Episode 217: Alison Rodriguez - Silverado Vineyards Podcast: Inside Winemaking Host: Jim Duane Guest: Alison Rodriguez Recorded: May 28, 2026

Jim Duane: Okay, Alison. Thank you for doing this. Tell me about what's going on in mid-May right now. How are you? What's on your mind?

Alison Rodriguez: Well, first of all, thanks for coming out here, Jim. To Silverado — sitting in our beautiful Silverado room. It actually overlooks our estate vineyards here in Stag's Leap.

Jim Duane: I have to interrupt you here, because people can't see this — this is audio. This is one of the most spectacular views in all of Napa Valley. Kind of put us in place a little bit.

Alison Rodriguez: It is. We have this gorgeous winery that was built in 1980, '81, and it's up on about a 250-foot promontory above the Stags Leap District. We look out over the northern half of Stag's Leap, we look out over the Yountville appellation, out over Oakville all the way up through Rutherford. You can see Mount St. Helena super clearly, you can see the surrounding Mayacamas and Vaca mountains. It is just a really stunning overlook of the entire center of Napa Valley.

Alison Rodriguez: This is kind of where I come when I need my moment of winemaker zen during harvest or otherwise — morning sunrise, evening sunset, doesn't matter. It's a beautiful overlook, so that's where we're seated today.

Alison Rodriguez: It's late May, already past Memorial Day, and we have some threatening clouds on the horizon. We've had a few days of rain — nothing too terrible, but it's a little unusual for a growing season to see any measure of rain quite this late. So I guess that's the thing I'd lead off with: in 2025 we started out of the gates real early. Bud break early.

Jim Duane: March was so hot.

Alison Rodriguez: March was so hot. I even started seeing buds pushing on my Chardonnay like February 27th. Very early. Then we had those great four weeks in March, and then things kind of cooled off, got a little rainy. It reminds me a little bit of 2010 and '11, with a lot of mowing passes. Like, okay, we're not quite done with the spring rains yet — we'll see how it goes.

Jim Duane: That was brought up to me last week, because there's the El Niño stuff that's in the news right now. El Niño, as far as I understand it, is more of an issue in the fall and winter.

Alison Rodriguez: Yes.

Jim Duane: So we can see the ocean warming now, and it's kind of like a preview — a little insight into what could potentially come later in the season. I got asked at Seavey whether we're in another 2011 situation. Everyone remembers that we really struggled to get fruit ripe. But I think the big difference now is that we're starting so early.

Alison Rodriguez: We're starting so early. I totally agree. In 2011 I can clearly remember we were blooming the first weekend of June, because it was over Auction Napa Valley weekend and we got about an inch of rain. That was a very different situation. Most of our bloom this year happened earlier in May, so I think we're looking pretty good.

Alison Rodriguez: It's always a thankless task to try to predict the future of any vintage, but I think we're all kind of thinking about those years where we've seen bigger fluctuations in the El Niño pattern — what did that mean for us. I don't know that there's a clear pattern. There have been some big El Niños, like '97, and some events where we just don't see the same precipitation. We're waiting to see what Mother Nature has in store this year.

Jim Duane: We already have this pressure as winemakers to pick — I don't want to say early, because it's very relative — but you want to pick as soon as you can. We've all been through 2017 and 2020 where fires hit in September or early October, and all that fruit you already got off the vine is safe. The longer you wait, the more risk you have.

Alison Rodriguez: It is a balancing act. Especially here in a place like Napa, where we're all extremely focused on highest-quality growing and highest-quality wine. We have an amazing climate, amazing soils, incredible vineyards. You want to be safe, but sometimes there is reward for certain calculated risks. It's a big responsibility, and you have to trust your previous experiences.

Alison Rodriguez: Here at Silverado, we have 325 acres of estate vineyards. All we farm and all we harvest is fruit from our own land.

Jim Duane: Okay, so 100% estate.

Alison Rodriguez: 100% estate. And with 325 acres, that brings quite a bit of tonnage. There's a pressing quality question and a pressing logistical question when it comes to harvest. I'm really grateful to have a terrific team here. I work with an amazing partner on our farm side — Will Thomas, our vineyard manager for our luxury estates. He and I have a kind of mind meld about what's going on in the vineyards.

