Napa Valley Wine Project Reviews Hardten Family Vineyards
Hardten Family Vineyards was founded by David and Christine Harden and their two children Adeline and Sophia with their inaugural vintage from 2019. Born and raised in Kansas City, David eventually settled in Minnesota where he was the founding partner of Minnesota Eye Consultants. His practice treats cornea, external disease, cataracts and conducts refractive and laser surgery. He is not the first ophthalmologist to own vineyards and produce wine in Napa Valley. Dr. Vance Thompson is one of the partners in Jessup Cellars and Handwritten wines, and Dr. Robert Sinskey founded Sinskey Vineyards in 1986. Sinskey also invented and patented several important surgical devices including a modified J-loop IOL (intraocular lens) used during cataract surgery and what is known as the Sinskey IOL Hook, which is still very much in use today.
David’s early introduction to wine was following ophthalmology school. He began collecting with a purpose, seeking out wines that were built to age and slowly building his cellar. He remembers dating a girl and taking a number of as he called them, “romantic trips” to Napa Valley. The wine, the views and the lifestyle they experienced made for some memorable dates. The girl he was dating, Christine, eventually became his wife.
Christine has been involved in WineFest, an annual event hosted by the University of Minnesota to benefit children’s health, research, education, and care at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital. Through this event they have met numerous other wine enthusiasts. They continued to visit Napa Valley although less often while they were raising their children. Eventually they began actively looking for property, interested in either a house in town or a vineyard. Eventually they located a 13 acre property at about 1,550 feet in elevation on Atlas Peak.
David’s parents and his grand parents owned several farms in Kansas where they grew wheat, milo and soy beans. The quiet, the agriculture and the country lifestyle appealed to he and Christine. They purchased this property in 2019 from the Mead family, who have lived on Atlas Peak since the 1880s. Hardten Family Vineyards was historically a small part of the overall 1,300 acre Mead Ranch.
The original vines on Mead Ranch were planted in the 1880s. Mead Ranch grows approximately 600 acres of grape vine and have been growing Zinfandel on Atlas peak since 1916 and Cabernet Sauvignon since the 1980s. Turley has produced a Zinfandel from the ranch for many years and Mead has also sold to Caymus and Duckhorn. During our visit with Jane Mead (died in 2019) on Saturday October 6, 2012, with the purpose of our visit to hear more about their history and see their vineyards, the one distinctive memory we have from the property was enjoying a diversity of incredibly tasty table grapes.
Nearby neighbors to Hardten Family Vineyards are Sill Family Vineyards (both growers and producers) and the sizable Circle R Ranch & Vineyards. Milliken Creek flows about 1/2 mile from their property, the same creek which eventually reaches the Napa River just north of downtown Napa. And part of the neighboring land is in the Napa Land Trust and will never be developed.
Several previous structures burned during the 2017 Atlas Peak fire including the main home and the caretakers house. The Hardten’s built a stone ‘barn’ with a living unit upstairs which they rent out on VRBO on a monthly basis. This is about a 20-25 minute drive from downtown Napa.
The oldest vines on site date to the early 1990s but these will be replanted most likely in 2025 as their yields have dropped significantly. During the fires in 2017, parts of the fringes of the vineyard burned but most of the vines were spared. After the transition in ownership, the Hardten’s hired well-respected viticulturist Mike Wolf to oversee the management of the vineyards. He and his team have since replanted some of the old vines and developed a new small section of the property for vines. The vineyard features three distinctive and separate vineyard blocks. The property is now 8.5 acres, entirely planted to Cabernet Sauvignon growing on several different rootstocks.
From the highest block, on a clear day one can look to the south and see the San Pablo Bay, far in the distance. Atlas Peak is known for being a ‘rockpile’ with a layer of volcanic rocks comprising much of the sub appellation. While ripping parts of their vineyard for replants, a rock pile estimated to be 30 feet high and around 100 feet in diameter was stacked on the property. Workers spent three weeks crushing all these rocks. The highest block on the Hardten property is also their rockiest and some of the crushed rocks were added to the soils in this block.
