James Molesworth, winespectator.com  Oct. 13, 2021

Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard the name. Located in the southern portion of western Oakville, VHR is quietly considered one of the top sources for Cabernet Sauvignon. In a wine world with a preponderance of single-vineyard bottlings, VHR’s name doesn’t typically appear on labels. And that’s OK with owners Bruce and Heather Phillips. 

“We’re interested in working with winemaker partners who want to make wines that represent the site, and showcase what makes it special. As long as they’re doing that, we’re fine with it,” says Bruce. 

The 600-acre site currently has 70 acres under vine. The original 2,500-acre property was purchased by Bruce Phillips’ grandfather in 1956, though there’s a history of grapegrowing on the site that dates to the late 19th century. Bruce’s father, Robert, then helped turn it into an insider’s prized source for fruit, starting by providing a good portion of Beaulieu Vineyard’s Georges de Latour bottling in the 1960s and ’70s. 

“It was an interesting time,” says Bruce of that period. “My father really wanted to focus on a single varietal, and he knew this was good Cabernet land. But the economics at the time, when Chardonnay was king, kept that plan at bay.” 

In 1974, Robert Phillips started selling fruit to Robert Mondavi for his reserve Cabernet bottling. A decade later, the younger Phillips finished high school and was working part-time alongside his father. He took a break to try the organic food business and some other pursuits, but the wine bug called him back. After attending U.C. Davis, he returned to work full-time on the family property. 

Over the years, a few parts of the property were split off, eventually becoming Promontory and Andy Beckstoffer’s Missouri Hopper vineyard, while the heart of the vineyard around the foreman’s house and family home stayed intact. 

“Along the way we had some conversations about switching from just growers to producers. One idea was to go in whole hog, use the entire vineyard’s production and become a 20,000-plus-case winery,” says Bruce. “The conversation lasted about 10 minutes. My dad said no way. It was a really scary proposition at the time.” 

So the Phillips kept on as growers. Then phylloxera reared its ugly head in the mid-1980s. Enter Tony Soter, the former Etude winemaker whose imprimatur is quietly all over Napa Valley’s Cabernet history. Soter helped oversee the replanting in the late 1980s due to phylloxera, and after a soil analysis identified a dozen different spots, including some with volcanic ash amid the more typical alluvial gravel/loam mix, varying rootstock and clonal selections were made. 

“The economics of the wine industry allowed for it as the demand for Cabernet had begun to outpace Chardonnay,” says Bruce. “And Tony really helped put us on the right path. He optimized the site’s expression through a single variety.” 

When working with winemakers today, the Phillips family approaches it as a group ethos. 

“It’s about a community of winemakers all doing something different, but special, to optimize the vineyard’s expression. We talk about what kind of wine they want to make, which then helps us figure out which parts of the vineyard they should work with,” says Bruce. 

The flatter portions that extend toward Highway 29 provide a rich fruit profile with silky tannins, while the hillside portion that ranges up to 600 feet higher up provides a darker fruit profile and more intense tannins. Mike Wolf farms the property, and the site is managed according to organic principles, though it isn’t certified. 

While all of the producers who source VHR’s fruit are connected by a thread of vibrant and vivid dark blue and black fruit in their respective wines, they each have their own style. And VHR did finally join the producer ranks; its own Cabernet bottling debuted with the 2008 vintage. 

The Phillips family keeps a modest 15 percent of the production for their estate bottling, made by winemaker Françoise Peschon, and it’s a wine that also provides a stark and authoritative example of the site. The Vine Hill Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville 2018, a 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon bottling, is captivating from the start, with a gorgeous display of cassis, warmed plum sauce and macerated cherry and boysenberry fruit flavors, all supported by a racy graphite spine. Extra violet, warm earth and singed alder notes create a backdrop for the fruit on the very lengthy and well-defined finish. And despite the heft, there’s latent energy as well. It’s a very serious Cab, from a very serious vineyard ….