Alison Rodriguez: Both of us feel like getting out of the blocks early — getting our pruning done early, getting into the vineyards with early interventions if they're necessary, whether that's early leafing or early crop thinning depending on the year — sets us up for more success as we roll into harvest. Manage those early season risks so we can better manage our late season risks and grow the best possible grapes. That's the name of the game around here.

Jim Duane: All right, let's diverge from this path. Take me back to 1998 or earlier. How did you get into winemaking?

Alison Rodriguez: I did what a lot of people do in this business — I fell into winemaking. I certainly did not grow up here in Napa.

Jim Duane: Where did you grow up?

Alison Rodriguez: I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The amazing wine growing region of Baton Rouge.

Jim Duane: You have no accent.

Alison Rodriguez: Occasionally, after a beer or two, I do. But both my parents are from Ohio, so it tends to be on the lower side. I don't think many kids, unless they grow up in this area, really think about winemaking as a profession. I came to it later in life. I worked for a wine company straight out of university — marketing and sales. I carried a bag. I sold wine in grocery stores, drug stores, then restaurants and fine wine shops.

Alison Rodriguez: I really caught the wine bug when I was working in Portland, Oregon, selling wines from Oregon and from all over the world for a distributor. Eventually that path led me to a job in Germany, doing wine sales and marketing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for a few years. After that, I felt like I was in the right business — I just may not have been in exactly the right part of it.

Alison Rodriguez: So I quit my job and did what only a person in their mid-twenties can do. I thought, this is going to work out great — I'm going to go get a winemaking degree at Geisenheim, the Fachhochschule Geisenheim in Germany. I shucked it in. I said, I have the rest of my life to work, and I want to do something fun and challenging, and winemaking is definitely that.

Alison Rodriguez: Before you can get into school at Geisenheim, you have to do a six-month practical internship in a winery or vineyard.

Jim Duane: That was your first cellar experience?

Alison Rodriguez: That would have been my first vineyard experience. My very first day on the job, I was shoveling composted grape skins down a vineyard row in the middle of the Rhine Valley in Germany. It was a big change from what I had done before. I had one moment of "OMG, what have I done?" But after that moment, I've really never looked back.

Alison Rodriguez: I loved the work in the vineyards. It was tough and demanding — there are some steep vineyards in Germany, you slip and fall even after 25 years, because some of the people I worked with had been doing it that long. But it's also like a moving meditation. It's great to see the cycles of the vines and work with them by hand, vine by vine, meter by meter up and down those rows.

Alison Rodriguez: Then I started working in the winery. When you're accepted at Geisenheim, you get a working permit good throughout the entire EU, so I was able to work in a few different regions — Alto Adige, the Nahe, the Rheingau, the Middle Rhein. My foreign language experience was limited to German, so it was a smaller part of Europe, but absolutely gorgeous. Learned a lot of different ways of making wine.

Jim Duane: Did you have the idea that you might want to stay in Europe?

Alison Rodriguez: I definitely thought about it. When I was working in Alto Adige, I worked at a great winery called Manincor, on Lago di Caldaro. I love to snowboard, and I was literally an hour's drive from beautiful glaciers in Austria. I had the chance to stay, and I seriously considered it.

Alison Rodriguez: But I chose to come back to the States. I really felt like there was a lot of opportunity here. I didn't have family ties or long-standing tradition in Europe, so I came back and started working in Napa — first at Acacia Vineyard, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Viognier, then at Sterling Vineyards.

Jim Duane: What year did you come back?

Alison Rodriguez: I came back in '05. The first vintage back was 2005, then '06 and '07, on through the next few years.

Jim Duane: I think that's when we met. I remember when you were working at Sterling.

Alison Rodriguez: Yeah, through some other friends working for that group.

Jim Duane: It's a big neighborhood here in Napa.

Alison Rodriguez: It really is. You'll run into just about everyone in this valley if you stick around long enough. I came here from Geisenheim, didn't know a soul, had no network through UC Davis or any of the California winemaking schools. I was really shocked at how many people I got to know so quickly — six months in, I'm saying hi to people on the street in Napa.

Alison Rodriguez: It's a very friendly, welcoming community, and I was very grateful for that. Sometimes people imagine it might be a very competitive scene here, but it's incredibly friendly and supportive among winemakers and people in our profession.

