From a vintage trailer to a stone quarry to homebrewed balsamic vinegar, The Terraces has it all–including great wine!

If you habituate Napa and think you’ve tasted at all of the great wineries, well you probably haven’t. Though it is directly across the Silverado Trail from Quintessa in the Rutherford district, The Terraces is one of the valley’s appointment-only sleepers, producing both wonderful fruit and outstanding vintages. Most visitors, however, speed past on their way to higher-profile, more accessible wineries such as Joseph Phelps, ZD and Miner Family.   

The complete name of this 120-acre estate is “The Terraces at Quarry Vineyards,” and such fuller disclosure renders greater insight into one of the many features that makes this place special. An eons-ago volcanic eruption of bubbling magna hardened into mounds of rhyolite, a chalky white stone similar in appearance to granite.     

“It is soft and easily workable,” said Timm Crull, The Terraces’ winemaker, viticulturist and owner with his wife, Sharon. “That’s why it was the building material of choice in the Napa Valley.”     

Crull said venerable structures such as Rubicon Estate (formerly Inglenook), Chateau Montelena and Far Niente are all constructed from the material. . .as is Greystone, now the Culinary Institute of America, owned earlier by the Christian Brothers and originally the wine cooperative, Greystone Cellars, when built in 1889. Was any of the stone for these historic buildings harvested from The Terraces? “I can’t say where our stone has been used, but the property has been on the map for the last century as a quarry,” Crull explained.     

One place he knows for sure used stone quarried onsite is the foundation for the property’s original winery building, a three-storey structure constructed in 1885. More about this later, but Crull still allows friends to source small quantities of his rhyolite for their home building projects.     

We’ve featured The Terraces wines for more than a year at Carpe Vino in Old Town Auburn, the wine shop and restaurant I own with my son, Drew. Recently, while I attended a symposium for wine writers at the Meadowood resort, the Crulls were kind enough to invite me to park my Airstream on their estate, just a few miles from the conference site.     

The concept behind my Vintage Highway blog is to roll my vintage trailer onto a winery property and stay for three or four nights, spending the daylight hours touring the region and meeting with winemakers, always sniffing out new vintages to bring into our shop. Then I write about what I see, learn and taste.     

What is most appealing to me, however, is having the opportunity—virtually 24/7—to observe the life of a working winery. When I awake in the morning in my aluminum cocoon, it is often to the tune of a diesel motor being turned over or the arrival of a field crew. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to talk informally with the owners as they work. . .or over a glass of wine.     

At The Terraces, I expected the principals would fit the archetype of nouveau riche, cashed-out, high-tech entrepreneurs who rolled over a fortune into the good life of the Napa Valley. So much for stereotypes. My first encounter with Timm Crull was as I pulled through the vineyard security gate and he approached in a Kubota 4×4, dressed in a dark blue fleece pullover, washed-out blue jeans and heavy work boots. With close-cropped, thinning hair and a face dominated by large plastic frame glasses with lenses that darken with sunlight, Timm nodded “hello” as I passed. I figured he was the vineyard manager, not the owner.     

Okay, so Timm is a Berkeley engineering and economics grad, where he met his wife, Sharon, who was an attorney. . .but this guy reminds me of the “do-it-all” farmers I know in Amador. During my five nights at The Terraces, I was parked next to the equipment barn, where I watched Timm build a mobile chicken coop virtually from scratch. This guy welded the frame to a rolling chassis; painted the metal; built all of the windows and vents using complex joinery; and sheathed the structure. Because he had baby chicks maturing at home—his family doesn’t live on the property—he had to get the job finished, so he worked every evening, sometimes until after 9 p.m.     

In the late afternoons, returning from a full day at the Meadowood conference and before returning for dinner, I’d chat with Timm over a Pabst Blue Ribbon. We bullshitted for hours on a wide array of topics, starting with his 1968 Avion trailer—another unexpected joy of this place. Timm’s trailer is a knock-off of the Airstream design, and he purchased it several years ago for a singular purpose: to serve as base camp for his annual, late summer pilgrimage to Burning Man in Nevada.     

It’s like a retro man cave on wheels, mostly original inside but retrofitted with air conditioning and a sound system. My impression is he uses it as a private retreat and as a place to crash when driving home after a winery party would be impractical. It’s a sweet set up, and Timm backed my trailer expertly next to his after negotiating a curving driveway in front of the vineyard guest house.     

“Why don’t you just use the house?” Timm offered generously.  “We don’t have anyone coming until Friday,” which would have given me three days of luxury in the 1,100 square-foot bungalow, with two bedrooms, two baths and a gourmet-kitchen, great-room combination.

“I’d love to,” I replied, “But my shtick is to stay in the trailer.”  I did, however, eagerly accept his offer to use one of the bathrooms in house, since I was dealing with water supply problems with my rig.  I showered there each morning and when I left, the place was so tidy it would have taken a police forensic technician to determine that someone had been in the bathroom.

