Arrow&Branch Investor Weekend Continues!

On our second day of this fifth Napa excursion, we once again blended business with pleasure, as we spent the first and the last part of our day surrounded by new friends and friendly acquaintances at Arrow&Branch’s events, and took advantage of being in this beautiful wine country by indulging in two additional outings during the afternoon.

First up was an exclusive, private tour of A&B Winery’s brand-new production facility and vineyard. As I’ve discussed elsewhere on this site, Dio and I are immensely proud to be investors in this long-awaited and dramatic expansion of one of our favorite producer’s properties. The written invitation we’d received also teased a “private viewing of America's National Treasure Rare Coins representing the birth of the US economy and its power on the global stage,” and if that sounds like an incongruous companion event, then allow me to explain. You see, the Contursi family (who are the folks behind A&B) have a longstanding reputation as leaders in the U.S rare coins market. For a half-century the Contursi family has been advising investors on how to preserve their wealth by purchasing extremely desirable, museum-quality coins, and it’s my understanding that they currently manage the single largest inventory of U.S. rare coins. Coins of this type are an irreplaceable part of American history, and kind of fascinating ― even to someone like me, who doesn’t know anything about that world.

For folks who want to get involved in this sort of thing but don’t have the desire (or perhaps the means) to own coins of this value and rarity outright, they even have something called the Arrow&Branch Rare Coins Investment Fund, which shares its name with the winery and the the family’s wine brand.

But more on their rare coins later.

WE ARRIVE AND HAVE OUR FIRST TASTE

Now, bear in mind that this 10 a.m. tour was the first time that Dio and I had ever seen the winery in person. That may have been the case for many of our fellow tour guests, I’m not sure. The A&B folks had sent us photographs and even a video of what the place looked like, but of course that simply can’t compare to visiting a place in real life. Here’s a video we made of approaching the facility, from the private driveway (once we got off the main road):

And here’s a photo we took of the sign itself:

One thing I will say about my first impression of the winery is that it’s much, much bigger than we had thought it would be, based on the photos we had been sent in advance. It’s just massive in scale. Now remember that Dio and I have been to numerous tastings at other custom crush facilities that serve the same purpose as this one, but the A&B facility is significantly larger than any of the other places of that sort that we’ve ever visited.

As soon as we walk in, the first thing we see to our right is a table filled with shiners. If you’re not familiar with that term, a “shiner” is basically a wine bottle without any sort of a label on it. You might encounter shiners when, for example, you’re doing a barrel tasting. Essentially, they’re used for holding wine that hasn’t been labeled for sale, nor had any sort of taxes applied to it (which is a very important distinction in the world of commercial alcohol production). It would be extremely unlikely for someone to come across a shiner in a retail establishment like a wine shop. But they’re used frequently for new wine that has not been released yet or for wine that might be sold off to another producer that would simply apply their own brand’s label to the wine. As soon as I saw those shiners I knew instinctively they were barrel samples.

As we entered the room, the first sample of wine was in the process of being poured. We were greeted by the various members of the Contursi family, as well as Thomas Neptune, who’s the family’s general counsel, and has been a trusted member of their business and legal team for over a decade. While we’d conversed with Thomas numerous times before via Zoom, this was our first time meeting him in person. Not too long after that, Steve Contursi climbed up a short ladder between some of the tanks to welcome everyone.

He then proceeds to introduce Jen Williams, their partner and winemaker. She then explained what we could expect from the different samples of wine contained in the shiners. I’d never met Jen before, and was extremely excited to hear her speak about the winery and her methodologies. I was also hoping to have a few moments to speak with her myself.

Now, here’s where things first started to get even more interesting than we had perhaps anticipated. We had initially been told that A&B would be a single wine from that Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, which the family has named “Lady Liberty Vineyard”, and so, as investors in this particular winery, we were basically investors in that particular wine. Any profits and possible commissions would be generated by both custom crush fees and the sale of said wine. However, it turned out that as they began harvesting and sampling the wine sourced from this vineyard, they concluded there was a very special block of cabernet that was so captivating that it deserved to be its own unique wine.

So now, instead of just having one wine, we’ll have a standard wine as well as a separate “reserve” wine. This was the first time we’d heard of this, and it was very encouraging to learn!

For this morning’s tasting, they ended up serving three different wines.

Rather than describing these wines on CellarTracker, as I usually do, I’m just going to offer some brief thoughts on them here in this post, because since these wines have not even been named yet, they can’t be plugged into that website’s online database. That’s how new they are.

The first one that was poured was from the 2022 vintage, and it was bottled in August of 2023. I wrote down a note that that it was highly tannic, packed with very young bright red fruit, and quite jammy.

The second wine poured was a 2023, and it was decidedly less tannic in its flavor profile than the first. I preferred this pour over the first one. Come to find out, that second pour was made from one of the best blocks in the vineyard ― the very same area they’re holding back for the special reserve wine, which then made complete sense. It was from a dense, big crop and the wine was deeply purple colored, with a ton of fruit. Interestingly enough, while the second bottle was a younger wine than the first, the grapes used for this batch come from an area with slightly better soil.

And Jen went into detail about the root stock and the clones which had been used for these grapes. They were grown on 20+ year old vines. That’s a good amount of age for them to have, and it helped to explain why the 2023 “Reserve” was showing slightly better than the 2022.