Jim Duane: Were you not the red winemaker at Sterling at some point?

Alison Rodriguez: I was.

Jim Duane: I just remember you being this paradox of Germany — which is all white wine, mostly — and then you were the red winemaker. I liked that little paradox.

Alison Rodriguez: Yes, there is a little paradox there. I started out at Sterling as the white winemaker. The first year or so was great, because we had so many fun white varieties to work with. We had a big visitor center program, and some wonderful Napa Valley varieties — Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, of course, but also Viognier, Gewürztraminer, Riesling, all kinds of fun varieties.

Jim Duane: Was that just like the best interview to ever walk into? Interviewing to be the white winemaker, having been in Germany, Austria, Alto Adige?

Alison Rodriguez: Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I feel like some people at that time would have still equated making wine in Germany with making very sweet wines. So maybe not, because I think a lot of people have moved beyond that — they know there are dry Gewürztraminers, dry Rieslings — but 27 years ago, that was not quite the case.

Jim Duane: I made a Riesling for Territorium from Santa Lucia Highlands in 2021, and it was a very difficult wine to sell because people just assumed a California Riesling was going to be sweet. And it wasn't. We fought that preconception.

Alison Rodriguez: Yes, it is a big preconception. When anyone sees that tall skinny flute bottle shape, people assume it's going to be like a Blue Nun that their grandparents drank. It is a shame, because it turns people off from a wine that can be really exciting and fun, and goes so well with our wonderful, very international cuisine these days. But it's a slow burn. I've been listening to Riesling being the next big thing for, I don't even want to say how long, but it's always the next big thing.

Jim Duane: What I don't understand is why Riesling's popularity diminished. The poorer quality, sweeter ones — I understand that — but that wasn't everyone. Why did Riesling diminish? Because I understand why Chenin Blanc diminished, but now Chenin Blanc is like the cool thing. People have tattoos about Chenin Blanc. No one has tattoos about Riesling.

Alison Rodriguez: Not true. I know people with Riesling tattoos in the US. Probably fewer than Chenin Blanc, to your point, but they're out there.

Alison Rodriguez: I'm just happy that there is a cool kid that people are exploring in terms of white wines. I do happen to like Chenin. What I like about it is similar to Riesling — it can be a lot of different things, not painted into a corner. It can be dry, sweet, unctuously sweet, sparkling. But I just find Riesling has a whole lot more to offer. It has a wider spectrum of flavors and aromas. I would love to see that "next big thing" day actually happen for it, but for now I'm still waiting.

Alison Rodriguez: The white wine skills were very handy, and I certainly learned some great techniques in Europe. But I also feel like what I picked up at Geisenheim and at places like Schloss Johannisberg was really about understanding how to read land — how to read the environment around a vineyard from its soil, how the air moves, how the water moves, being able to assess vineyards quickly with some confidence.

Alison Rodriguez: In Europe the environmental parameters are a little more challenging, so you have to be able to assess quickly because conditions can change rapidly. I think that actually helped me bridge over to red winemaking here in Napa, because most of the red winemaking I did at the beginning of my career was on hillsides — Diamond Mountain, Spring Mountain, Howell Mountain, Mount Veeder. I kind of got into the hills in Germany and almost never left.

Jim Duane: Technique-wise, were there any cellar techniques you learned in Germany that were not so widely known or practiced when you came to work in Napa?

Alison Rodriguez: There's one technique I still use to this day. It's called Maische Standzeit in German — Maische is your mash or must, Standzeit is a waiting time. So you're essentially de-stemming your white varieties, especially those with great aromatic potential in their skins — Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, anything with a good amount of terpenes — and you hold it in your press for several hours.

Alison Rodriguez: You allow the natural enzymes in the grapes to do their work, because they're there. We just don't often give them time to break down the pectins and cell walls and release those aroma precursors into the juice.

Jim Duane: Does that mean you have to withhold SO₂ so you're not inhibiting the enzymes?

Alison Rodriguez: I actually don't withhold it entirely. I don't use a big dose of SO₂ at that stage, but I do use a little bit — I add it into the press pan, not directly to the press itself. So as we're waiting and allowing those enzymes to do their work, the SO₂ goes in maybe three to four hours later when we actually start pressing.

