Estate Director Paul Roberts on Bond Estates (VIDEO)

Paul Roberts, Director of Bond Estates, talks to genConnect on Napa Valley and the monetary value of wine.

PAUL ROBERTS: It’s great to be here on a beautiful, pretty, sunny day here in Aspen.

KELLY HAYES: So you travel the country, I imagine, telling people about Bond Estate. Tell me a little bit about what the Winery’s all about.

PAUL ROBERTS: So really the essence of what we’re trying to do at Bond is put together what we say is a portfolio of grand crus of Napa Valley. So we’ve been working with some of these vineyards now in excess of 25 years trying to basically understand Napa through many, many years of experimentation. So we now have 5 wines. To get to these 5, we’ve now made 72 different Cabernet Sauvignons. So we’ve vinified trying to understand what’s the good and the better and then the best.

So because we’ve had this great fortune to live in the Valley, see the differences between the valley floor the top of the mountain and the hillside, it’s given us a really extraordinary understanding we think of what is truly the great terroirs of Napa Valley. So, we always say it’s taken a lot of years, 72 vineyards that we’ve experimented with down to the 5 that we really want to hang our hat on.

KELLY HAYES: So what is it about Napa Valley that makes Cabernet so happy?

PAUL ROBERTS: There’s so many factors. I think one of the great things is that it’s the land of sunshine. We’re a pretty altruistic growing environment. Most years we’re going to have lots of sunshine, relatively cool weather come in. We do get some heat spikes, but those are becoming less and less. Climate change is effecting Napa and we’re actually getting cooler. What’s also really extraordinary that a lot of people don’t think of– because I think whenever they come to Napa it’s a little bit like Aspen, you look around, it’s beautiful. We’re telling people more and more, look down. Because within the context of Napa Valley, we have over half of the world’s soils. So it really allows us to almost find this perfect little home to small vineyards to let Cabernet express itself in a very different manner. We also have some great fog, great wind come in. Really allows us to make temperatures so we don’t have anything over ripe.

KELLY HAYES: So Napa is clearly a sweet spot for Cabernet Sauvignon.

PAUL ROBERTS: Yes.

KELLY HAYES: What would be the other sweet spots in the world? If I was a Cabernet lover, what areas of the world would I look at.

PAUL ROBERTS: When it comes to Cabernet, you always have to start in Bordeaux I think Bordeaux was really where it all started. Bordeaux has had this string of great vintages, but their wines are getting much bigger, much more rich and powerful. You can also look towards certain places in South America. But I would say the next three, in terms of my trio of really great Cabernet, would be Bordeaux, Left Bank, Napa Valley, and Coonawarra in Australia. So this little band of red soil almost like this soil at Red Mountain over here loaded full of iron makes a great cabernet. So, I think those are the big three in my mind.

KELLY HAYES: So speaking of the big three, your wines sell for the three figures.

PAUL ROBERTS: Yes.

KELLY HAYES: Why is a bottle of wine worth that much money?

PAUL ROBERTS: That’s a good question. Pricing is always an intriguing aspect when you look at it. We’re looking at the factor that we have had almost two or three decades of experimentation. It’s taken us a long time to get there. There are a lot of vineyards which never made the cut. But it also comes down to selection. Because we’ve selected the five best out of all these that we’ve vinified with. But, even then, the way that we’re farming and then the land costs we have in Napa Valley, it’s not an inexpensive endeavor. Also we’ve been very, very fortunate that there is international demand for our wines. A lot of people, obviously, think that a big market for us in the United States, but also we saw a lot of wine in Europe and Japan. So it comes down to a little bit of the demand and supply.

KELLY HAYES: Terrific. Paul Roberts, Bond Estate, thank you very much for joining us here at genConnect. Thanks Paul.

PAUL ROBERTS: Thanks very much. Appreciate It.

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