Wine Spectator on David Boies
Wine Spectator features Owner, David Boies.
Case by Case: Founding Partner, Renown Attorney and wine collector is featured in the June 2016 installment of Wine Spectator. Read on for an excerpt:
[David’s] engagement with wine extends far beyond the walls of his cellar. Combining his enological obsession with Mary’s love of travel and biking, the couple has pedaled through wine lands across the world, visiting Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley and the Dolomites in Italy. Excursions to California set the stage for perhaps the most enduring component of Boies’ wine legacy: Hawk and Horse Vineyards, a biodynamic estate located in the Red Hills appellation of Lake County. Boies bought the 900-acre ranch in 1990, originally using it for recreation and raising Black Angus cattle. Situated at elevations of between 1,800 and 2,200 feet on red volcanic soils, the site struck Boies as ideal for Cabernet cultivation. After consulting with Napa producers such as Caymus and Quintessa, and commissioning soil testing at the property from the University of California, Davis, Boies handed day-to-day operations of the site over to his stepdaughter, Tracey Hawkins, and her husband, Mitch, in 1999.
Consulting winemaker [Dr.]Richard Peterson, who has worked with Napa luminaries Beaulieu Vineyard, Screaming Eagle and Atlas Peak, among others, has lent his expertise to the project since 2006. “I was drawn to them from the start by their uniqueness in the industry and their desire to achieve true excellence in their wines,” he says. “Hawk and Horse Vineyards’ wine grapes are deliberately harvested at traditionally low Brix levels—levels designed to guarantee a more European sugar/ acid balance in the grapes than is often endured in California. This produces table wines that are more food-friendly and yet will age beautifully in bottle.” From vines planted in 2001, the estate produces several varietal bottlings of Cabernet and a Port-style dessert wine called Latigo, fortified with alembic-distilled brandy. Boies says the wines have been steadily improving in quality since the inaugural vintages—they now grace restaurant wine lists in New York, and Boies proudly served them to guests at his recent birthday celebration in Las Vegas. Animating his interest is a commitment to terroir and a deep curiosity regarding the complex interaction of wine, place and people. “Wine is the product of winemaking and a product of farming,” he says. “You sometimes get that sense from visiting producers, but you never really understand it until you start to make it yourself.”
