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18 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018 { one woman's view } IT'S HARD TO ARGUE with a proven track record, especially when it goes back half a century. I couldn't help but come to that conclu - sion after tasting through a score of excit- ing wines spanning Trefethen Family Vine- yards' 50-year history in the wine business (Trefethen joins Chappellet, Schramsberg, ZD, and several more Napa Valley wineries also celebrating this milestone birthday). Tasting old wines from those blue-chip pioneers makes two things clear : First, in the wine industry, chasing the newest hip release can mean missing out on exquisite classics from wineries that have spent decades getting really good at what they do. Second, Napa Valley was— and is—bestowed with remarkable natural attributes as a wine region. The pioneers who arrived here in the 1960s were often business executives who hadn't so much as grown a tomato, never mind planted a vineyard or made wine. Yet without a whit of experience, so many of them managed to turn out remarkable bottlings in spite of themselves. John Trefethen, recalling his early vintages in the 1970s, calls them "amazing wines by accident." John's wife, Janet, adds, "We entered the wine industry when there were no wine magazines, no wine critics, no 100-point scale. What we learned, we learned from the vineyard itself." If you wanted to gauge whether or not a winery deserves its reputation, tast - ing its 30-year-old dry Riesling is a good place to start. The 1988 Trefethen Riesling is nothing short of phenomenal, with a sensual, vibrant, lit-from-within quality that old wines with lots of natural acidity can possess. When the Trefethens came to Napa Valley, there were more than 1,000 acres of Riesling; today there are 66, which prompts one to wonder about the Napa Valley Rieslings that will never be. The tasting also explored Chardonnay releases ranging from the 1977 to the 2016, with those two bookend vintages emerging as my favorites: One could see in the daughter the still-beautiful grace of the mother. And regarding Cabernet, I had not known that the early Trefethen vintages of the variety were produced in American oak, but in the 1970s, Kentucky's bourbon country seemed the logical place to go if you needed a barrel or two. Despite this, the 1979 Library Selection Cabernet Sauvignon was a stunner—all richness without concentration. It possessed beauti - ful freshness and a structure formed by an exquisite balance of acid and tannin; had I tasted it blind, I most certainly would have deemed it a Left Bank Bordeaux. In the end, I came away from the tasting thinking about what it means for a wine to be deemed a classic. I've decided that this signies that something has been cher - ished over a long period for its integrity, and in that case, Trefethen certainly takes the cake. Karen MacNeil is the author of The Wine Bible and the editor of the free digital newsletter WineSpeed. She can be contacted at karen@ karenmacneil.com. Getting Really Good THE VIEW FROM 50 YEARS AT TREFETHEN FAMILY VINEYARDS by Karen MacNeil / photos by Susan Wong PHOTO: MATT MORRIS A giant cake celebrating Trefethen Family Vineyards' 50-year anniversary sits just outside of the winery's doors in Napa. Janet Trefethen leads a tasting of Trefethen's historic vintages for Karen MacNeil.