Grounded Wine Co. by Josh Phelps

Napa Valley, California, USA

Grounded Wine Co. is an exciting and welcome négoce project from second generation Napa winemaker Josh Phelps. Josh’s experience growing up in wine country and his relationships with terrific growers around California, Oregon, and Washington have given birth to this awesome project. These are grassroots wines brought together from trusted, sustainable vineyards up and down the west coast that showcase the Phelps family style at accessible prices.

Josh Phelps grew up in the salad days of Napa’s golden age surrounded by energetic young farmers and winemakers that would go on to become the new world’s wine royalty. Josh’s father is of course Chris Phelps, an instrumental winemaker in those days California really emerged onto the world stage. Chris Phelps is the consulting winemaker at Grounded Wine Co. today, Josh managing the day-to-day in the cellars.

In a fascinating way, the stories of both father and son shadow each other. Phelps Sr., after studying winemaking at UC Davis, mastered in oenology at the University of Bordeaux in the late 70’s and early 80’s. He went on to work at Pomerol’s Château Pétrus with Christian Moueix. In 1983, Christian appointed Phelps as their founding winemaker at The Moueix family’s Napa venture, Dominus. He went on to work for several iconic Napa estates until, at his son’s urging, Chris Phelps at last minted his own brand, the iconic AD VIVUM. 

And so Josh Phelps had a front row seat to a legendary Napa cohort, yet he didn’t take much of a shining to wine at first. Out of high school Josh went into pre-med, and even worked fighting forest fires in Idaho some summers, despite no lack of opportunities for winery and vineyard work. But over his first few years of adulthood wine gradually took hold of him. A family trip to Bordeaux at the age of 21 was the coup de grâce, coaxing him into the wine business for good. 

Thereafter, Josh followed in his Dad’s footsteps, studying oenology at the University of Bordeaux (and learning French while he was at it!), then apprenticing at Château Pétrus as well. But when Josh returned to California, he approached wine with a slightly different prerogative. His aim is and has been to make authentic American wines of place that the next generation can also afford. And so Grounded Wine Co. was born, a kind of pan-American négoce with its feet grounded in Napa’s young but lignifying styles and traditions.

At Grounded Wine Co. the byword is sustainable, high quality, varietally- and terroir-correct wines with a grounded approach to pricing.

Josh is the first to acknowledge that when outstanding Cabernet’s like AD VIVUM’s are selling for hundreds of dollars per bottle, it’s crucial the Phelps family style can also be accessed in less precious bottlings. And that style is wonderful: It is that classically opulent California richness nuanced by both their time’s studying in Bordeaux. “We’re making wines that I think are pure, honest, and authentic; wines that are correct, which isn’t always the case at the price points that we’re at.” There’s a neo-classical taste for greater freshness and balance in Grounded’s bottles, but when drinking these wines you get the immediate impression that the baby has not been thrown out with the bathwater. This is our kind of winemaker—one that can dance their own way and still dance with the one that brought them. The wines are poised without jettisoning the most appealing elements of Napa and its environs: the long hang times, the rich phenolics, the lush tannins, and the magnanimous fruit. We are less interested in wines that idealize and ape the old country stylings than we are in wines that push for greater balance while embracing the true nature of their terroir’s fruit. This is the alignment of vision we find in Josh Phelps’ style.

If you want to know more about the characteristics of this area you can take a look at www.vinerra.com.