Joe Montana Partners With Ed Sbragia To Produce Montagia Wine
- By CWF Sources
- Published 01/27/2005
- Features
Few names in Napa Valley match that of Joe Montana for magic.
The retired star quarterback has been everyone’s favorite “sighting,” though people in Napa Valley generally grant him and his beautiful wife Jennifer their privacy.
Long visitors to the Valley, they bought a ranch in Knight’s Valley northwest of Calistoga a few years ago, moving from Menlo Park with their children.
A wine lover, Montana flirted with started his own winery, but years ago, he admitted his concern that people would exploit his name and his privacy as happened to many other celebrities who’ve entered the wine business.
Nevertheless, he and Jennifer knew that they had the opportunity to share their name to create a wine and wine label that would a powerful charitable tool. They found that opportunity by pairing with Ed Sbragia, the larger-than-life “winemaster,” who’s helped build Beringer’s reputation for 25 years.
The result was Beringer Vineyards Montagia, a blend made by Sbragia and Beringer winemaker Laurie Hook to satisfy the tastes of both Joe and Jennifer Montana. While making sure the wine gets attention, however, they've mostly avoiding the limelight because they're aware that Joe's celebrity can quickly eclipse other messages. For that reason, Sbragia remains the primary spokesperson for the wine.
Joe Montana isn’t the only football legend involved in wine.
Carmen Policy, former executive of the San Francisco 49ers, owns 10 acres in Yountville and is expecting to release his first vintage in 2007.
San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos, who runs his real-estate development firm from Stockton, bought Bell Wine Cellars with his son-in-law Ron Berberian in 2002, while former 49ers coach Bill Walsh owns a vineyard, too.
Dick Vermeil, the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, comes from Napa, where his ancestors made wine. He’s joined Calistoga's On ThEdge Winery to make a Jean Louis Vermeil label in honor of his great-grandfather.
The collaboration actually started with the 2000 Napa Valley Wine Auction.
That year, Sbragia and Joe Montana created a cabernet sauvignon blend from Beringer Howell Mountain fruit from the renowned 1997 vintage.
It was named "Montagia," a clear derivation of Montana’s name, and one case of 750 ml bottles plus a 9-liter bottle of the wine together with a dinner at Beringer’s historic Hudson House with Ed, Joe and Jennifer, plus some rare Montagia-logo sportswear, were auctioned, garnering a healthy $210,000 for Napa Valley health charities.
The two had so much fun with that project that they decided to continue the collaboration to continue making Montagia and focus it primarily for charitable donations.
In the fall of 2002, Joe and Jennifer helped Ed create another blend from Howell Mountain fruit, this from the excellent 1999 vintage, and decided to make wines in the future when the vintages warranted.
As often noted, however, 2000 was a cool growing season in Napa Valley except for a few hot spells, though bud-break and fruit-set were normal. That moderate weather doesn’t lend itself to the blockbuster wines Sbragia makes and Montana loves, but moderately warm and sunny days from June to September matured the grapes properly.
It was clear that not all the grapes were adequate for the special wine they wanted to create, but Sbragia and winemaker Laurie Hook were able to pick individual blocks in the vineyards to get the flavors they wanted.
“Because of the cool vintages that preceded 2000, we were especially attentive to what was happening in the vineyards,” explained Laurie. “It made for a lot of running around, visiting each site regularly to see how the vines were doing, how the grapes were progressing, etc. And we waited for what seemed like an eternity before we finally made the call to bring each lot in.”
Each individual vineyard lot was kept separate during the winemaking process and aging so the winemakers could track the development of their aromas, flavors and tannins of the wines.
This allowed them to focus the best attributes when blending.
During fermentation, Sbragia and Hook tailored the maceration and gentle pump-over regimes for each lot to get optimal extraction.
Sbragia hand-selected new thin-staved French oak (Nevers) barrels to match the wines. “My choice of barrels is as important as any other decision I make,” Sbragia explains. “For our cabs, I prefer oak from the Nevers forest because it provides everything I’m looking for while still maintaining a framework that is subtle.”
The wines were aged for almost 23 months, and the winemakers tasted them regularly to monitor their development.
As anyone who knows Sbragia’s wines could guess, the wine is big, intense and brawny, but it also has an elegance resulting from Jennifer Montana's insistence on increasing the percentage of cabernet franc.
The final blend consists of cabernet sauvignon from Steinhauer Ranch (29.5 percent), Bancroft Ranch (33 percent), Rancho del Oso (22 percent) and Chabot (10 percent), and Cabernet Franc from Steinhauer Ranch (5.5 percent).
Paul Franson has lived in Napa Valley since 1995, but grew up all over as the son of an Army officer. He formerly was editor and writer for technical and business magazines in the high technology field and ran a successful Silicon Valley public relations firm.
He writes regularly about life in Napa Valley and elsewhere for The Napa Valley Register, notably his weekly column “What's up in Napa Valley?” He also writes for The Vine Napa, Napa Valley Life, Wine Country.com and Solano.
In addition, he also writes about wine for The Wine Enthusiast, England’s Decanter, Senior Connection, Wine Business Monthly and Wines & Vines.
His work can be found on the Internet at NapaLife (www.napalife.com), a web site about Napa Valley for locals and Travel Tastes (www.traveltastes.com), a web site about wine, food and travel.
