56 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} Interested in a more spirited, less prim side of wine country? Head to St. Helena, a small town nestled in northern Napa County. Though it appreciates the finer things with ample art galleries, fine dining and more than 100 wineries, the region remains refreshingly grounded. DOWN-TO-EARTH WINERIES There’s a true earthiness to Ehlers Estate. Consider the hunks of rock in the organic winery’s tasting room walls. They hail from the two mountains that flank the property like massive bookends: the sandier stones from the Mayacamas Mountains and the darker volcanic rock from the Vaca Range. “It is a gorgeous metaphor for the terroir—the story of the soil that we have surrounding us,” says wine educator Catherine White. “This is how our vineyards were formed: from the runoff of all of this beautiful minerality.” Heeding the land, Ehlers winemaker Adam Casto recently experimented with one of the vineyard’s blocks by planting vines, not in structured, straight rows, but in abstract, organic patterns to match a recent digital map of the soil. “I call it vineyard architecture,” says Catherine, who lights up talking about all things agriculture. She adds that he’s also trying out “companion planting” to see whether neighboring plants influence the flavor of the grapes. Ehlers also gives the land a voice through its portrait wines. These red blends match the exact percentage of each of the site’s different plantings in a particular year—66% cabernet sauvignon, 16.3% merlot and so on—to produce a perfect embodiment of the site itself. Catherine, who describes every wine as a PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: ADAM POTTS / CONOR HAGEN
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