Rocks, Stars, and a Global Wine Phenom

An interview with Philippe Melka

Interview by Saralyn Mehta, Sommelier

When Philippe Melka left the University of Bordeaux with degrees in geology, agronomy, and enology, he embarked on a career that started at the top and has maintained that altitude for over 25 years. After working with the prestigious Château Haut-Brion in Bordeaux and Moueix’s Dominus Estate in Yountville, California, Philippe travelled and worked in Italy, France and Australia, before returning to California for good. At Melka Estates, Philippe collaborates with his wife and business partner, Cherie Melka, to produce some of the top-rated wines to come out of Napa Valley. Philippe is also an international wine consultant (named by Robert Parker as one of the top nine in the world) whose Atelier Melka oversees about 150 wines globally. Saralyn Mehta sat down with him to discuss the present-day realities—and future—of winemaking in Napa Valley.

Photo courtesy of Melka Estates

On Making Wine in Napa Valley…

Saralyn Mehta (SM) You have lived and worked all over the world. What made you want to put your roots down in Napa?

Philippe Melka (PM) That is pretty easy to answer, actually. Just after my college years, I was approached by a French company, Moueix, who asked me to come to the U.S. and be an intern during the harvest at Dominus Estate. Right away, I fell in love with the place. I was lucky to be in a great environment at Dominus, which, even if it is in the U.S., has a lot of French flair and philosophy—so I was not totally out of my French culture. But more importantly, I quickly realized the potential of Napa Valley by studying the terroir of this vineyard. I spent about 2 years working for this company in the U.S., and then I worked for them in France. France was so traditional for a young guy like me that I thought California had much more sex appeal for my career than France. My wife wanted to live in France; I wanted to live in the U.S. That’s pretty much the only battle that I won over the years.

SM I know that the fires of 2020 affected your winery. How has climate change affected growing and winemaking practices in California?

PM My first vintage in Napa Valley was in 1991, and in 2001, I started to see the impact of weather in California: the heatwaves starting to be later and more frequent. We started to visually experience shrivelled grapes by then and started to think about how to manage our vineyards a little bit differently. In 2015, we started to experience drought and heat at the same time. And then, in 2017, fires started to really affect us. Until 2017, we had never really had any fire affecting the Napa Valley and the wine business overall. And in 2020, we made the decision not to make any Napa Valley wines. So we don’t have a lot of wine in the cellar right now!

SM What does 2021 look like?

PM This year is just a small harvest because the drought started to really affect the vines. It’s a bad circle of life right now, where all those drought years compound. The clusters are much smaller this year; the berries are much smaller. So there’s not a lot of juice. It’s going to be a small harvest.

Available at Jones & Company: 2016 Proprietary Red Blend 2016 Le Mekerra Vineyard (Knights Valley); 2017 Majestique Syrah Paderewski Vineyard (Paso Robles); CJ 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley); Métisse 2017 Jumping Goat Vineyard (Napa Valley); Métisse 2017 Martinez Vineyard (Napa Valley)

On Finding Balance…

SM Is balance in the wine found in the vineyard or the winemaking?

PM A little bit of both. Let’s say about 70%–80% of the quality is made in a vineyard. On the winemaking side, it’s more about balancing the wine. There are so many factors, but the important one is our harvest timing: not too early, but not too late. And then it’s about understanding your tannin potential every year—you want to extract but not over-extract. That’s how you really balance it out. And finally, you want to use new oak at a certain percentage as well, based on the vintage. So between harvest timing, maturation timing, and the percentage of new oak, that’s how you balance it out.

SM You and your wife Cherie are partners in the winery. Many people would find living and working together challenging: how do you find balance there?

PM Well, I’m going to be frank, it’s a hate and love sort of thing. My balance is I have the consulting side. When we are 100% together, we need just a little breather I think, for both of us. And the way we are working helps us to have great harmony. We both have a science background, so even if naturally my wife knows the production side, she also works the administrative and sales side. In consulting, I work with a group of winemakers, but with our own winery, it’s my wife and I who talk about the styles of wine we want to create, and we also do the blending together. So, it’s really the two of us creating.

On Keeping Score and the Future of Wine…

SM Every other article written about you refers to you as either a rockstar or “the 100-point winemaker.” How important are the points when it comes to wine?

PM I can tell you, I’m not really a rockstar. I wish I were a rockstar! But it’s definitely not me. I think the star system is a little bit “the game” in Napa Valley. You just need to embrace it because people love it. You can’t deny it. And that part of things can excite the customers—if they buy more wine because of a star system, why not? For winemakers, it’s a hate and love situation. But especially during the Robert Parker era [Ed. note: Robert Parker was the founder of The Wine Advocate and an originator of the 100-point wine system], it was very beneficial to promote the wine, excite the customers, and get educated about wine. So that was very positive.

Now the scoring system is evolving, it’s in a transition phase. It was a one-man show before, and now it is a lot of different people. It maybe doesn’t have the same weight because consumers are also more educated. It’s a logical and normal evolution. Between climate change and the customers getting brighter and younger, there’s a lot of things happening right now in the wine business.

SM What do you see for Napa Valley in the future?

PM A lot of techniques that were used 50 years ago disappear and come back. But the evolution is really in the vineyards. Usually, Napa people are thinking Cabernet and Chardonnay in general. But we are rethinking if Cabernet Sauvignon still has to be the king of Napa Valley. Over the last even 5 years, of the Bordeaux grapes, Cabernet Franc is a much stronger player than it used to be. Somehow it is a little bit more resistant to heat and drought—the grapes keep their integrity much better than Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s becoming much more important, and we will be blending more and more Cabernet Franc into Cabernet Sauvignon.

Vines are amazing creatures—they are very resilient—but now, we are really looking for grapes that will be more droughtresistant. We are still in the early stage, but who knows? Maybe, we’ll all make wines from different types of grapes in 50 years—or maybe even 20 years from now.