History
Salvador Ramos, a veteran Napa grower, planted the vineyard in 1993. It takes its name from Augustus Watson, a Napa attorney who owned the ranch in the early 1900s. Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts of Arnot-Roberts are the only producers bottling from it, and it has become one of the reference sites for the leaner style of California Chardonnay.
The Site
A steep, exposed hillside at 450 feet in the far southern tail of Napa County near American Canyon, southeast of the Carneros line and looking straight down at San Pablo Bay. It falls outside every sub-appellation, so the wines carry the plain Napa Valley AVA. True limestone is close to absent on the North Coast, but a narrow fractured fin of marine limestone surfaces at the end of the Vaca range here, with lean calcareous Fagan series clay above it. The calcium carbonate limits potassium uptake, which holds juice pH down. An abandoned limestone quarry sits adjacent, worked in the early 1900s for the cement used to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Afternoon gales off the bay close the leaf stomata and stop sugar accumulation early in the day.
Vines and Blocks
The 1993 Chardonnay block is planted entirely to Clone 4 at wide six by eight spacing, which lets air move through against the damp bay fog. In 2014 Arnot-Roberts field-grafted a single adjacent acre over to Loire selections of Cabernet Franc.
The Wines
The Chardonnay is fermented in stainless steel and aged in neutral oak: pale, bone-dry and saline, with chamomile, lemon peel and wet stone. The Cabernet Franc runs to a handful of barrels a year, pale and aromatic with red cherry, rose petal and chalky tannin.