Jean Edwards Cellars was founded by husband and wife Karen & John Troisi with their first vintage produced in 2004. The wine namesake comes from combining both of their middle names; Karen’s is Jean and John’s is Edwards. From New Jersey, both worked at Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Europe for many years until retiring in 2012. Each has enjoyed wine for many years; both recall their first trip to Napa Valley was part of a road trip. Having followed the New York Giants for decades, each year they make a point to attend at least one away game. In 1984 they traveled to San Diego and then drove up the coast ultimately ending in the city of Napa.
That first trip turned into numerous visits to the valley; the inception for their wine began with a simple conversation tied into a tradition held every time they would visit the valley. They would always stop at Oakville Grocery, purchase sandwiches and then drive partway down Oakville Cross Road, find some shade and eat before visiting another winery. During one visit in the mid 1980s, while parked in the shade near Silver Oak Cellars they began to discuss the possibility of owning their own wine brand someday.
Fast forward nearly 20 years and this dream became a reality with the release of their first wine, a 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. Based on years of being consumers and numerous visits to the region’s wineries, they already knew what features they wanted to implement for their own wine brand including varieties and wine styles.
Kian Tavakoli has been their winemaker since the first vintage. The wine was made at Crushpad in San Francisco for a number of years (Jean Edwards was one of Crushpad’s first 4 clients); now the wine is made locally at a winery next to the city of Napa.
Fortunately both Karen and John’s tastes in wine are similar. Their wine making philosophy is to produce wines they both enjoy drinking – not to chase scores or highly stylized wines. By training, John is a Food Scientist and certainly understands the integration of food with wine. All their wines are very food friendly.
There are a number of individuals in Napa Valley that both Karen and John consider role models – even if these individuals are not directly aware of their influence on both Karen & John. During one of their trips to the valley they met Randy Mason (of Mason Cellars) who was the General Manager at the time at Napa Wine Co. Unannounced they introduced themselves and Randy spent most of the afternoon showing them around and tasting them on wines.
They consider Suzie and Paul Frank (founder of of Gemstone Winery) additional mentors, especially when it comes to hospitality. Karen recalled ordering wine from Gemstone and Susie and Paul hand delivering it to their hotel room in Napa. They also met Carl Doumani at a tasting once and in part modeled the style of their own Petite Sirah after some of the Petite Sirah’s he was making at the time during his ownership of Quixote Winery.
Select Wines
Whites
Like the neighboring tasting room Bougetz Cellars, Jean Edwards Cellars produces a Sauvignon Blanc from the Dalla Gasperina Vineyard in Rutherford and has been doing so since their inaugural vintage of this wine in 2014. For those visiting, we recommend trying wines from both producers; despite from the same vineyard one will notice some significant differences including texturally.
The 2022 Jean Edwards Dalla Gasperina Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc is medium yellow in color; the bouquet offers aromas of lemon/lime zest, citrus blossom, grapefruit, green apple and passion fruit. The palate offers a pleasing balance between the more herbal characteristics inherent to this variety and a riper expression. It is neither one nor the other. It reveals flavors of pineapple, mandarin orange, honeycomb, and pomelo. The bouquet is more citrus driven than the palate. Its texture is rounded and lightly creamy but not viscous; this wine lingers vibrant with bright acidity. Oysters are often an associated pairing with wines from this variety; tasting this wine made us recall our visits to Tomales Bay Oyster Company in Marin County where we enjoyed freshly shucked oysters outdoors on warm fall days.
The 2015 Jean Edwards Sauvignon Blanc is from the organically farmed Dalla Gasperina Vineyard which straddles the Rutherford / St. Helena appellation border with the 5% remainder of Sémillon sourced from Pope Valley. The wine was fermented in stainless steel tanks and then aged in neutral oak for 8 months. Citrus aromas show on the bouquet. The wine feels nice on the palate in part due to its soft and rounded texture. It features a noticeable viscosity. Karen and John recommend this wine to be paired with shellfish.
