Press Restaurant St. Helena Makes Remarkable Vintage Wine Acquisition Secures Standing As Most Extensive All-napa Valley Wine List

PRESS Restaurant, St. Helena makes history as the destination for the most extensive list of Napa Valley wines to be found at a restaurant anywhere, with two recent acquisitions led by sommeliers Scott Brenner and Kelli White. Over the past several months PRESS has purchased more than 2,000 bottles, going to auction twice, to acquire over 250 new selections of vintage Napa Valley wines, making for a total of more than -1,200 different Napa Valley wines available at the restaurant.

Carefully selecting the best Napa Cabernets, as well as some whites and sparkling wines from the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, Brenner and White have taken PRESS one giant leap closer to being the "repository for rare and older Napa vintages" that PRESS owner Leslie Rudd has envisioned.

Brenner and White - who make up the sommelier team for PRESS - have attended the two most recent Bonham and Butterfields wine auctions in order to find the rare and older vintages they've been seeking. Before attending the first on June 18th 2011 the auction house allowed them to sample some of the wines in advance and, finding them to have excellent provenance, the duo has swept the auction twice over the summer. They have acquired legendary vintages such as the '70 Mayacamas, '74 Freemark Abbey Bosch� Vineyard, '74 Caymus, '82 Mondavi Reserve, and the '62 BV Georges de Latour, upon which both Andre Tchelistcheff and Mike Grgich worked, and White describes as "in beautiful condition, drinks incredibly well. Just magical." However, even with the auction lots, the majority of PRESS' verticals have still been sourced directly from the wineries themselves, since there is no better guarantee of provenance than the wine coming straight from the winery.


The pair also purchases a great deal of older wines from Blicker Pierce in St. Helena (also known as BP wines), who are brokers both for current market releases as well as private cellars they have purchased. Stefan Blicker states - "As specialists in older vintage wines of excellent provenance to the country's top restaurants, we knew immediately that the addition of Kelli and Scott at Press was a game-changer. In less than one month, they became BPWine's single largest purchaser of older California wines. Their commitment to building the list to this new level is impressive, to say the least!"

When asked to explain the characteristics people should look for in aged cabernets White says - "Balance, perfume, tastes of earth. The tannins should soften and integrate into the wine. Young Cabernets are delicious but sometimes the amount of fruit and alcohol and tannin can be too intense for a lot of dishes. Older, dialed back Cabs are often more food-friendly."

Additionally, some claim that with the manipulation and stylization in wineries and vineyards that began in the 1980's - such as drip-irrigation and picking later for increased ripeness (often resulting in higher alcohol levels) quality has shifted. Now the emphasis is more on immediate drinkability. "All I know is there are wines made from unsorted bunches of grapes fermented in giant redwood tanks from the 40's and 50's that are still drinking beautifully today, while a startling number of big scorers from the high-octane, �ber-ripe, no-expense-spared vintage of 1997 are already falling apart" states White.

Besides Cabernet, Brenner and White also acquired older whites such as Stony Hill '77 Chardonnay and '78 Gewurztraminer, as well as other red varietals such as Etude '91 and '99 Pinot Noir and Martini '78 Zinfandel. Admittedly harder to find than Napa Cabs, the sommeliers say they still had a lot of fun tracking them down.

When asked if she thinks some d