Chris Pratt Cellars. In Napa Valley there are boutique wineries and then there are micro producers, the smallest of the smallest. Take Chris Pratt Cellars for example; winemaker and namesake of the brand, Chris Pratt produces only 100 to 150 cases a year, typically only several bottlings a vintage including a white and a red wine. The first vintage bottled as Christopher Pratt Cellars was in 2015, an extra extracted high alcohol red wine. The next year he produced a Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon blend. In 2017 he crafted a Howell Mountain Petit Verdot from what was Henry Brother’s Ranch. And in 2018 he produced a Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend.
Chris was raised in Oak View, in Ventura, California (near Ojai). He was interested in a career in film and studied film at the University of California Santa Barbara. After some time working on film sets in Austin, Texas he and his wife moved to Napa Valley. Surfing was his go to escape while living in central California. After moving to northern California he decided to find a new outlet; encouraged by his father in law, he began brewing beer in his garage. His wife suggested he work a harvest at a winery. His first winery job in Napa Valley was at Sequoia Grove in 2002. In the two plus decades he has been making wine in Napa Valley Chris has worked for large and small wineries including Napa Wine Co, Orin Swift, ADAMVS, Staglin and currently Aonair.
His wines are carefully and thoughtfully hand crafted. Chris told us all winemakers should have their own small brands; it gives them full ownership of their wines and builds empathy towards others in the business, especially those who are responsible for selling wine. He is attracted to winemaking for numerous reasons including his interest in experimentation, the diversity of varieties he works with and having the opportunities to work with ever evolving equipment in the cellar.
While not owning any vineyards, he has access to numerous sites both within Napa Valley and outside of the region through networking with other winemakers and various growers he has met in the valley in the two plus decades he has lived here. Sometimes a winemaker will harvest extra grapes; this can be an opportunity to purchase a small amount for his own production. Or other times friends may approach him about selling grapes from their own vineyards.
For Chris, winemaking is about learning and improving his skillsets; it is also highly personal and an introspective pursuit every vintage and is always centered around family. His career has spanned a diversity of wineries and winemaking practices. But to him, winemaking is intuitive, a large part of his ethos is creating wines by ‘feel’. The consistency of his wines are built around inconsistency as each year his vineyard sources and varieties change. But that is how he likes it, always having a new challenge.
Select Wines
We first discovered the variety Torrontes during our visit to Salta, Argentina when we were pursing visits to some of Donald Hess’s (Hess Collection) properties and high altitude vineyards. This white variety is very popular in that region; it is native to Argentina resulting from a cross between Muscat of Alexandria and Mission. We are not aware of any vineyards growing of this variety in Napa Valley, but we have come across it before in Lodi and Paso Robles. Chris decided to produce this wine when a co-worker introduced him to several varieties from this part of Lodi including Barbera and Verdehlo.
The Christopher Pratt 2022 Ingrid Torrontes was sourced from the Alta Mesa AVA in Lodi. This wine is medium gold in color; it is highly aromatic including stone-fruited scents of peaches, nectarines and apricots. There is also a honeyed note at play here including of honeysuckle and honeycomb. It offers flavors of Golden Delicious apple, pear, peaches in light syrup, nectarine, pineapple and apricot. During fermentation Chris noticed this wine had no weight and was almost watery – those ‘thin’ characteristics have since dramatically dissipated with some age. We noted its lovely texture; it is creamy with a light viscosity. Flavorful and balanced this wine lingers with a long fruit filled and bright finish and right at the end, a subtle herbal note. It is a refreshing 13.1% alcohol.
The 2019 Christopher Pratt Ingrid Propriety Red Wine is deep ruby in color; the bouquet is focused on its core fruit characteristics with the secondary aromas playing a more subtle role. Chris told us this was a complicated blend to create and as a result, took a long time before it was ready to be bottled. He crafted it with grapes from multiple sources and varieties including 70% Cabernet Sauvignon from Coombsville and Oak Knoll, 15% Merlot from Atlas Peak and Howell Mountain, 5% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot from Howell Mountain and 5% Syrah from Mt. Veeder. The bouquet is dark-fruited with scents of blackberry and boysenberry and some accompanying baking spices. The palate sports flavors of plum and dark cherry. The finish is seamless yet lengthy in terms of both flavor, a suppleness of tannins which coat the entire palate and a parallel spice character that is lightly woodsy, with a dust/earthy nuance and dark pepper. This wine is brightly flavored with a refreshing energy from its acidity. We wrote, in our initial notes, “cold winter, fireplace wine, enjoy with steak”.
Chris’s mother is a former soprano singer and an artist. She also collects numerous paintings and is known for her Rosemaling folk-art works, or rose paintings, a type of art that was popularized in Norway from 1700 to 1850. She was an early member of the California Rosemaling Association. We are now a proud owner of one of her works, a pretty very Scandinavian looking design, painted on a wooden plate. One particular painting in her collection depicting the back of a nude woman hung in the family home for years, but Chris never knew it’s backstory. Years later he found out that his grandfather on his maternal side of the family had painted this piece of his grandmother. It makes for an engaging looking wine label. And in homage to his mother Ingrid, he named several wines after her.
In 2021 Chris had access to grapes from the historic Lewelling Vineyard in St. Helena; he made wine from this vineyard for one year only. It is worth mentioning that Lewelling Vineyards farms one of the oldest continuously-owned family vineyards in Napa Valley with family ownership dating back to 1864. What is just as remarkable is that the Lewelling family has stayed true to their strong agricultural roots generation after generation.
The 2021 Chris Pratt Lewelling Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, I Said Goddamn! is deep ruby and nearly opaque in the glass; the bouquet is ripe but perhaps not as opulent as some of the recent bottlings we have tasted from this property. The bouquet offers aromas of dark cherry, boysenberry, mulberry and blackberry with an accompanying thread of toasted oak spices and deeper in the aromas, a note of dark chocolate. The palate features both red and darker fruit flavors supported by an energetic acidity. The palate echoes the ripeness of the bouquet with flavors of boysenberry jam, blackberry at the peak of ripeness, dark raspberry and assorted cherries at various levels of ripeness. One can feel there are loads of tannins in this wine, but they are managed carefully and with precision. They linger with a dusty character and a rounded texture, a seamlessness if you will.
Like other family members, Chris’s daughter is also an artist. She used to paint various cd covers; if the label looks familiar its because it was based off an image from the film, Kill Bill and features a likeness of actress Uma Thurman. She drew this at age 16. This image even contains a black circle in the center representing the center of the CD. His daughter has filled up various sketchbooks over the years; this probably won’t be the last of her paintings to be featured on a bottle of Chris Pratt Cellars.
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Consumers purchase wines for a wide variety of reasons including price, region, variety and label design being some of the most common influences. Large production wines equate to availability and shelf space. Shelf space equates to presence. But then there are those who take the time to seek out small brands who aren’t built to fill shelf spaces in retail outlets. Those who want to dig deeper and discover the stories behind each of the wines and the winemaker. These wines are crafted by hand with such a limited production that often marketing is primarily by word of mouth. And those are the types of consumers who will find the most value in the Chris Pratt wines.
The wines are primarily sold direct to consumer other than a small wine shop and wine club which carries them on the east coast. The wines are typically released on the website in the spring and fall. For more information or to purchase current releases, visit: www.chrisprattcellars.com
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