The 2020 Jean Edwards Gold Coast Vineyard Chardonnay Sonoma Coast is dark golden in the glass; the bouquet is sweetly fruited including of ripe apricots, peaches in light syrup and nectarine accompanied by butterscotch, caramel, crème Brule and warm butter. If one were to describe its aromatic character as like walking into a kitchen during the holidays with aunts frantically baking a variety of desserts, we would totally agree. The palate closely mirrors the bouquet with flavors of warm butter, apricot, yellow peach, mango, caramelized sugars and baked apple. This is California sunshine bottled up at the end of summer and expressed in a glass. The finish is rich, brightly lit from the acidity and lingers with with both ripe fruit and assorted sweet notes including vanilla and honeycomb. Its texture is creamy but not overly viscous. Best enjoyed by itself next to a pool on a warm day with a bevy of gorgeous people nearby for intellectually stimulating conversation.
Reds
It is extremely rare when we taste a Santa Clara Valley grown wine produced from a Napa Valley based producer. The 2019 Jean Edwards Cooper’s Cuvée Black Paw Santa Clara Valley Aver Vineyard is 100% varietal. This wine is deep ruby and nearly opaque in the glass; it’s dark color is an inherent characteristic of this variety. The bouquet is meaty and brooding with aromatics of dried meats, roasted coffee beans, dark chocolate, toast, crushed black pepper and a woodsy spice most resembling the inside of an old cedar box. But there are also fruit scents at play here including dark cherry, blackberry and plum – and their presence becomes more expressive as the wine evolves in the glass. The palate is darkly fruited with flavors of dark plum, blackberry and dark cherry. The tannins are grainy and gritty but not coarse; they outpace the fruit on the finish. Lingers bright with a light warmth of alcohol deep on the palate along with a dark pepper spice. Medium acidity. This wine was aged in 50% new French oak barrels. This wine is produced every year as a tribute to their Black Labrador Retriever, Cooper. We don’t eat as much red meat as we used to, but we would be quite happy pairing this wine with a dry rub T-bone steak on the BBQ.
The 2012 Jean Edwards Petite Sirah was the first Petite Sirah they made and each year they continue to produce subsequent vintages of this variety. Both Karen and John have been on Vincent Arroyo Winery’s mailing list for years. Every time they visited him, Karen would always ask Vince if he would sell them some Petite Sirah and Vince’s answer was always the same, something like “it’s too much of hassle to sell fruit, we use all the grapes ourselves”. But ultimately, Karen’s persistence paid off; in 2012 he offered them a ton of grapes.
The 2012 Jean Edwards Petite Sirah sports a sweet fruit and floral perfume driven nose with notes of dried rose petal. This is a variety that can certainly be out of balance – especially when young. This wine is not like that. On the palate there are notes of berries and spice with very well managed dusty, slightly grainy tannins anchoring a pleasing finish. Karen and John say this wine pairs well with chocolate cake!
The 2019 Jean Edwards Cellars Philary Vineyard Syrah, Atlas Peak is deep ruby and opaque in the glass; the bouquet is meaty, gamey, brooding, dark and layered. If aromatics could stimulate an intellectual conversation, this bouquet is a conversation starter. It offers scents of sweaty baseball mitt being used on a hot summer day, forest floor, dried herbs including sage, burnt rubber, toast, dark chocolate and crushed black peppercorn. The fruit starts to show more given time including of plum. We love Syrah’s with aromatic character and this wine has it in spades. Richly flavored across the palate, it is darkly fruited including plum and blackberry. The tannins are gravelly, not overtly course and linger with a woodsy spice, dried meats and dark pepper corn. Mouth watering. Someone once told us Sryah’s like the grill; tasting this made us think of warm summer evenings, a healthy appetite and grilling hamburgers.
Jean Edwards has worked with Stagecoach Vineyard (located high on the slopes of Atlas Peak) from the very beginning, it was this vineyard that supplied them the grapes for their first vintage in 2004 and incidentally is the wine that Wine Spectator Magazine named as “one of twenty new Cabernet producers to watch…” in their annual Cabernet Sauvignon issue.
