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The new cults:
Upstart wineries shoot for Screaming Eagle status
May 30, 2008
by Jon Bonne, Chronicle Wine Editor
What is a cult wine today? For the past decade or two, it was code for a California upstart with a newly hewn prestige, ratings to rival top Bordeaux and price tags to match. Names like Harlan Estate, Bryant Family and Colgin drew a dose of reverence (and occasionally a sneer) from the wine obsessed.
But cult labels have matured. For a new generation of collectors, a cult wine is about more than a triumph over the odds of scarcity. It's having what the next guy has just barely heard of - the wine version of street cred.
Even long-standing aficionados have gotten savvier. Many now hope to find the Next Big Thing early on the curve - getting on a mailing list before prices soar. Devotees haunt online message boards, sharing the skinny on would-be cults even before a first release. By the time a rating is out, it's too late. Cult wines now favor the early adopter.
"The first things we hear from most of our clients is 'What's new?' " says David Stevens of Acme Fine Wines in St. Helena, which specializes in tracking down highly allocated wines. "They want to have something that their neighbor doesn't have that's the next Screaming Eagle."
Who are the New Cults? I whittled a list of about 50 past, current and potential future cult wines down to a final selection of six, plus 10 contenders poised for cult status.
Whether this expanded definition holds will ignite a debate or two. But the topic has always been a magnet for flak. There isn't even agreement on what the first cult wine was. Grace Family Vineyards might lay claim to the title. So might Spottswoode, Caymus or Diamond Creek.
Clearly, though, the concept solidified in the early 1990s, when Harlan Estate and Bryant Family both leaped from nowhere to superstardom.
Equally clear is which wine drew a road map for endless imitators. No one could have predicted the hype over the inaugural 1992 vintage of Screaming Eagle. The wine, crafted by Heidi Peterson Barrett, not only got 99 points from Robert Parker but also banked on near-impossible scarcity - just 175 cases that year, or a piddling 2,100 bottles.
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