Alison Rodriguez: The problem of course is that time is time — you don't always have an abundance of it at harvest. But to me it's really worth it. We spend so much time growing great grapes at Silverado; I feel like we need to draw out everything we've grown into those grapes all season. For our Sauvignon Blanc, we have 98 acres across the river in the Yountville AVA, and maybe 10 to 15% of that gets that hold time in the press. It helps develop body, aroma, and greater intensity.

Jim Duane: So is there a downside to it? Why wouldn't you do all of it that way?

Alison Rodriguez: The downside is logistics. If I have three press loads a day and each holds for four hours, plus my press cycle also runs a few hours — it becomes a very long day. We take advantage of the technique when we have the time, and of course some vintages give you more time than others. But it's a technique I really like to use with bright aromatic varieties.

Jim Duane: I have my own ideas about this, but I'm interested in your thoughts. You're not adding SO₂ to the grapes up front, and while the enzyme action you're describing is what you want, you know that polyphenol oxidase — the browning enzyme — is happening as well. Does that concern you, potentially getting more browned juice out of the press pan pre-SO₂?

Alison Rodriguez: There are definitely a couple of different camps in the world of Sauvignon Blanc. One is purely anaerobic — do everything you can to stop oxidation. Another is less concerned with browning. I'm not very concerned about it.

Alison Rodriguez: I remember working with Chardonnay at Acacia Vineyard — and Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are clearly different varieties, but they were experimenting with hyperoxidation, which is a radically different way of attacking the same problem. They would hyper-oxygenate the juice, literally hook up a big pump to a full tank of just-pressed Chardonnay juice and circulate it for hours and hours with the intent of browning everything you possibly could brown.

Jim Duane: And dropping it out.

Alison Rodriguez: And dropping it out. You'd let it settle for the next day or two, come back, and rack it. It was astonishing how clean, clear, and bright the juice was.

Alison Rodriguez: There's definitely room for both styles when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc. The more reductive style is not our house style here. Our house style focuses on the grassiness in our vineyards, the pea shoot kind of aromatics, but also melon, citrus, grapefruit, ruby red grapefruit, white grapefruit, tangerine, pomelo. A lot of those aromas are attached to thiols, which come out in fermentation, and some — the coriander-type aromas, the white flower, melon stone fruit aromas — are more on the terpene side. I don't fear losing those, because we grow an abundance of them into the grapes to start with.

Jim Duane: The best research I've come across on the browning push-and-pull is from sparkling wine producers. I know certain producers who measure redox potential, and then inject very specific amounts of oxygen to the juice, because they don't want it too reductive to begin with — they find it becomes phenolic later. In sparkling you can't have phenolic or any column defects. The wine just has to be so clean.

Alison Rodriguez: It has to be. A sparkling baseline is already pretty tart — the acid profiles are more like what I was used to seeing in Germany. And I think sometimes we forget that none of these components exist in a vacuum. They're all working together in a matrix.

Alison Rodriguez: The interaction between acid and phenolics is really interesting. The higher your acid, the more those phenolics pop out. Even phenolic levels that wouldn't bother anybody in a still Chardonnay would be way too phenolic for a sparkling base wine with that much more acid. So it's all about balance.

Alison Rodriguez: Along the winemaking path, each of us takes in certain techniques and then applies them bit by bit, just to test and see what works. Sometimes techniques work in certain vineyards that don't work in others. You try to get a little closer to your ideal every year and continue to refine. I think that's actually one of the best parts about winemaking — and another amazing thing is the inspiration you can draw from tasting other people's wines, whether from across the world or just up the street.

Jim Duane: Okay, let's take us back to chronology. Sterling — were you there until you came to Silverado?

Alison Rodriguez: No, I was there for about seven years, and then I went to work at Beringer in St. Helena. I had the chance to work with Mark Beringer as well as Lori Hook — two amazing winemakers. At that point I was working on all the Cabernets for Beringer — their high-end Cabernets. Private reserve, Home Ranch, seven different single vineyards: Bancroft, Steinhauer — I can't help but say Steinhauer, it's a very German name, and of course named after an amazing grower who recently passed. What an incredible vineyard. So that was my first all-Cab-all-the-time job.

Jim Duane: Were you one of the people who made the Diageo transition into Beringer?

