Red Schooner Transit

For more than 40 years the Wagner Family has been making dark, rich red wine from Napa Valley. They are also, perhaps not surprisingly, avid consumers of diverse wines from around the globe. They still love to learn about California with its array of soils and extreme maritime-influenced climate, but they have also found that venturing far afield helps them to see what is close by in unexpected ways. This perspective inspired them to experiment in a way they wouldn’t have imagined even 10 or 15 years ago.It all started with appreciating good Malbec. Years ago, they considered whether they could make such a wine in Napa Valley, but had no luck making quality Malbec from vineyards planted either in the area of Rutherford or the elevated mountain domain of Atlas Peak. Over time, another idea started to take shape. Could they create a wine at Caymus using fruit from another part of the world? Was there a lesson for them in the now commonplace ability to find high-quality fruit at the local grocery store (including grapes), sourced from thousands of miles away?There are tons of fruit being shipped on ocean freighters every day, and so they considered this project to be not so crazy after all. RED SCHOONER is a “Red Wine of the World,” an experiment of more than five years in the making.