James Suckling talks with Jason Exposto, the winemaker for Futo Estate in Napa Valley, about their recently released sauvignon blancs. Futo is a tiny-production project that makes mostly cabernet sauvignon-based wines from their vineyard sites in Oakville and Stag's Leap District. But James says their sauvignon blancs show fantastic quality and underline why Napa should continue to make great whites from the grape, which came from cuttings planted from To Kalon vineyard's great I Block, perhaps the oldest sauvignon blanc in California.
In this interview, James asks Jason about how Futo Estate switched gears from mostly making cabernet sauvignon-based wines to focus on the sauvignon blancs. "It was a fantastic soil type that we discovered on this upper terrace of the vineyard, and it just screamed for some white wine, so we could not resist," Jason says.