At Nickel and Nickel, they focus on 100% Single Vineyard, Single Varietal. What does that mean? First of all single varietal means that they are using 100% of that grape...no blending. For example, to be called a Cabernet Sauvignon, it only needs to have 75% of that grape and any other variety of grape can be added to it. To have a American Viticultural Area (AVA), it needs to be 85% of the grapes coming from that area. To be called single vineyard, it doesn't even have to be 100%...only 95% needs to be coming from that vineyard. At Nickel and Nickel, it's all 100%.
Single vineyard means that all the grapes are coming from that soil type.
What makes Napa Valley so unique? We have over half the world's soil types in this very small piece of land. Napa Valley is only 30 miles long and 5 miles wide. The reason why we have so much soil diversity is because of all the activity that happened to form Napa Valley. The Eastern mountains, Vaca mountains, were formed by volcanoes and the mountains on the western side were formed both by earthquakes and by volcanoes. Napa Valley also used to be a big waterway, raging rivers were going through the valley, bringing the water from the Sierra Nevadas and making it's way into the San Francisco Bay. As it was making it's way, it would pick up some sediment and leave some sediment behind. This is why we have this mineral rich soil diversity that is optimum for producing quality Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Wappo & Lakoya Native Americans called this the land of plenty because of how easily and abundantly everything grows.
I like to say, here's this very small valley...it’s a pin drop on the scope of the United States map, yet this area produces what people consider some of the best Cabernets in the world.
