In thinking about Heitz Cellar, our memories break down into two periods: when Joe Heitz was alive and afterwards. Let us be clear that in both periods to vineyards produced world-renowned wines, particularly their Cabernet Sauvignons. But the wine tasting experience became very different once Joe passed away.
Heitz – the winery and the man – are true pioneers of Napa Valley winemaking. He founded the winery in 1961. To put that in perspective, that was 15 years before the famous Judgment of Paris put California wines on the oenological map. Heitz Cellar’s 1970 Cabernet Sauvignon was one of the American wines tasted on that historic occasion.
For most of its existence, the Heitz tasting room was an unassuming, sparsely furnished stone building on Route 29 in St. Helena. The winery was generous in pouring many of their best wines, including the most famous one, the Martha’s Vineyard. Joe Heitz believed that wine was for sharing and so tasting at his winery were free. That remained the case until Joe’s heirs sold the winery to the Lawrence family in 2018. But Joe lives on, on the Heitz Cellar labels, checking out his wines in the aging room.
The old Heitz Cellar winery, circa 1990. Photo courtesy of Wine Spectator.
The Heitz winery today has been rebuilt as a sleek building and tasting room, not a Napa Palace but a long way from two barrels and a plank. As is the case everywhere in Napa Valley, the tastings are sit-down affairs and there is a fee, one consistent with other top-end vineyards in the region. Tastings are available at the original location, now called the Salon, and in the Vaca Mountain foothills, at what they term the Estate.
Tasting at Heitz’s Salon. Photo courtesy of the winery.
The wines available for tasting lean heavily towards the Cabernet Sauvignons that made Heitz so well-known. Martha’s Vineyard is still the flagship wine, and now has a picture of the old winery building on the label. (Sadly, a former favorite of ours, the Bella Oaks, is no longer made.) Some of what makes a visit to Heitz so exciting is that all their wines are sourced from single vineyards, so one can taste the regional variation in Napa Valley in the hands of a single winemaking team. Oh, yeah, they have some Chardonnays and a Rosé too. They’re not the reason to visit Heitz Cellar.
Power Tasting isn’t qualified to compare the wines the way Joe Heitz made them to those made with his name on the label today, but we can compare the experiences. Previously, visitors were made to feel like Joe’s guests, sharing in the bounty of his vineyards and his winemaking skill. The wines were and are powerful and elegant, but the experience was casual and down-to-earth.
A visit to Heitz Cellar today is more like dinner at a four-star restaurant. It’s classy and makes one feel special, but it’s removed from the earth the grapes grew in. (There is a vineyard tour available, so we guess that isn’t always the case.) Honestly, we preferred the old way, but those days are gone and we enjoy the way things are now.
A word about the name. It’s Heitz Cellar (singular) although we’ve always pluralized it. We don’t know any other singulars.