Scarecrow is bringing a little fire to the annual Napa Valley Grapegrowers' online harvest auction – and its little dog too.
Bottle No. 001 of the first commercial release of Toto's Opium Dream, a special bottling from the oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines in Scarecrow's vineyard in Rutherford, is the headline-grabber of the Harvest Stomp auction. Toto's Opium Dream is arguably the rarest, and most expensive, of Napa Valley's cult wines.
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This is only the fifth vintage of Toto's Opium Dream, and the first that the general public can buy directly. The first three vintages set records at Premiere Napa Valley, an auction open only to trade bidders. In 2014, five cases of the 2012 vintage sold to The Wine House in Los Angeles for $4333 per bottle – a Premiere Napa Valley record that has not been approached in the nine years since. In 2017, Total Wine & More bought five cases of the 2014 vintage at Premiere for $3333 per bottle. And those are wholesale prices.
At the Harvest Stomp auction, which starts Thursday and ends August 24, you can be the first wine lover to buy Toto's Opium Dream directly. There are 35 total lots at Harvest Stomp, including some unique large format bottles and interesting sports packages. And there will eventually be 199 more bottles of Toto's Opium Dream 2016 for sale. But for Napa fans who crave something unique, it's hard to beat Toto's Opium Dream 2016 bottle 001.
"We feel very strongly that we need to support the workers," said Scarecrow owner Bret Lopez. "Without the workers the whole thing falls to the ground. It used to annoy me greatly when I'd meet somebody who said 'my wine'. It takes 30 to 50 people to make a bottle of wine. Most of those people are the farmworkers. They're the most underappreciated people in the wine industry."
Proceeds from Harvest Stomp are split between the Grapegrowers and the Napa Valley Farmworker Foundation, which provides education to the farmworker community.
"No. 1 being a super special bottle, we are hoping it will garner a lot of money for the farmworker foundation," said Scarecrow co-founder Mimi DeBlasio.
Lopez said Toto's Opium Dream was initially created for the Premiere auction, taking advantage of a small block of Cabernet vines planted in 1945 on Lopez's grandfather's estate that never got phylloxera and thus has never been replanted.
"They asked that you produce something that is unique for the auction," Lopez said. "We only have 25 acres. Basically we are dedicated to producing Scarecrow. What doesn't make it into Scarecrow in any given year, goes into M. Étain, our second label. So we thought, we have these vines that are arguably the oldest Cabernet vines in the country. They were planted in 1945. They were still producing. It's astounding how good the fruit that comes off these vines is. There's only two acres of that stuff. To produce the wine for the auction, we took enough juice to make 60 bottles from the Old Men vines."
Unlike an online auction, Premiere Napa Valley is a live event where wine buyers from retail stores and restaurants can taste barrel samples before bidding. So when the trade went crazy for Toto's Opium Dream, Lopez knew he had something special. But the first two vintages were bought by Japanese distributors, so few outside Japan were aware of the wine. That changed for US aficionados when Toto's Opium Dream Scene III set the Premiere record in 2014.
The 2016 vintage is a barrel selection. Winemaker Celia Welch ferments the Old Men block separately and chose the best barrel to make 200 bottles of Toto's Opium Dream.
"If you're into Scarecrow, this is the creme de la creme of this vineyard," Lopez told Wine-Searcher. "This is as good as we're ever going to produce. That block goes into every bottle of Scarecrow that we've ever produced. It's the distillation of the essence of Scarecrow down to its very primal essence. The juice that comes off of those vines is just remarkable. It's just astounding. You can taste it when you walk down the rows and pop a berry off a cluster. The tannins are like velvet. The flavors are multiple iterations in your mouth."
If the Scarecrow wine is the star of the auction, its supporting cast is big. Other lots include:
* Two magnums of Colgin Cellars IX Estate – one each from 2012 and 2014;
* Three magnums of Freemark Abbey Bosché Cabernet Sauvignon – one each from 1993, 2003 and 2013;
* A 6-year vertical (2012-17) of 750ml bottles of Memento Mori Cabernet Sauvignon;
* A 6-year vertical (2013-18) of 750ml bottles of Larkmead Solari;
* A methusaleh (6-liter) of 2012 Signorello Estate Padrone.
Three of the most interesting packages for California sports fans involve sports teams.
The Golden State Warriors package includes tickets to a game along with magnums from each of the Dubs' recent championship seasons: 2015, from Keever Vineyards; 2017, from Jones Family Estate; and 2018, from Duckhorn Vineyards.
Similarly, the San Francisco Giants package includes tickets to a game along with magnums from each of the Giants' title years: 2010, from Meteor Vineyard; 2012, from Saunter Wines; and 2014, from Ziata.
Surprisingly, the third sports package is not from the nearby San Francisco 49ers. Instead, it includes four tickets to a Los Angeles Rams game as well as a magnum of Frog's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon from the year 2000, when the Rams won the Super Bowl while they were based in St. Louis. There's nothing from vintage 2021, when the LA Rams won the title.
I asked Sonya DeLuca, interim executive director of Napa Valley Grapegrowers, how Stomp ended up celebrating two Northern California title teams and one from Missouri. (To be fair to Missouri, it is the site of the first American Viticultural Area, granted even before Napa Valley.)
"Silver Oak are our hosts and chairs this year," DeLuca said. "They have strong connections to sports and athletics. They were really instrumental in bringing us a lot of exciting sports packages. We looked into the 49ers and for whatever reason we weren't able to secure that. It would have been quite the trifecta."
Get your bids in before August 24 at https://harveststomp2023.ggo.bid/bidding/package-browse. NVGG says that winning bidders can pick up their wines locally; if you are out of the area, you can arrange shipping for an additional fee. Don't run into a field of poppies and get caught napping.
