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Bell Wine Cellars 2019 ‘Faniani Vineyard’ Cabernet Sauvignon: a Proving Ground
Most vineyards in Napa Valley’s relatively small growing area are owned by individuals and families, sometimes for generations, whose pride of ownership and meticulous year-round attention to managing their crops is the realization of a dream. Unlike most other food...
Ever wonder what the stages of harvest include?
By early August, the vineyards of Napa Valley are flourishing, and the planning for the annual harvest begins in earnest. While the arrival of another high-quality crop is a time of celebration, harvest time is also a period of almost non-stop hard work and critical...
What is Veraison, and when does it occur?
Each year, vineyard managers in Napa Valley and around the world monitor each stage of development that will determine the successful maturation of their grape crop. Depending on the weather, elevation, soil type, and even the grape variety, the various stages may...
Flowering in the Vineyards
Throughout each year, the vineyards and landscape of beautiful Napa Valley undergo dramatic color transformations that represent the maturation of the annual grape crop. Even before the vineyards show signs of life in the spring, mustard plants interspersed among the...
Do you know the life cycle of a wine grape? Pt 2
Bud break and Flowering In the spring, after the vineyard crews have carefully pruned back the prior season’s growth on each vine to encourage new grape development, new buds begin to emerge that will soon open to become flowers. Signaling the onset of the growing...
Do you know the life cycle of a wine grape? Pt 1
As we savor the full, rich flavors of our carefully selected Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and other wines, rarely do we think about the care and skill required to produce such marvelous flavors and aroma. While wine grapes have been produced for thousands of years,...
Spring in the Vineyards
Napa Valley’s incredible scenery is constantly changing. In the springtime, as the vines come alive again, gorgeous yellow mustard flowers carpet the vine rows as the vines start their seasonal bud break that will yield the crop for the new year. Those first tender...
Harvest-Starts-Vineyard
To review, in January, February, March we experienced biblical levels of wet – parts of Napa got almost as much rain as the last three years combined. This was followed by a mostly chilly, damp, foggy spring. No clear weather pattern developed; we swerved from nice...
Next-Vintage-Begun
Napa has been enjoying a couple of weeks of pretty days – so welcome after weeks of rain and chill. Our Chardonnay has mostly popped new green shoots, which is the official start of our next vintage year. Some of the Merlot has popped as well, a bit unusual. ...
2016 Harvest is a Wrap! Holidays are almost here!
Our first, drenching October storm is behind us, leaving one and a half inches of rain in Napa, twice as much in St. Helena. We’ve wrapped up bringing in the fruit, and now all the action is inside the winery. Over the last five years, we’ve gradually added new...
A little look back into Bell Wine Cellars
Winemaking is not only an art but also an exacting science. Wineries can only survive by producing excellent vintages, innovating, and doing what is necessary to please their customers. While delivering the best-quality luxury wines must be every winemaker’s goal,...
What Happens During Early Spring at our Winery?
Work never ends in the vineyards and wineries of Napa Valley. While vineyard managers have been actively preparing their hibernating vines for the coming year following extensive pruning and checking soil health, the wineries of Napa Valley are in full gear,...
2017-Wrap-2018-Horizon
As I watch faded leaves fall from the oak above the office window, and think about this year about to end, I have to conclude that it has been one of the most challenging we have faced in the 20 years here at BELL. The weather alone kept us continually alert with the...
Grapes-Coming-Harvest
Harvest has begun in Napa, the culmination of a vintage year of unusual weather. Our drenching rains of winter refilled aquifers and then some. Flooding in Napa downtown has been a news staple for many generations. But the recently completed work on utilizing acres...
SUN is here today
Welcome to 2017! This is being sent while we have a sun break, before the rain returns in earnest for the weekend. Napa has had almost 20 inches of rain by New Year. As you can see in this picture, the little slough behind our winery is over half full. While this...
2017 is on the Horizon
It’s the last week before holidays command everyone’s complete attention. We are busy closing annual files, making last additions to wines in barrel, and tracking errant shipping orders. Temperatures have dropped. My thermometer was under 30 for the first time this...