And then, for the final selection of the morning, they poured a third wine which was also from 2022. However, this one had been sourced from the same block as the second “reserve” wine we tasted. It stayed in the barrel far longer than the second wine, and thus it was more concentrated.

I must say that it was tricky and a bit difficult for me to score these three wines, because they are still fairly early in the process of aging in their barrels. At this stage, they’re all still relatively primary and youthful. Plus, I’m not nearly as familiar with barrel samples of this sort as I am wine that’s matured, been released and is considered ready to drink. That said, I must imagine that all three of these will eventually be graded somewhere in the range of 90 to 95 points, and possibly even higher than that.

TOUR OF THE CRUSH PAD AND WINEMAKING FACILITIES

From the tasting, we all followed Jen as she headed straight to the crush pad and the area where the wines will actually be made. We began in the cold room, and she remarked that she liked to call it “My Favorite Room.” It’s a pretty large space, and according to her the variety and total of all the specialized hardware and equipment in there makes it the most expensive room in the whole facility. This is the area which is used to chill all the fruit until it can be taken to the crush pad to be processed. Check out this video of a portion of this part of our tour:

There was such a tremendous harvest of grapes in 2023, so had they already been making wine in this facility at that point, the cold room would have been very useful in storing all that additional fruit in a safe, chilled environment until they could begin to use it. Jen said that if some of their grapes ever need a little help in finishing their fermentation process, this room can actually become a “warm room” to keep the fruit hot, for just that purpose.

Here are some more images of this adaptable space:

At this point, we headed to the tank room. That’s where we began and tasted samples of the new wines earlier. This is where the pumpovers occur. That’s a technique where fermenting wine from the bottom part of these giant tanks are ― you guessed it ― pumped out and then poured over the solid cap of grape skins that float on the top of all the liquid. Doing this properly extracts the optimal amount of tannins, color and aroma compounds from the skin of the grapes.

This is also where the bladder presses are used on the white grapes. That’s where you feed grapes into the top of a large horizontal cylinder, and inside that container is a bladder that can be inflated with air. When that occurs, additional pressure is put on the grapes, and it extracts their juice from the inside out!

And then, it was time for the big reveal.

THE BIG REVEAL

At this point, a huge door was opened that allowed us to enter the large barrel storage chamber that also doubles as A&B’s new hospitality area. This moment was so epic in scope that it would not have felt out of place to see some guy with a snare drum in the corner launch into a slow, intense press roll to accompany the moment.

We all slowly walk in, and there was a collective feeling of “wow” in the air. It was a very, very, very, very nicely designed space with a super high ceiling. It kind of took your breath away. Here are some pics and a video of the space including the hospitality area.

They’re eventually going to be storing scores of barrels of wine in here, but on that day, it was just a huge, beautiful and very well thought out room where we’d all soon be meeting back up to share a special dinner.

From there we moved outside to see the vineyard itself and get a glimpse of the vines and grapes that were used to make the very samples of fine wines we had just tasted a few minutes before. Here are some views of the growing area:

THE KIND OF COINS YOU’LL NEVER BE TEMPTED TO TOSS

Once we returned to the main processing area, Steve introduced his son Michael who runs the family’s coin investing business. The two of them gave everyone a basic primer on how that world works and then discussed some specific, highly sought-after coins in greater detail. We all learned about a half-dozen or so of the coins in their collection, and the significance and value of each one.

And then they passed them around.

I don’t know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to hold a small item in your hand which is worth a stunning amount of money. It’s not something that happens every day, and for many of us it’s not something that happens ever, really. But on this day, we all had that opportunity. These coins are beautiful and compelling. Just take a look at some of them we were allowed to handle:

And check out this one. It’s worth over $1.6 million! You can see the price tag right there.

And as we are looking at these coins, they poured us a sample of their lovely 2022 Sauvignon Blanc. And that was the conclusion of the morning’s activities.

Before it was time for us to head out and meet Rami and Keiko for lunch and to taste some amazing wines by Zeitgeist Cellars (which you can read about here), and then on to learn about both wine and cheese with the head of Neiman Cellars (which you can read about here), I made a point to seek out Jen Williams, who’s not only A&B’s winemaker, but also is now a partner in the winery and handles its wines as well. After letting her know how much I admire her winemaking skills and enjoy her wines, I asked her how she had come to design this new facility.

Her response? That she took everything she liked about wineries she had worked for in the past and only implemented those aspects; while making a point to avoid any other ideas she had encountered previously in her career. I told her a bit about HeavyPourWine.com and asked if she wouldn’t mind us taking a photo for the blog. She didn’t, and here it is. The big red thing behind us is the bladder press I spoke of earlier.

Jen seemed like a genuinely nice person, and very appreciative of the fact that Dio and I are involved with A&B as we are. That in turn only served to reinforce to the two of us that we’re glad to be involved with such good people in an ambitious undertaking of this sort. Because at that point, we had personally met all the folks involved in this new facility and expansion and every one of them left good impressions on us both.

Before we headed out to continue our adventures for the afternoon, I made sure to let Jen know that we were on our way to meet her husband for lunch and to try more of her wines (she and he are co-winemakers for Zeitgeist Cellars), and she was hopeful that he’d let us try some of their incredibly rare white wine known as Trousseau Gris.

Were we able to do so? Click over to this post to find out.

As long as we were back at this location and dressed for the big private dinner by 5:30 p.m., the rest of the day was ours…