Alison Rodriguez: No, I was there about a year before that transition. Then about a year later I got to see all of my old compatriots again — it was an interesting time, but a really fun time.

Alison Rodriguez: From there I went to work for the Hess Collection, the Hess person family up on Mount Veeder. A well-known family in the valley at that time. They had about 900 acres throughout the valley, and we also bought fruit from a lot of different places for the Hess Select program. Each of those places — Sterling when it was owned by Diageo, Beringer, the Hess Collection — it was like a turbo-charging of understanding different AVAs and vineyards, where to grow what and how to grow it, where the beautiful little pockets of extra-special stuff in this valley are. A real high-velocity learning curve.

Jim Duane: I want to put a little shout-out — for anyone visiting Napa, the art gallery at the Hess Winery up on Mount Veeder is awesome, and free.

Alison Rodriguez: Yes. Donald Hess was committed to ensuring that everybody could see and enjoy the art he collected. He accumulated unbelievable artworks — modern art. He was a big fan of always collecting from artists who were alive, who he could talk to about their artistic process and what they were thinking about when creating a particular work. Wine was his second passion, and he put the two together up there. I agree — it's one of the best winery visits around, and you feel like you're a world away, even though it's about 10 minutes outside of the town of Napa.

Alison Rodriguez: And I have to shout out to Donald Hess and the Hess family — he was so committed to ensuring that every elementary school kid in this valley got a chance to see his art collection at least once. He would bus the kids up to go through it while they were in elementary school. A really special notion. Truly great people to work for, and terrific wines from a wonderful growing area.

Jim Duane: A lot of the Cabernets I've had from Mount Veeder have a real tough tannin. Is that something common throughout those vineyards, or am I just hitting a few select examples?

Alison Rodriguez: My experience with hillside Cabernet in this valley leads me to believe it is just a calling card for most of the hillside AVAs around here. There's a lot of farming on a curtain, if you will — thinner soils at the tops of hills than down on the benches or the valley floor. That leads to vines that are working a little harder to reach their particular balance. They may have to sink their roots deeper, they may not be as vigorous, and typically their berries are tiny.

Alison Rodriguez: That smaller skin-to-pulp ratio compared to other AVAs with deeper soils gives you the possibility of high tannin extraction. You also have the possibility of high color extraction, and sometimes these things work in great concert and make absolutely transcendental wines. But there are some years where it is really challenging to manage the fermentations and rein in what can be burly and brawny tannins.

Jim Duane: That's a lot of my work at Seavey — tannin management for those same reasons. It's not a mountain, but it's hillside, small berries, a lot of astringency that you could extract if you're not careful.

Alison Rodriguez: Exactly. There have been some vintages where I'm tiptoeing around my fermenters to make sure they do not accidentally over-extract.

Jim Duane: I've been pushing it. There's a Block 8 Cabernet at Seavey — very steep, a challenging block, very hard tannin every year I've worked with it. I've been flirting with earlier and earlier pressing. Trying to do as long a cold soak as I can, but once it's gone, it's gone. Definitely not a candidate for extended maceration. I'm talking pressing sweet.

Alison Rodriguez: Yes. And I've been pushing it further toward double-digit Brix too.

Jim Duane: It's good for tannin management, but then I get sluggish fermentation problems.

Alison Rodriguez: Oh yes.

Jim Duane: Something you've seen as well?

Alison Rodriguez: Yes. I think a lot of it has to do with temperature — but it's not all temperature. We have good temperature management here and I still see it sometimes. It also feels like some vintages you just see more of it than others. I wish I had the magic bullet, but I don't. It goes back to that management of highest quality out of your site. In 2025 some of my first few ferments I could tell the tannins were just coming hard and fast out of the skins early on, so we modified — we changed the number of pump-overs, modified temperatures to start with. You try your best. Each vintage gives you something a little different in the little bag of presents you get every harvest.

Jim Duane: So I'm going to call you a flat-lander now that you're here.

Alison Rodriguez: I'm going to beg to differ on that.

Jim Duane: Okay. Do you ever have the challenge on the opposite end of the spectrum — needing to push the grapes harder and try to get more out of them, specifically talking about reds?

