Grgich Hills Estate

The Free Bacchus Story

Miljenko Grgich made the Chardonnay that beat white Burgundy at the 1976 Judgment of Paris. He made it at Chateau Montelena, not here — Grgich Hills did not exist yet, and he founded it the following year with Austin Hills. That is the story everyone knows about this house. It is not the interesting one.

The interesting one starts in 2000, when Ivo Jeramaz took over the vineyards. Jeramaz is Grgich's nephew; he came from Croatia in 1986 and changed career to work for his uncle. He put all five estate vineyards onto organic farming and then more or less stopped talking about grapes at all in favour of talking about soil.

The USDA's organic register lists Grgich Hills Cellar under CCOF across 451 acres, certified for crops and for handling — and the handling list is the part that matters. The wines are named on it one by one and vintage by vintage: the Napa Valley Chardonnay, the Fumé Blanc, the Cabernets, the Zinfandel, and a Croatian grape called Crljenak Kaštelanski that DNA work identified as Zinfandel under another name. The wine itself is certified organic, not only the fruit it was made from. Three of the other Napa houses in this cellar — Corison, Frog's Leap and Eisele — certify the fruit and stop there, so the difference shows in the register rather than on the label.

In March 2023 the estate added Regenerative Organic Certification from the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a standard that begins where organic ends and then asks for evidence that soil, biodiversity and working conditions are improving rather than holding. Jeramaz's line on it is that none of this is new: he calls it back to the future, because it is roughly how he and his uncle farmed in Croatia before either of them saw California.

Which brings it back to Chardonnay. The Napa Valley bottling is still the wine people come for, and at around $49 it is the least expensive way into a house whose Cabernets cost several times as much.