Taking Over a Legendary Wine Estate, Drinking With the Dallas Mavericks and Admiring Winston Churchill’s 42,000 Bottle Legacy

I love talking about wine with people who share my passion for it. We open bottles, we trade stories about travel and soil types, terroir and residual sugar, and we talk of taste and food and restaurants. We recommend wines to one another, we drink, and we learn a lot.

In Wine Talk, I introduce you to friends, acquaintances and people I encounter as I make my way around the world, from Houston to Mexico City, Los Angeles to Burgundy, and other locales far and near, individuals who love and respect wine as much as I do, who live to taste, who farm and make wine. Whether my subject is a collector, a winemaker, a chef, a sommelier, a buyer, a grower, or simply an avid drinker of wine, you’ll appreciate their insight. And I hope you’ll learn something from them as well. 

Matthew Crafton has an amazing job. He’s the president and winemaker at Chateau Montelena, an estate known far and wide in the wine world. Remember The Judgement of Paris? It was a bottle of Chateau Montelena, the 1973 vintage, that won top honors in the chardonnay category in that famed tasting and helped put California wine on a higher pedestal in the eyes of millions of consumers.

No, Crafton was not involved with the estate — or wine in any manner — back in 1976, but what he’s done since joining the Calistoga-based Chateau Montelena, in 2008, is worthy of the property’s estimable legacy.

I first met Crafton in the fall of 2019 at the estate, and had the pleasure of tasting through some wines with him. His thoughtful nature impressed me, and his dedication and enthusiasm were evident. I recall that the riesling, a 2017, was beautiful, as were the chardonnays. A walk through the estate completed the visit. Chateau Montelena is a destination I recommend when my opinion about Napa is solicited.

Crafton has a degree in economics from the University of Virginia. He matriculated in 2003. He had planned on a career in finance, but wine called to him. He has said he could not envision working in a cubicle, that he loved being outdoors. So he took a job low on the totem pole — cellar rat — at Ingleside Vineyards, in Oak Grove, Virginia. He worked under Matthew Meyer, whom Crafton credits with giving him a chance to break into the industry despite his lack of experience.

Crafton, who completed a degree in viticulture and enology at UC Davis in 2008, was named president of Chateau Montelena in January — the first time someone other than a Barrett had held that title — and now guides longterm strategy and daily operations at the estate, including brand and communications strategy and water rights projects. He also oversaw the estate’s largest replant in the past 40 years.

“The Barrett family has always led Chateau Montelena with a longterm view,” Crafton notes. “Stepping into this position gives me the responsibility to put that philosophy into action, ensuring that every decision from the vineyard to the cellar to operations supports the health of the estate and the integrity of the wines for generations to come.”

Let’s see what Crafton has to say in the latest edition of Wine Talk.

James Brock: Tell us about three wines you think are drinking well at the moment. What makes them worthwhile? 

Matt Crafton: I’ll start with a fastball down the middle: the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay — the bottle that’s in the Smithsonian and ignited the American wine revolution in 1976. We opened two bottles in London in March, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well they poured.

There was no mistaking that they’re mature wines. But still delicious and drinking more like chardonnay from the late 1980s rather than the early 1970s. It’s not often you get to taste history. A pairing? The right people who can live in and appreciate the moment.

For my second choice, I’m going with the Napa Valley 2023 vintage, in general. From a winemaking perspective, it completely played into our wheelhouse. The wines — both whites and reds — have tremendous finesse, and in the right hands (or perspective) benefit from some restraint.

What I love most about the vintage is that the great wines really seem to have required some perspective — a sense of place in time. It was legitimately difficult not to make a good wine in 2023, but the elements that separate good from great are those that I wish would persist each year.

It’s easily one of my favorite vintages from the last two decades.

For the third, I’m going with a budget-friendly option from a wonderful small producer in Rhône: Domaine De Orgnes and their 2021 ‘La Garrigue’ bottling. This vineyard sits on the alluvial fan adjacent to the Gard River on the most Southern point of the Côtes du Rhône appellation. It’s a beautiful, charming wine from a great family and it pairs just as well with lamb as it would with a ham and cheese crepe.

The sense of place is striking and I was surprised to learn that the Romans planted the first vines in this domaine almost two millennia ago. I love everything about it.

JB: If cost was no consideration, tell us the one bottle you would add to your personal collection, and why.

MC: To be honest, I’m not much of a collector. But rather than focusing on scarcity or aspiration, which I imagine is where this question tends to go, I’d probably search for a bottle with meaning. I think that’s one of the most underrated aspects of wine: its ability to transport someone to a specific place in time and elevate the occasion.