Study the Napa Valley Vintners’ appellation map and the length of the valley is sectioned into a crowded megalopolis of vineyards, one after the other with virtually no relief.  Credit early grape growers and winemakers such as Charles Scheggia for recognizing the potential of Napa.  He purchased the property that now comprises The Terraces in 1881, and immediately established a vineyard.  

Scheggia employed Chinese laborers to terrace the hillsides to accept the vines, a laborious, time-consuming process.  By 1889, the valley’s earliest zenith was reached when 140 commercial wineries were operating in Napa, a number that would be decimated first by an end-of-the-century outbreak of phylloxera, then root louse and finally the passage of Prohibition in 1920.

While trees have long since supplanted neat rows of vines, the original terraces are still prominent features of the landscape.  As is the foundation of the original winery building; the structure burned down after just one crush, a violent end that was likely an act of arson.  At least that’s the local lore. . .discontented Chinese laborers, angry about not being paid, reduced the place to ashes.  Though it has never been rebuilt, the Crulls have restored the stone foundation and now use the site for winery celebrations.

Timm took me for a tour in one of his many quads, coursing through the estate’s network of nut-busting trails, over hills and through vineyards.  Acreage not planted in vines is densely covered with five species of oaks, though the scrubby trees all appear to be the same to me.  My host thumped us through the ruts, stopping frequently to open and close chain link gates that impeded our mission.  Pieces of outdoor art are planted unexpectedly. . .a staircase to nowhere called the Treehouse, two totem poles purchased near Vancouver, B.C. and an elephant, carved from stone and shipped home from Cambodia. . .making this very much an atypical vineyard tour.

Eventually, we reached the top of the property, acquired in two parcels with the first purchase in 1993 from a family who had owned the estate for 72 years.  Another 21 acres was purchased in 2001 and included The Terraces vineyards and winery building.     

We stood about 400 feet above the valley floor, which is revealed dimly through the morning’s residual coastal fog. Immediately below our feet unfurls a five-acre block of cabernet sauvignon, the estate’s best fruit that commands upwards of $5,000 per ton. All told, there are 20 acres of cab, two acres of cabernet franc and three planted in zinfandel.     

Tim launched into a tutorial on soils, clones, weather, pests, canopy management, drainage, timing and more. . .a comprehensive lecture that I seemed to have heard or read before in bits and pieces, but never from one person so directly connected to a vineyard classroom. I asked a few questions and he rolled on, an excitable practitioner eager to try and make me understand.     

The far western edge of the valley is corralled by the Mayacamas Mountains, studded with massive manor homes visible even at this distance. Below is Rt. 29 through St. Helena. Timm points out Far Niente there. . .and to the far right is the Culinary Institute. This vista absolutely commands a wine lover’s adulation. Attempting to calculate the level of total investment, the wine resting in barrels, the intense competition, the talent required to make this appellation work. . .it is unfathomable for a modest wine merchant from comatose Auburn.     

We move on to The Terraces’ modest winery building, a compact and efficient complex built in 1991 where Timm handles every phase of winemaking in-house, from crush to bottling. And that’s pretty amazing since, along with assistant winemaker Nate Page, he produces at most 2,500 cases per year. I appreciated the minimalistic architecture lavished on the structure, and I especially appreciated the careful landscaping. It’s all in the details, isn’t it?     

The tasting room is upstairs, an elegant open space illustrated boldly with a lifetime’s collection of artwork. A hugely efficient woodstove occupys the center of the room, and a double door leads out to a spacious covered deck where we spent the previous evening.

This is Premiere Napa weekend, an annual high-roller gala punctuated by a Saturday auction of cult wines benefiting the Napa Valley Vintners Association and attracting deep-pocketed retail buyers from around the country.  One lot of wine—five cases of Shafer “Sunspot” Cabernet Sauvignon—sold for a remarkable $37,000 (more than $616 per bottle), and many auction bidders were guests of the Crulls for a pig roast featuring spicy pulled-pork creations, paired with The Terraces current releases: zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and petite sirah. Among the notable partiers was seven-foot, four-inch tall Mark Eaton, former center for the Utah Jazz and now a partner in Tuscany, an Italian restaurant in Salt Lake City.     

I chatted with Mark, and he was compelled to literally bend over to speak to me; I had to rotate my head back until it hurt to look up at him. Interesting fellow, and a wine geek for sure. I wondered how many glasses he is obligated to consume before achieving even the slightest discernable buzz.     

It was because of an invitation to the Crull’s post-Premiere party that I was in Napa in the first place. I went on the Napa Valley Vintners web site to learn more about the Premiere auction, and then discovered the symposium for wine writers was to be conducted earlier in the week, with attendees invited to sip at tastings as well as to observe the auction. I couldn’t pass any of it up, and it made for a truly spectacular trip along the Vintage Highway.

In Part II, learn about the complex art of making balsamic vinegar and find out about Carpe Vino’s May 15th winemaker dinner featuring The Terraces.