Alison Rodriguez: I have not seen that here at Silverado, and I'm extremely happy with the vineyards we have here. I think the original founding family — the Disney Miller family — did their homework. Diane Miller was actually Walt Disney's daughter, and she, her mom Lillian Disney, and Diane's husband Ron founded this winery in 1981. They had already purchased the first vineyards in 1976 — the Miller Ranch, where we grow Sauvignon Blanc — and then Silverado Vineyard here in Stag's Leap around 1978. Then they purchased our Coombsville property, 110 acres planted in Coombsville in the mid-'80s, and on through to our five estate properties.

Alison Rodriguez: Diane was extremely passionate about wine and winemaking. I often joke that everybody who comes to Napa has a dream — everybody would love to have a world-renowned vineyard. But very few have the means to make it happen from the start. She had both the dream and the means, and she researched to find some of the earliest planted vineyards in this valley and put them together in this little string of pearls that is our collection of vineyards at Silverado.

Alison Rodriguez: That matters to me. When I try to imagine what it was like planting a vineyard here in the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s — you had horses, oxen, people you could hire, but it was all hand work. Clearing 100 or 200 acres up at Mount George in Coombsville was an enormous undertaking. You wouldn't do it unless you really knew that land was absolutely perfect for growing grapevines. So I try to think about these older vineyards in that perspective — these were people who probably came from a place where they knew a thing or two about grapevines and knew the hard work that clearing the land would require.

Alison Rodriguez: And they were right. I've worked all over this valley, in every single AVA Napa has to offer. I have never seen juice chemistry come in like this — it is perfect, right from the land itself.

Alison Rodriguez: Circling back to your original question — do I feel like I ever have to work the grapes? No. If anything, because we're in some cooler AVAs — Yountville, Coombsville, Stag's Leap — we're all basically south of the town of Yountville, with a cooler influence from the bay and from the river. We actually do have to watch our tannin extractions. Some of our estate vineyards are at 400 to 500 foot elevations, reasonable hillside stuff. So yes, challenges still, but really, the magic is in the soil.

Jim Duane: What are your normal lot sizes at harvest, and your tank sizes?

Alison Rodriguez: For reds it can be anywhere from about four tons to maybe 10 tons. For whites, my press size is about 16 to 18 tons, but I don't always fill those. Maybe it's only a 12-ton pick that day. With 325 acres, four tons is on the smaller side — eight to nine tons is really a nice sweet spot. We do optical sorting here, we have all the bells and whistles for our reds.

Alison Rodriguez: We're working with two amazing Cabernet-growing AVAs — Stag's Leap and Coombsville. What a lot of people don't realize about Silverado is our estate Cabernet Sauvignon, which is kind of our flagship wine. It's the only non-single-vineyard wine I make. I call it my dual-vineyard wine, because it comes literally 50% out of our Stag's Leap estate vineyard and 50% out of our Coombsville estate vineyard, and that's it — every year, only from those two places. Yes, it says Napa Valley on the label, but it really only comes from those two vineyards. And while it won't be the same every vintage, I feel like every vintage they're like siblings — very reminiscent of one another.

Jim Duane: How would you describe your style for Cabernets?

Alison Rodriguez: We're all about showcasing our great estate fruit and highlighting what we're doing in the vineyards — highlighting our estate terroir. So if I'm doing my job right, you should be able to pick up the personality of both Stag's Leap and Coombsville in our estate Cab.

Alison Rodriguez: Stag's Leap to me is always black and red cherries — very supple, with incredible length on the palate. It has this staying power, this persistence. It should have a really even weight from front to back, with a little touch of marzipan, or sometimes braised fennel — something slightly anise-like, but not sweet anise. And for Coombsville, you get a darker fruit profile — blackberry to black plum, plum skin, sometimes bay laurel. So we're in this cherry, red cherry, black cherry, plum skin, damson plum, bay laurel, marzipan sort of spectrum.

Alison Rodriguez: We use 100% French oak, about 40% new on the estate Cab. Of that new oak, I tend to have about half the barrels at 24-month stave aging and half at 36-month. Most listeners will understand that the wood itself is being aged, not the wine — all the wine ages for exactly the same amount of time, about 20 months. But the wood aging matters a great deal in terms of how much impact the oak has on the wine. We're looking for a supportive, framing oak — something that elevates and uplifts the fruit rather than masks it. I tend to stay away from toastier barrels and look for texture, suppleness, freshness. That's our style.