The Virginian in me leans toward sharing a bottle of Madeira with Thomas Jefferson after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or with George Washington after Yorktown. But for real fun, I’d start the day with a bottle of Pol Roger with Winston Churchill. I recently read that he claimed to have consumed 42,000 bottles in his life. Wow.

JB: What is your favorite grape, and why? If you don’t have a single favorite, tell me about one that you are especially passionate about.

MC: I don’t think I have a favorite. Like people, they all have their charms and challenges. So it changes. I tend to enjoy the intellectual and creative puzzles around the varieties I either don’t make (currently) or the ones we don’t do well in California, in general.

Nebbiolo is one of those, and perhaps there’s a winemaker out here who is rocking it that I don’t know about. But I love how in the right hands it can be completely ethereal. In the wrong hands, it’s at best pedestrian.

JB: How about one bottle that our readers should buy now to cellar for 10 years, to celebrate a birth, anniversary, or other red-letter day?

MC: This is what we do: Montelena wines age. I should probably clarify that many wines persist, but few wines actually develop over time, as in decades. I don’t like using the term improve. Because we focus incredibly hard on making sure each wine is delicious upon release.

But there’s no question that our wines develop more complexity, depth and character with proper cellaring. In this era of instant gratification, ageable wines are a niche throwback to something that can’t be cheated. The reward requires time and patience. . . and then we celebrate with friends and family.

An openly shameless plug for our membership program is that members get access to our wine library. Everyone should have a bottle from their birth year.

JB: Where is your go-to place when you want to have a glass or bottle (outside your home and workplace)?

MC: I travel a lot of for the winery — globally — so I tend to stick close to home when I’m back in Napa. That said, I do appreciate a well-curated wine list when I do go out. Press, in Saint Helena, has the best Napa-focused list in the valley and the cuisine to back it up.

They usually have a few special pours on their by-the-glass list, sometimes via Coravin. My happy place is with a cigar and a glass of wine and/or whiskey . . . so wherever that can happen.

JB: If there was one thing you wish everyone would keep in mind when buying and drinking wine, what is it?

MC: To relax and live in the moment. Appreciate the wine for what it is and use the occasion of opening it to bring people together.

JB: We’ve all read the countless articles and papers devoted to the dire state of the wine world and industry, the stories of surplus fruit, ripped-out vines, younger drinkers abandoning wine, climate worries, and the role of alcohol in human health.

What do you think needs to be done to improve the current state of wine? Better education? Marketing? How concerned are you about the future of the industry?

MC: I’m actually very optimistic about the future of wine. It’s easy to forget that the one constant in business is change. I do believe we’re seeing a demographic change in our customers, which was inevitable. In California at least, some of the deleterious effects you’ve referenced above have been exacerbated by how decisions were made post-COVID and by the supply shocks due to the wild fires we’ve endured in recent years.

There isn’t any point in casting blame, but the reality is that all of us have to adapt to the new paradigm. For many producers, that’s unfamiliar and thus scary. I see it as an opportunity to rethink how we do business to better connect with our customers. I love the idea of welcoming new people into the fold.

To put a finer point on it, in my mind, the wine industry doesn’t really exist as a single entity. A boutique, 500-case producer doesn’t have much in common with a five million case, grocery-driven brand. They’re both equally important, but their businesses are completely different.

That’s why wine has lagged behind beer and spirits in crafting an industry message to address the misinformation, fear and uncertainty. We all have to do our part in reminding the public that wine is part of every day life. And it’s a great part. And it’s not going to kill you.

JB: What is your wine eureka moment, the incident/taste/encounter that put you and wine on an intimate plane forever?

MC: This one’s easy. It was a bottle of 1974 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet. I was only a few weeks into my first job, working in the cellar for a large winery in Virginia. I was still trying to wrap my head around how to roll a barrel properly and what clean actually meant (hint — clean is binary, not a sliding scale).

My boss, our winemaker, had previously worked for Heitz Cellar in Napa and pulled out the ’74 Martha’s for us after work at his home. The wine was straight-up magic. There’s no other way to describe it. That’s when I knew.

JB: What has been the strangest moment/incident involving wine that you have experienced in your career?

MC: This is a tough one as I’ve been through a hurricane, a tornado, multiple fires, and plenty of things that are too bizarre to print. Off the top of my head it would be a fairly ordinary day in Dallas working the market about a decade ago. That pedestrian day ended at a private party (which I did not have an invite for) drinking wine with the Dallas Mavericks at 3 a.m. It’s a good reminder to say Yes more often to opportunity.

JB: If you could journey to one destination (or region) tomorrow to explore its wines, where would you go?

MC: Tokaj, Hungary. I found out a few years back from a genetic test that many of my ancestors originated there. Go figure.

JB: Your favorite wine reference in a work of literature (fiction, film, poem)?