He wrote Spinning the Bottle, a book on wine public relations written with Harvey Posert.
The retired star quarterback has been everyone’s favorite “sighting,” though people in Napa Valley generally grant him and his beautiful wife Jennifer their privacy.
Long visitors to the Valley, they bought a ranch in Knight’s Valley northwest of Calistoga a few years ago, moving from Menlo Park with their children.
A wine lover, Montana flirted with started his own winery, but years ago, he admitted his concern that people would exploit his name and his privacy as happened to many other celebrities who’ve entered the wine business.
Nevertheless, he and Jennifer knew that they had the opportunity to share their name to create a wine and wine label that would a powerful charitable tool. They found that opportunity by pairing with Ed Sbragia, the larger-than-life “winemaster,” who’s helped build Beringer’s reputation for 25 years.
The result was Beringer Vineyards Montagia, a blend made by Sbragia and Beringer winemaker Laurie Hook to satisfy the tastes of both Joe and Jennifer Montana. While making sure the wine gets attention, however, they've mostly avoiding the limelight because they're aware that Joe's celebrity can quickly eclipse other messages. For that reason, Sbragia remains the primary spokesperson for the wine.
Joe Montana isn’t the only football legend involved in wine.
Carmen Policy, former executive of the San Francisco 49ers, owns 10 acres in Yountville and is expecting to release his first vintage in 2007.
San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos, who runs his real-estate development firm from Stockton, bought Bell Wine Cellars with his son-in-law Ron Berberian in 2002, while former 49ers coach Bill Walsh owns a vineyard, too.
Dick Vermeil, the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, comes from Napa, where his ancestors made wine. He’s joined Calistoga's On ThEdge Winery to make a Jean Louis Vermeil label in honor of his great-grandfather.
The collaboration actually started with the 2000 Napa Valley Wine Auction.
That year, Sbragia and Joe Montana created a cabernet sauvignon blend from Beringer Howell Mountain fruit from the renowned 1997 vintage.
It was named "Montagia," a clear derivation of Montana’s name, and one case of 750 ml bottles plus a 9-liter bottle of the wine together with a dinner at Beringer’s historic Hudson House with Ed, Joe and Jennifer, plus some rare Montagia-logo sportswear, were auctioned, garnering a healthy $210,000 for Napa Valley health charities.
The two had so much fun with that project that they decided to continue the collaboration to continue making Montagia and focus it primarily for charitable donations.
In the fall of 2002, Joe and Jennifer helped Ed create another blend from Howell Mountain fruit, this from the excellent 1999 vintage, and decided to make wines in the future when the vintages warranted.
As often noted, however, 2000 was a cool growing season in Napa Valley except for a few hot spells, though bud-break and fruit-set were normal. That moderate weather doesn’t lend itself to the blockbuster wines Sbragia makes and Montana loves, but moderately warm and sunny days from June to September matured the grapes properly.
It was clear that not all the grapes were adequate for the special wine they wanted to create, but Sbragia and winemaker Laurie Hook were able to pick individual blocks in the vineyards to get the flavors they wanted.
“Because of the cool vintages that preceded 2000, we were especially attentive to what was happening in the vineyards,” explained Laurie. “It made for a lot of running around, visiting each site regularly to see how the vines were doing, how the grapes were progressing, etc. And we waited for what seemed like an eternity before we finally made the call to bring each lot in.”
Each individual vineyard lot was kept separate during the winemaking process and aging so the winemakers could track the development of their aromas, flavors and tannins of the wines.
This allowed them to focus the best attributes when blending.
During fermentation, Sbragia and Hook tailored the maceration and gentle pump-over regimes for each lot to get optimal extraction.
Sbragia hand-selected new thin-staved French oak (Nevers) barrels to match the wines. “My choice of barrels is as important as any other decision I make,” Sbragia explains. “For our cabs, I prefer oak from the Nevers forest because it provides everything I’m looking for while still maintaining a framework that is subtle.”
The wines were aged for almost 23 months, and the winemakers tasted them regularly to monitor their development.
As anyone who knows Sbragia’s wines could guess, the wine is big, intense and brawny, but it also has an elegance resulting from Jennifer Montana's insistence on increasing the percentage of cabernet franc.
The final blend consists of cabernet sauvignon from Steinhauer Ranch (29.5 percent), Bancroft Ranch (33 percent), Rancho del Oso (22 percent) and Chabot (10 percent), and Cabernet Franc from Steinhauer Ranch (5.5 percent).
Paul Franson has lived in Napa Valley since 1995, but grew up all over as the son of an Army officer. He formerly was editor and writer for technical and business magazines in the high technology field and ran a successful Silicon Valley public relations firm.
He writes regularly about life in Napa Valley and elsewhere for The Napa Valley Register, notably his weekly column “What's up in Napa Valley?” He also writes for The Vine Napa, Napa Valley Life, Wine Country.com and Solano.
In addition, he also writes about wine for The Wine Enthusiast, England’s Decanter, Senior Connection, Wine Business Monthly and Wines & Vines.
His work can be found on the Internet at NapaLife (www.napalife.com), a web site about Napa Valley for locals and Travel Tastes (www.traveltastes.com), a web site about wine, food and travel.
He wrote Spinning the Bottle, a book on wine public relations written with Harvey Posert.