Napa’s Beaulieu Vineyards welcomes new winemaker, Trevor Durling

Beaulieu Vineyard, usually shortened to just BV, is one of the Napa Valley’s most esteemed and trailblazing wineries. The Rutherford-based company helped to give rise to the region’s reputation for producing some of the finest wines on earth, thanks to the knowledge of founder Georges de Latour and legendary scientist André Tchelistcheff; if a rising tide lifts all ships, these guys were the tide that raised the Napa Valley to where it is today. Amazingly, BV has only had four chief winemakers in its 117-year history, and it recently welcomed its fifth, Trevor Durling, who’s replacing Jeffrey Stambor.

A Sonoma County native, Durling began his career in 2003 with an internship at the Russian River Valley’s Sonoma-Cutrer winery before spending two seasons harvesting grapes for Gloria Ferrer and taking a full-time job with Sonoma’s Moon Mountain in 2005. He joined Napa’s acclaimed Provenance and Hewitt in 2010 as assistant winemaker, and in 2015 he was appointed lead winemaker there.

We had the opportunity to meet with Durling and taste some of BV’s wines recently, and he’s clearly incredibly knowledgeable about BV’s wines and super-passionate about what he does. He walked us through a stunning assortment of some of the winery’s finest wines, including a 1975 Georges de Latour, 2014 Reserve Tapestry, 2013 Clone 4 and Clone 6, 2014 Georges de Latour, and the 2013 Rarity.

Incredibly, the 1975 retained much of its dried fruit and blackberry flavors, with a bright acidity and a slight flavor of port due to the aging. The Tapestry, which is a blend of 76 percent cabernet, 13 percent merlot, and small amounts of petit verdot, malbec, and cab franc, was bold and complex. The Clone 4 and Clone 6 (which are 100 percent cabernet sauvignon and are only available for purchase in the winery’s tasting room) were full of dark fruit and warming spices and were a great showcase for this spectacular vintage. The 2013 Georges de Latour, which is 93 percent cab, was rich and full-bodied, with lots of red berry notes; this wine, named after the founder, has been in production since 1936 and is widely regarded as the benchmark Rutherford cabernet.

Finally, we tried the Rarity, which is one of the most sought-after wines in America; only 1,200 magnum-size bottles were produced. The winemakers recognized that 2013 was going to be a great vintage, so they chose eight of the top barrels from four of their best vineyards - Ranch No. 1 and 2, the Hewitt Estate Vineyard, and a neighboring small vineyard - and blended and bottled them. The resulting wine, which currently sells for more than $1,200 per bottle, is nothing short of stunning. It’s bold and powerful but supple and elegant, with flavors of blackberry, cassis, and chocolate; 100 percent new oak and 10 percent petit verdot add to the complexity. This is a wine that will age very, very well, and was in all honestly quite possibly the best Napa wine I’ve ever tried.

Being able to sample these wines was an extraordinary treat, and having Durling as our guide made it even more exceptional.