77% Sauvignon Blanc, 23% Sémillon

Food pairings: Halibut baked en papillote, seared scallops, oysters on the half shell, shrimp salad with avocado and lemon, fish tacos, goat cheese, herb salads and asparagus, and chicken dishes such as chicken marbella or a crisp schnitzel.

Winemaking: The grapes were hand-harvested in the cool darkness of night and reached the winery at dawn, where they were kept cold and protected from oxygen before gentle whole-cluster pressing. The juice was fermented at cold temperatures to preserve its freshness, 55% in French oak barrels, 35% of them new, and 45% in stainless steel tanks. Once dry, the wine aged on its lees, and select lots received occasional bâtonnage. The 2024 season began with a frost-free, even budbreak and a generous fruit set, followed by a moderate early summer of foggy mornings and cool nights. Late summer turned warm, but cold nights kept the acidity lively, giving ripe, concentrated fruit balanced by bright acidity.

Vineyards and terroir: Cliff Lede's Sauvignon Blanc gathers its complexity from the diversity of terroir running north to south through the Napa Valley. It blends Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon from the family's estate vineyards in Calistoga, the Stags Leap District and Carneros. A grower vineyard in eastern Rutherford adds old vines of a heritage Musqué clone, for density, richness and lemony citrus notes, while old-vine Sémillon from another Calistoga site brings the expansive, mouth-coating richness that is the hallmark of the house style. The Calistoga estate, at the base of Diamond Mountain, has gravelly loam soils of volcanic origin, full of water-rolled gravel and large cobbles.

Family and history: Cliff Lede (pronounced "lay-dee") grew up in his family's construction business in Canada and had collected Bordeaux since his late twenties when a business retreat in the 1990s first brought him to the Napa Valley. In 2002 he bought a vineyard and winery in the Stags Leap District and founded Cliff Lede Vineyards, naming its vineyard blocks after his favorite rock songs and albums. Viticulturist David Abreu began replanting the estate in 2004, and a new winery and cave system designed by Howard Backen received its first harvest in 2005. The family added the Calistoga vineyard in 2013 and land in Carneros in 2019, and the Stags Leap District estate has been Napa Green certified since 2015. Today Cliff works alongside his son Jason, General Manager and COO, and Director of Winemaking Christopher Tynan, a former assistant winemaker at Colgin Cellars who joined the team after David Abreu introduced him to Cliff in 2012.

In the pictures: Founder Cliff Lede among the vines; the winery in the Stags Leap District; and the Calistoga estate vineyard at the base of Diamond Mountain (photos courtesy of Cliff Lede Vineyards; winery and vineyard photos by Bob McClenahan).