Jim Duane: Tell me a little bit about Sauvignon Blanc, because that's what I know Silverado for.

Alison Rodriguez: Sauvignon Blanc.

Jim Duane: One of my favorites for a long time.

Alison Rodriguez: It's one of my favorite wines, especially on a warm summer day in Napa Valley at that golden hour — end of day on my porch or back deck. Our Sauvignon Blanc is evolving. Every year you have a little bit of a chance to make something slightly different. It has evolved from being 100% stainless steel tank fermented to now, with the 2025 vintage, about 25% fermented in five-year-old neutral French oak barrels. That is a textural decision — for the body and mid-palate — to bring tanginess and concentration to the wine, not to impart any oak flavors. Why would I want to put oak flavors on top of gorgeous Sauvignon Blanc fruit?

Alison Rodriguez: So our Sauvignon Blanc has that spectrum of citrus — grapefruit, pomelo, lemon zest, wonderful melon and stone fruit characters, as well as a little bit of that grassiness, that tangy pea shoot kind of character. Nothing too overtly tropical. 75% stainless steel tank fermented, 25% neutral French oak barrels. And about 10% of the 2025 vintage got that extended skin contact time before pressing — the Maische Standzeit we talked about earlier.

Jim Duane: Would you say that German word again?

Alison Rodriguez: Maische Standzeit. Try to spell that three times fast.

Alison Rodriguez: It's a great way to build dimension. Sometimes people think Sauvignon Blanc is a simplistic wine, but it's not. There should be great dimension and texture to it, a dynamism in the aromas. It's like when you're cooking — you bounce flavors off one another, whether sweet and salty or salty and spicy. One flavor can make another pop. The same is true in white wine.

Alison Rodriguez: I always envision a great Sauvignon Blanc as having a teardrop-shaped dimension — broad and rich in the front, voluminous in the mid-palate, but then very narrow and coming together in a really crisp, minerally finish. If that's the kind of Sauvignon Blanc you like, you'll probably find a great bottle in our Silverado Miller Ranch Sauvignon Blanc.

Jim Duane: I like that teardrop. Are you making just the one Sauvignon Blanc, or do you have a range?

Alison Rodriguez: I've started making a little bit of reserve Sauvignon Blanc. We came out in 2024 with a very small prototype, just for our visitor center — only available here or through our wine club. That one is 100% barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc, in 100% neutral barrels. I've tasted a few examples of barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc that I really love — some here in the valley, some great names out of Bordeaux.

Alison Rodriguez: It tends to have a little more of what the French would call animal — a little lanolin, some interesting tangy qualities, a bit more herbaceous, spring meadow-like. But it's incredibly voluminous and a really fun wine to work with. 2024 was year one, 2025 is looking pretty good, and it's been really well received by our wine club and visitors. We'll definitely continue making that one.

Jim Duane: How long are you keeping the Sauvignon Blanc in the cellar before bottling?

Alison Rodriguez: The Miller Ranch Sauvignon Blanc is about six months, so not very long. That barrel-fermented portion sees weekly stirring for about three and a half to four months before it has to come out and get ready to bottle. The reserve Sauvignon Blanc is about eight to nine months. I feel like I could probably take that longer, but there's also the reality that most people want to drink a Sauvignon Blanc pretty much the year after it was harvested. I've certainly seen great examples that stayed in barrel for easily 18 months, so who knows where this path will lead.

Jim Duane: I think especially when you're going with new wood on Sauvignon Blanc, it needs the time.

Alison Rodriguez: Oh, for sure. Totally agree. We'll continue to play and refine as we go.

Jim Duane: What other varietals are you making? Is that the bulk of it?

Alison Rodriguez: We certainly make a few more. I make a Merlot out of our Mount George vineyard in Coombsville. I actually make all five Bordeaux varieties out of that vineyard — here in Stag's Leap we only grow Cabernet Sauvignon, but at Mount George we have all five.

Jim Duane: Coombsville was very windy when I lived there. I was close to Skyline Park.

