chalk-like in their textural feel. Both the tannins and the fruit parallel each other on the long finish.

And in 2024 Caren released the inaugural bottling of Nestweaver; the 2021 Nestweaver Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from the Ulises Valdez planted Corpuel Family Vineyard. This wine is named in homage to her grandmother.

—

Highly sought after Andy Erickson who has worked at prominent Napa Valley wineries including Dalla Valle, Harlan, Screaming Eagle and Staglin, and produces his own wines bottled under Favia with his wife Annie, has been the winemaker for Arietta since the 2005 vintage. Erickson was handpicked by Kongsgaard to succeed after he and Maggy sold their interest in Arietta.

Arietta’s wines are well distributed in California and are available in select states including New York, New Jersey and Texas as well as several countries overseas. We have seen their wines in a number of local wine shops including Oakville Grocery and the former Gary’s in St. Helena.

For many years production was at Chateau Boswell Winery but has since moved to Hudson Vineyards in Carneros. Arietta’s earliest vineyard relationship was with Hudson Vineyards. And after Hudson completed their winery and 6,500 foot cave in 2018, they later offered their production space to several small premium producers including Arietta. And this is where by-appointment only tastings are hosted in a private space, sometimes with Fritz or Caren.

For more information, to schedule a visit, join their mailing list or to purchase wine, visit: www.ariettawine.com