History
Philip Togni trained in Bordeaux and worked through a long list of Napa cellars before establishing his own vineyard high on Spring Mountain. The estate has stayed deliberately tiny and family-run: Philip, his wife Birgitta and their daughter Lisa, who now does most of the winemaking, run it between them. The style has not chased the valley's stylistic shifts: indigenous yeast fermentation, twenty months in French oak with around forty per cent new, and a wine built to need a decade before it opens.
The Site
A ten-acre vineyard at about 2,000 feet, near the top of the Spring Mountain District. Most of the estate is thin, skeletal mountain scree, which is the source of the flagship wine's structure. Lower ground on the property carries deeper loam and volcanic clay.
Vines and Blocks
The estate is planted to the Margaux-style set: Cabernet Sauvignon with Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, largely old massal selections and heritage Clone 7 rather than modern nursery clones.
Tanbark Hill is not a separate property but the estate's second wine, drawn from two designated blocks of Cabernet on that lower, deeper-soiled ground, about three acres in all. The extra soil depth softens the vine stress, so the fruit arrives rounder and more approachable. Barrels destined for the estate bottling that show forward fruit or softer tannin are declassified into it, in the Bordeaux manner.
The Wines
The estate Cabernet is savoury, firm and slow, requiring ten to twenty years. Tanbark Hill is made to the same standard but read earlier: mountain herbs, tart redcurrant and cassis over grainy tannin and driving acidity.