The 2012 Jean Edwards Stagecoach Cabernet Sauvignon was aged in 100% French oak of which approximately 65% was new. This vintage was blended with 4% Malbec and 1% Petite Verdot. On the bouquet this wine shows a diversity of aromas including a combination of cigar smoke, leather and blackberry nuances and as it opens notes of various dessert spices. Aromatically the fruit is generous. The entry is fairly soft with a rounded overall mouthfeel. The dusty tannins are well integrated and linger for some time with additional subtle notes of both chocolate and toasted oak.
The 2012 Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon was aged in 100% oak with 75% in new French barrels. The bouquet is unique and certainly stands out; it is somewhat meaty with aromas of bacon fat, coffee, brown chocolate and various baking spices. On the palate this is a robust wine yet is well balanced between fruit, acidity and structure. A sweetness of oak lingers slightly on the finish.
And Jean Edwards also produces a limited number of bottles for Gary’s Wine stores in New Jersey, branded as Go Figure Cabernet Sauvignon with various lot numbers. This partnership makes sense as both Gary and Karen and John live in New Jersey and both are strongly connected to Napa Valley. Gary’s used to operated Gary’s in St. Helena, the current home of The Napa Valley Museum of Art & Culture (THE MAC).
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Tasting Room Evolution
In early 2016 Jean Edwards moved into the Wines on First Tasting room (a small, now closed tasting room which featured wines from a few select producers) located just off of First Street across from the Andaz Hotel. Karen says her initial correspondence with the tasting room was ‘old school’, a printed letter sent in the mail. Old school still works – timing was appropriate for the tasting room to bring on another producer. While still living in New Jersey, they also have a residence in the city of Napa and when in town, their “commute” to this tasting room was only a 10-minute walk. They moved out of this tasting room in late 2017.
In February 2018 Jean Edwards moved from their downtown Napa location to the Sonoma Plaza – opening a small tasting room in the space that Napa Valley based Falcor Winery previously occupied. This is in Vine Alley a cute collection of small tasting rooms and shops located a short walk from the actual plaza. Tasting were either sit down at the wine bar or or sometimes guests preferred one of their sofas.They moved out of this tasting room in 2020.
And in 2021, Jean Edwards moved into their current space – a small tasting room in a part of the city of Napa called Vichy Springs, or what we call the Silverado Wine & Arts District, home to several wineries, tasting rooms and art galleries. The primary building on site houses two other winery tasting room neighbors and is estimated to date from the 1950s. It has seen many uses over the years including as a machine shop, storage for an art gallery, possibly used for storage of whisky when it was being distilled nearby at the old Hedgside Distillery (now the home of Del Dotto Winery) and for yoga.
And because this is within the city limits of Napa, the tasting room is not confined to the same regulations as if they were in the county. However, while in the city limits, this is certainly not an urban tasting room (about a 10-minute drive to downtown). One primary perk of being within the confines of the city include being open to the public by walk-in. This tasting room is also one of less than 20 wineries in Napa Valley on the itinerary of the Napa Valley Wine Trolley.
Guests who stay at the nearby Silverado Country Club can walk to the tasting room (about 15-minutes) or have the resort arrange a golf-cart ride.
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If one meets Karen and John, one will quickly realize their love for dogs. Note the tiny profile of a dog’s head on the back of all their bottles. This is in tribute to “Trouble” their first Labrador Retriever.
Their distribution is mostly east coast centric with select placement in New Jersey including at several Wegmans Grocery stores (where they self-distribute), Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York and Washington DC. Locally they have cut back distribution because of their tasting room but they are still found at La Toque and the Napa Valley Wine and Cigar.
Total annual production is usually around 600 cases (they have grown slowly over the years). Most of their wines are only produced in quantities of 50 to 100 cases. They maintain a mailing list and also a wine club. They are members of the Napa Valley Vintners and the Rutherford Dust Society. To join their mailing list or wine club, to purchase wines and for more information visit: www.jeanedwardscellars.com
Atlas Peak Road Tasting Room
Old Sonoma Tasting Room:
Original Napa Tasting Room
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