History
Joseph Phelps leased the vineyard from Marion and David Backus in 1977 and bought it outright in 1996. It has been bottled as a single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon for most of that time, deliberately kept apart from Insignia, the multi-vineyard blend it stands in contrast to.
The Site
Twenty-one acres on the steep, west-facing slopes of the Vaca range, immediately east of the Silverado Trail in Oakville, with Screaming Eagle to the west and Dalla Valle to the south. The soil is iron-rich volcanic gravelly loam and red clay debris that holds almost no water. Blocks on the hillside terraces climb some 500 feet above the valley floor and take unfiltered afternoon sun, which is why a mountain site here ripens early rather than late.
Vines and Blocks
Cabernet Sauvignon accounts for roughly nine tenths of the planting, in Clone 7 and heritage selections carried through successive replants, with small blocks of Petit Verdot and Malbec in the hottest, rockiest corners. Two lower blocks sit on the flatter apron above the Trail on siltier colluvium; two more are terraced into the face above. Drought-tolerant 110R and 3309C rootstocks pace the vines through the thin red clay.
The Wines
Phelps Backus is savoury and iron-tinged where Insignia is plush: cassis and pencil shavings over firm, mountain-grown tannin, with the sage note that the site's exposure seems to encourage.