Screaming Eagle Winery: Worship the King of Wine and wait 10 years for a bottle of America’s most expensive wine

As the saying goes, "One mountain cannot tolerate two tigers." In the American wine industry, there is a wine king called Opus No. 1, but there is also a "Worship King of Wine". Not only do the two "kings" not compete with each other, they are also good friends. This week’s weekend story is about another “king” – Screaming Eagle Winery.

When you hear the name "Screaming Eagle", does the heroic image of an eagle soaring in the sky appear in your mind? In the United States, the name Screaming Eagle has a different meaning. "Screaming Eagle" is the nickname of the U.S. Army's 101st Air Assault Division. The members of the 101st Air Assault Division have a screaming eagle embroidered on their armbands. This team played an extremely important role in the "Normandy Landing" and is an ace team that cannot be ignored in American history.

After making wine independently for the first time, the owner of the winery, Jane Phillips, took the wine to Mondavi Winery for a tasting and received a comment: "This wine may be an eagle, or it may be nothing." Phillips She decided to name the winery "Screaming Eagle" because she just wanted to be that eagle!

Jane Phillips was originally just a real estate agent. Perhaps out of her keen professional sense, Phillips followed the trend of buying vineyards at the time. In 1986, she bought a total of 57 acres of vineyards in Oak Village. At that time, there were only 1 acre of vineyard planted with about 80 Cabernet Sauvignon plants, as well as some white grape varieties.

At first, Phillips sold all the grapes to nearby wineries for winemaking, but three years later, Phillips came up with the idea of ​​trying winemaking himself. Fortunately, she has been taking care of the vineyards herself, so the Cabernet Sauvignon here is always fresh and excellent. In a simple stone house, the legend of Screaming Eagle Winery officially began.
Because the wine-making conditions are simple, we can only use the traditional rural wine-making method, using purely manual methods to press the juice to make wine. The grape juice is placed in plastic barrels and then placed in new oak barrels for aging. Unexpectedly, the wine made with such anxiety was praised by his friend Robert Mondavi as soon as he tried it. Phillips was determined to make his own wine ever since.

Worship the king of wine, less is more

Bordeaux has garage wine, America has cult wine. Since the 1980s, a number of small boutique wineries have emerged in California aiming to create top-quality wines. Their wines are highly praised, but their output is extremely low, usually only a few hundred cases per year, so the prices are extremely high. Expensive, this is "Cult Wine".

Screaming Eagle Winery is the undisputed king of cult wines. Lipeng Winery, the originator of Garage Wine, can produce 6,000 bottles per year, while Screaming Eagle Winery can only produce less than 500 cases per year. All of this is deeply influenced by Phillips’ philosophy of “Less is more”.

After a successful tasting, Phillips met Heidi Barrett, a famous winemaker praised by Robert Parker as the "First Lady of Wine" through Robert Mondavi's matchmaking. Two equally ambitious and ambitious women became a perfect partnership, integrating perfectionism into winemaking.

Imitating the technique of French garage wine, we carefully select the most mature and flawless grapes to produce top-quality wine. In years when the grape growth is not perfect, such as 2000, we simply give up winemaking.
In 1995, Robert Parker scored a near-perfect 99 points for the 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon (the first vintage of Screaming Eagle Winery), making Screaming Eagle Winery an instant hit. It is said that only 225 cases of the wine were produced in 1992, making this wine a "treasure" that all wine collectors want to acquire.

Later, Parker gave full marks to the 1997, 2007, 2010 and 2012 vintages of Screaming Eagle respectively. This level of praise is hard to come by even for the top Chateaus in Bordeaux. In 2000, a 6-liter bottle of 1992 Screaming Eagle was auctioned for $500,000, breaking the record for wine at the time and pushing Screaming Eagle's reputation to its peak.