The primary focus of Hardten Vineyards is to grow and sell grapes; to date their grapes have been sold to Raymond, Caymus, Chappellet and to St. Clair Brown.
Visiting the property one is stuck by the quiet, broken only by apassing car or a plane. The property is usually above the fog line; it stays cooler here longer into spring than the valley floor. And this can clearly be seen in the vines; for example during our visit in mid April many of the vines had not yet started bud break while vineyards on the valley floor had begun bud break as early as late February and by this time of the year had already established prominent canopies. A later bud break results in a later harvest. Pruning here generally starts in late February and is finished by early March.
Fires burned a significant part of the vegetation here in 2017 and in 2020 but wildlife has since grown back. Sometimes the property is visited by mountain lions or the occasional bear, as well as coyote and foxes. And several owl boxes are located on the property, often housing young chicks during the spring. With farming, there is never a ‘normal’ year. No wines were produced in 2020 due to the resulting smoke taint. Production was lower in 2021 due to frost damage earlier in the year.
Wine from their first vintage in 2019 was crafted by winemaker Patrick Sabo at The Wine Foundry, located just south of the city of Napa. The winemaking has since been moved to another winery in Oakville.
Select Wines
The 2019 Hardten Family Vineyards First Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is deep ruby. The bouquet initially reveals some herbal characteristics including sage, dried herbs and pipe tobacco and as the bouquet evolves, it opens to scents of toast, cedar box, chocolate and mocha. The aromas are more dark fruited than red including cherry, plum and blackberry. The palate offers flavors of dark cherry, raspberry, mulberry and plum along with some brown baking spices. Medium acidity. This is a highly approachable, enjoyable and easy drinking mountain red. The finish is savory with some notes of dried herbs and a light touch of dust. This wine shows restraint in terms of texture; the tannins are supple and fine grained, and according to David, have softened slightly with several years in the bottle. For reference, we tasted this 4.5 years post vintage. This wine was aged in 50% new oak and 50% once used oak barrels for 22 months. With a longer hangtime, they find the wine doesn’t need as much oak, which is perfectly fine with David. He prefers wines where the oak is a complementary character rather than a dominating one.
This wine is 95% Cabernet Sauvignon with the balance an assortment of Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc from Stagecoach Vineyard. When bottling two wines, the family decided that this wine would be associated with David and his older daughter Adeline. With Patrick’s assistance, both blended this wine. It is called First Reserve to indicate not only its quality but also the fact this is was their first vintage and both David and Adeline are first born children.
The 2019 Hardten Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Belle is named in homage to Christine’s request that the family install a dinner bell on their front porch – for her own sake. This wine is associated with she and her younger daughter Sophia who spent time helping create the blend with Patrick. This wine is deep ruby; the bouquet offers an immediately bowlful of ripe cherries along with scents of raspberry, plum and a garrigue like character. There are other plenty of other equally dominant aromas at play including cocoa powder, mocha, cedar and a light toast. This wine reveals flavors of dark cherry, blackberry at the peak of its ripeness, mulberry, boysenberry and dark chocolate. This wine is balanced and flavorful without the accompanying tannin intensity commonly associated with mountain sites. Instead, the tannins are fine-grained; perhaps their presence is slightly more noticeable than the First Reserve bottling of the same vintage. Their presence is felt more on the front of the palate than the back. Like the First Reserve bottling, this wine is also 95% Cabernet Sauvignon from the estate with the same additional four varieties composing the remaining 5%, but in a slightly different ratio.
The Hardten family tasted through 13 different blends when deciding which ones to bottle. Two of the blends stood out the most. When both wines were ready to be bottled, there was a glass shortage, a common theme that year for many producers. As a result, the wine spent a little extra time in barrel before being bottled. Both wines were in barrel for 22 months.
Wines are not produced every year and production is always miniscule. This is one of Napa Valley’s smallest commercial producers. For example only 50 cases of each wine were produced in 2019. The wines are sold direct to friends and family and through their website and there is no retail distribution although for some additional exposure, they have poured the wines at WineFest in Minneapolis. For more information and to purchase wine, visit: www.hardtenfamilyvineyards.com
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