Late Fall at Bell Wine Cellars
We can hardly believe it is the middle of November – the whirl of harvest and then traveling to work in the Florida market has us spinning. While we were in Florida, Napa received several days of rain. YAY! See how deep green the grass next to our driveway is now? ...
Harvest on the Horizon
Harvest is indeed around the corner, as veraison in the Merlot can attest to. Chris Stewart, our newest member added to the cellar staff, and Aikaterini, our harvest intern from Greece, sampled the fruit in our Sauvignon blanc vineyard this week and found sugar...
July 2015 Summer has arrived with the Best of Napa RED!
The 2015 California State Fair handed out their awards last week, and we couldn’t be more pleased. Many BELL fans know we don’t send our wines out for review except the few retrospectives we participate in through Napa Valley Vintners. In general, we’ve always felt...
Early Spring at the Winery
The spring rainy season has us working inside this time of year, both taking care of the brand new wines from the 2015 vintage and getting the older wines ready for bottling. The “getting ready” is a long process, and includes evaluating the corks that are the final...
Napa-Valley-Vintners-Premiere
This year, we’re hosting a Premiere preview event along with our new neighbors next door, Mira Winery (www.mirawine.com) and Hoopes Vineyard (www.hoopesvineyard.com). Just to make it interesting, we decided to collaborate on a joint lot of 20 cases – all three of us...
Napa-Approaches-November-Without-Visitors
It has been two weeks since the fires began. November is a week away. Across northern California, recovery has begun, both harvest and wine-making continues, and we carry on. Unfortunately, the frightening images of raging fires roaring through neighborhoods remain...
Early-Spring-Bell
The water level has been THE story of the last several months, but with the end of February, Premiere Napa Valley takes center stage. This two part picture displays the difference an hour can make, taken just as the doors open and again, at mid-morning this last...
Early Summer in Napa Valley
The early summer growing season is in full swing now – Chardonnay berries are the size of peas and the Merlot, always a bit behind, is about the size of BB shot. This week, we’ve had some typical summer weather. Heavy fog in the early morning, gradually clearing...
Spring, Bottling and Budbreak in Napa Valley
We bottle tomorrow and the crush pad is stacked with cases of empty bottles, huge plastic sacks of corks and the capsules that cover them, as well as the bottle labels. The long semi that houses the mobile bottling line arrives today. We’ll sanitize hoses, get the...
December 2015 – Napa Winter Beauty
The month of December is upon us, with all its attendant seasonal whirl. Vines are shedding their colorful leaves as the weather changes. Grasses in the vineyard have sprung back to life with the recent storms. The stony palisades on the eastern sides of the...
August 2015 – Harvest on the Horizon
It‘s hot hot hot – just right for August. Unfortunately, some of the HOT is due to the concern about recent fires nearby. On July 22, the Wragg fire, believed to have started by a car accident, quickly began sending up dark grey plumes one valley east of us, near...
May 2015 The Valley Speeds Up
Late spring is when Napa goes into gear, with activity ratcheting up in the vineyard, the tasting room and out in the market. Anthony and I just got back from our third trip out of state in as many months. Oklahoma is familiar to Anthony, but brand new to me;...
Bell-Rhine-Cruise-Completed
Anthony and I have just returned from a chilly trip up the Rhine, beginning in Amsterdam on April 1st. Floating on a river of water running so rapidly it tilted the channel markers, we watched the world slowly change from a flat, green delta to the precariously steep...
Planning Your Summer Trip to Napa Valley and Where to Visit
Summertime in Napa Valley offers a glorious opportunity to get away and enjoy new and exciting activities, great weather, and experience the beauty and bounty of nature. Few places offer so much to do for couples, groups, or families. The scenery, the weather, the...
Bordeaux-Opens-Doors-Napa
Napa has long used the wines of Bordeaux as a measure of quality, a goal, a definition of style. And why not? Bordeaux has two thousand years of wine production, reaching back to the days of the Roman empire and it’s thirsty citizens in the first century AD. The...
April 2015 Sun Rain
Anthony and I are about to head to work in Oklahoma for the next week, and before I leave, just a quick note to let you know we’ve gotten at least a half inch of RAIN since last night. The sound during the heaviest part of the downpour on our tile roof actually woke...