Alison Rodriguez: The southern half of the AVA tends to be quite windy. Around Silverado Middle School, Skyline Park — that tends to be pretty breezy. Where we are, up on the northeastern corner of the Coombsville bowl on the slopes of Mount George, it does not feel that way. We grow — or I should say make — Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot out there. Not super rare varieties, but a little unusual to see them together.

Alison Rodriguez: I also have some old-vine Zinfandel up Soda Canyon Road and a very small estate vineyard up there. I make a single-vineyard Kerner as well, which is an unusual variety to see.

Jim Duane: I don't even know if that's a red or white.

Alison Rodriguez: It is white. A sub-alpine white variety — a natural cross of Riesling and Trollinger, two very German grapes, though it was crossed in Austria. Grown quite a bit in northern Italy, Austria, and Germany. It's like lime, zesty apple, and lime zest — a beautiful, snappy, bright wine.

Alison Rodriguez: I also have a small Chardonnay vineyard out in Napa Carneros — hillside, older-vine Chardonnay — so we make a Sunset Ranch Chardonnay as well.

Jim Duane: Older vine — Clone 4? What kind of clones?

Alison Rodriguez: I have some Clone 4, and I also have some Hyde clone, with a couple of different rootstocks. Interesting to play with. I usually have about three or four different lots of Chardonnay in the winery each vintage, and then I barrel-select for the final wine. I personally pick every single barrel that goes into all of my smaller-production wines.

Jim Duane: So then you have a blend situation. How do you handle the non-selected lots?

Alison Rodriguez: The non-selected lots typically cascade into our estate Cabernet, or for the whites — well, not Chardonnay specifically. The Chardonnay might find a home with one of my sister wineries.

Jim Duane: You have sister wineries?

Alison Rodriguez: I do. We're part of Foley Family Wines. Silverado was purchased in 2022 by Bill and Carol Foley and their daughter Courtney as a new Napa winery for their portfolio. They have three wineries here in Napa: Silverado, Foley Johnson, and Maris.

Alison Rodriguez: So I barrel-select the best barrels of Sauvignon Blanc for our little Sauvignon Blanc Reserve, and for Solo — our single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon out of our Stag's Leap property, usually about 400 to 600 cases. All barrel-selected. Anything that doesn't make it into Solo goes straight into our Napa Cab. And we're not talking about bad barrels — these are really fine distinctions. Like, I know this particular barrel is better for Solo, but the barrel right next to it on the same rack is pretty darn good. Very fine distinctions.

Alison Rodriguez: So we make a single-vineyard Cabernet out of our Stag's Leap property, and we make a single-vineyard Cabernet out of our Mount George estate vineyard, which is called Geo — a nod to George, and also to the terroir of that vineyard, which has this volcanic and sedimentary layering, like a layer cake of different soils. We have plenty to keep us busy. I make about 20 different wines for Silverado each year.

Jim Duane: Very cool. Twenty. Anything else we need to talk about from Silverado before we wrap up?

Alison Rodriguez: I don't think so. I think we've covered everything.

Jim Duane: Okay. So you've got to tell me what your childhood smelled like in Baton Rouge.

Alison Rodriguez: What my childhood smelled like. Wow.

Jim Duane: What takes you back?

Alison Rodriguez: Living in Baton Rouge, the air was always so heavy and thick, so full of humidity. We don't really have extremely fragrant things around us, but the world itself was fragrant in a way — heavy and heady. Sweet olive was always one of my favorite aromas growing up. Magnolia — I don't know how many people know that magnolia has a really delicate scent. And tomatoes, tomato plants. We had an amazing tomato garden. You can't really grow roses in that kind of humidity, but cut grass, lots of mowing. Oak leaf litter in the fall and winter when the oaks were dropping their leaves.

Alison Rodriguez: And then there are the scents of New Orleans. I grew up 90 miles from New Orleans and went there a lot. The scents of that city — I went back a few years ago and thought, wow, New Orleans just does not smell like it used to. On one hand, probably great for people visiting. On the other hand, slightly sad for someone like me who remembers it from childhood. It was the only kind of bigger city experience I had, and it had incredible, sometimes unctuous and maybe not so pleasant aromas — but interesting and fascinating nonetheless. Cities definitely smell a lot different than suburbs.

Jim Duane: Alison, this has been great. Thank you so much.

Alison Rodriguez: Yeah, thanks a lot, Jim.