Concentrating mainly on the Chardonnay grape variety, the Patz & Hall team of Donald and Heather Patz, James Hall and Anne Moses is making world class wines. Although they own no vines they have long term contracts to buy fruit from the Caldwell and Hyde vineyards

Planted on a steeply terraced hillside 250 metres above the valley floor at the cool southern end of the Napa valley, the hillside fruit of the Caldwell vineyard is wonderfully rich and ripe with good acidity. Low yields produce grapes of great intensity and concentration which are combined with the perfumed, Muscat-like fruit from the Hyde vineyard in Carneros to make wine of great complexity.

Considerable care is taken both in the vineyard and in the cellars, the grapes being harvested by hand and rigorously selected with only the finest and ripest fruit being used. After de-stemming and gentle pressing the juice is settled overnight into new French oak. After the first fermentation the wines are not racked again but allowed to age 'sur lie'. A stirring of the lees every two weeks extracts maximum flavour and complexity, adding a further dimension to the wine. After eleven months in oak the wines are racked and bottled without further filtration. The resulting Chardonnay has a marvellously exotic, peach aroma with a touch of spice, great richness on the palate and lush ripe fruit with hints of lychees. This is a big, mouthfilling wine with a powerful finish.

Recently Patz & Hall have added two stunning wines to their range. Their quest has always been to search out vineyards whose fruit will enable them to produce wines which reflect the ‘terroir’ and this pair are, according to Donald Patz, "breathtakingly concentrated, full-throttle wines"!

Pinot Noir is a new departure for Patz & Hall. Their search for the finest fruit took them to Russian River, in the cooler part of Sonoma County. The result is a wine of fruit-packed finesse from this wonderful but tricky grape. It was bottled without filtration after a year in cask, so nothing of its complexity, fruit or weight is lost.