Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 1992 Insignia, the flagship proprietary wine of the Joseph Phelps portfolio, is a 67% Cabernet Sauvignon / 33% Merlot blend. The wine is extraordinary, with an opaque purple color, a big, spicy, licorice, vanillin, smoky, cassis-scented nose, sweet, ripe, massive flavor concentration, and well-integrated acidity and tannin, which make for an unctuous texture and a juicy mouthful of wine. It should drink well for 20+ years. It may be the most opulent and hedonistic Insignia since the debut release in 1974.
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Wine Spectator
Starts with a slight earthiness but then quickly shows a ripe, plush, generous core of complex currant, black cherry, anise, sage and blackberry that's youthful, vibrant and remarkably complex. Aging very gracefully.--'92 California Cabernet retrospective. Drink now through 2012. 4,783 cases made.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards is a family-owned winery committed to crafting world class, estate-grown wines. Founded in 1973 when Joe Phelps purchased a former cattle ranch near St. Helena in the Napa Valley, the winery now controls and farms nearly 375 acres of vines on eight estate vineyards in St. Helena, the Stags Leap District, Oakville, Rutherford, Oak Knoll District, Carneros and South Napa Valley. In 1999, the Phelps family added 100 acres of vineyard property near the town of Freestone on the Sonoma Coast, where Phelps now grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Phelps is best known for its flagship Napa Valley blend of red Bordeaux varietals, Insignia, first produced in 1974. Awarded Wine Spectator's "Wine of the Year" in 2005, Insignia is widely regarded as a qualitative benchmark for California winemaking.
Undoubtedly proving its merit over and over, Napa Valley is a now a leading force in the world of prestigious red wine regions. Though Cabernet Sauvignon dominates Napa Valley, other red varieties certainly thrive here. Important but often overlooked include Merlot and other Bordeaux varieties well-regarded on their own as well as for their blending capacities. Very old vine Zinfandel represents an important historical stronghold for the region and Pinot noir is produced in the cooler southern parts, close to the San Pablo Bay.
Perfectly situated running north to south, the valley acts as a corridor, pulling cool, moist air up from the San Pablo Bay in the evenings during the hot days of the growing season, which leads to even and slow grape ripening. Furthermore the valley claims over 100 soil variations including layers of volcanic, gravel, sand and silt—a combination excellent for world-class red wine production.