Pride Mountain Vineyards – Napa Winery – Spring Mountain

If you’re on a mission to find the best Napa Valley wineries, you’re on the right track.

In 1989, Jim and Carolyn Pride purchased the Historic Summit Ranch situated right on the Napa -Sonoma county line atop Spring Mountain establishing Pride Mountain Vineyards. As retirement was upon them, the Prides initially wanted to buy a vineyard from which they could sell grapes locally. They quickly realized growing grapes was a full-time job. As part of that transition to the next phase of their lives, Carolyn would stay up at the property and manage the operations during the week while Jim traveled and taught classes for Pride Institute, the international practice management firm he founded for dentists, returning on weekends to help run the property.  

Things quickly evolved as the Prides bought every viticulture textbook from the UC Davis bookstore to learn how to build and scale their venture.  By 1998, the Prides began welcoming guests and word had gotten out that they were making some amazing wines. The rest is history and today the Prides are making some of the best Cabernet in Napa Valley.

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In 2004, a new chapter began.  Unfortunately, Jim had passed away and his children Steve and Suzanne purchased the property.  This was a critical inflection point as the key tenets were still in place, high-quality grapes and crafting the best possible wines, but the process completely shifted with regards to the overall approach.

In the vineyards, they have experimented, studied, and changed every aspect of how they grow grapes. “That means getting the right amount of sunlight on the grapes, getting the shoots to stop growing earlier rather than later each summer, replanting blocks to get the right rootstocks and clones onto each of our 60 growing blocks, and stewarding a healthy ecosystem in the vine rows,” said Steve.

Pride Mountain Vineyards is at over 2,000 feet in elevation, oriented on gentle slopes with a temperature swing during the main growing season that is quite mild of about 10 to 20 degrees. Their grapes are above the fog line and get sunshine from sunrise to sunset resulting in darker flavors and a richer texture in their red wines than sites that do not receive as much sunlight. The cool afternoons allow for a slower ripening giving way to more complex flavors in both their whites and reds.

In the cellar, the Prides have become much more quantitative and rigorous with regard to measurements and techniques to mitigate flaws from developing as well as to make informed decisions early in the winemaking process.  With Matt Ward at the winemaking helm, he provides technical rigor in tandem with an excellent sensorial understanding of each of the wines.  They have learned that their wines are at their best when they have an intense flavor and textural impact due to the high amount of sunlight they get on the mountain while retaining bright freshness due to the cool afternoons.

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“When grapes are brought in too early, they do not yet have their full range of complex intense flavors and when they are brought in too late they acquire a muddled overripe and rather boring character,” said Steve. “Matt strives to find that perfect place where flavors are peaking.”

For their Cabernet Sauvignon, they often do a comparison of their mountain-top wines with those grown on the surrounding valley floor in Napa Valley as well as sending the wines out to the lab to do a quantitative comparison.  The mountain-top Cabernet Sauvignons always have the highest levels of phenolic compounds, which are things like tannins that give the texture and richness of the wine, resulting in a weighty and dense mouthfeel, but they never bite on the finish. They also tend to have authentic flavors like cedar and fresh tobacco, giving the Cabernet Sauvignons distinction. “They never cross over into the candied overripe nature of so many expensive Cabernet Sauvignons and I attribute that first and foremost to our growing site and second to our winemaking decisions,” said Steve.

The Prides also make a high-elevation Viognier. For Steve, the choreography the grape displays as it transitions from the rich attack to the building verve with a fresh and lively finish keeps things interesting. The thrilling textural dance with the subtle floral and lovely stone fruit flavors offers a unique tasting that he wishes all wine enthusiasts got to experience.

Growing grapes has not always been easy as the 2020 Glass Fire ravaged the Spring Mountain community as well as Napa at large. The Pride family had about 60% of their fruit in. Although they harvested all their grapes, they ended up destroying all the 2020 wines that were harvested after the fire.  “The good news about the 2020 reds is that they are gorgeous. The bad news is that we have a lot less of them,” said Steve.  “I think our Spring Mountain community up here, which has always been close, became even closer and more supportive of each other as we collectively navigated the devastation wrought by the fire.” 

As the Prides look toward the future, the goal is not necessarily to grow in size, but to constantly improve across all facets of the business. One interesting development: they will plant one to two acres of Syrah on a north-facing rocky slope as they have found it provides for an interesting complex wine hopefully to rival some of the best Syrahs in California.

“Here in California, if you plant Syrah on south-facing slopes that get a lot of sun, it ripens too quickly and those complex flavors do not have time to develop.  Thus my conviction [ok hope] is that the Glass Fire has revealed the perfect location in the world to grow Syrah. Always having small ongoing projects like this keeps the enthusiasm level up for all of us,” said Steve.

The final piece of the puzzle with Pride Mountain Vineyards is world-class hospitality. They are constantly thinking about the customer and reimagining the guest experience – doing everything in their power to ensure that guests drive away happier after their visit than when they arrived. The goal is to provide a tasting experience that is in tune with the needs of each customer or group, put the guests at ease, and make learning about wine fun and unpretentious. 

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PRIDE MOUNTAIN VINEYARDS OVERVIEW

• Who – Owners – Carolyn Pride, Suzanne Pride Bryan, and Steve Pride
• Winemaker – Matt Ward
• What – Napa – Sonoma Family Vineyards & Winery
• When – Open, by appointment, from 10:00 AM until 3:30 PM. Closed Tuesdays.
• Where – 4026 Spring Mountain Road, St. Helena, Ca 94574
• Reservations – Can be made online here
• Phone Number – 1-707-963-4949

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