Sep 16, 2022
In this episode, I chatted with a real Californian pioneer, Cathy Corison, of Cathy Corison Winery in Napa Valley.
Cathy is a champion of Cabernet Sauvignon, who always managed to marry the qualities of power alongside elegance and finesse beautifully. Not an easy fit.
You can hear about her early years as a young winemaker. She spoke of taking on complex and big operations, for which in hindsight, she is happy to admit, they (her and other 20-something-year-old winemakers of the time) should probably not have been responsible.
In our conversation, Cathy was telling the story of what it was like, standing by your fruit and not bowing to the ‘Parker trend’ of big, overripe and extracted Cabernets of old, in the process forgoing any salary for a decade!
She also described her ‘Bench’ Terroir, what it is like and how it translates in her wines.
We discussed the challenges of fires and water shortages and the obligatory question of what wine she’d be happy to take with her to a desert island (Cabernet-Sauvignon?... you might be surprised!).
This episode is the first of 4 episodes exploring the people and wineries of Northern California.
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Moshé