Text by: Gleb King
Photos: realmcellars.com
Napa Valley’s Realm Cellars has evolved from an uncertain beginning into a symbol of craft, culture, and quiet revolution. With an obsessive attention to detail, a relentless drive for improvement, and a belief that wine should speak to both place and purpose, Realm redefines what it means to make great Californian wine today. For us at Symbolicwines.com, it’s a huge honor to export Realm Cellars’ wines to the world – we sell them overseas for many years. Those who order them – already know enough about the estate, so, there’s no need to retell the history. What’s more important – is to talk to the founder for deeper answers. We’re incredibly fortunate to have sat down with Scott Becker, the co-founder and visionary behind Realm Cellars, whose leadership has helped shape not only the winery but the very conversation around modern Californian winemaking. We're proud to share this exclusive interview.
Realm Houyi barrel room. Photo – realmcellars.com
Realm Cellars is often called the cult winery. What does it mean to be a cult winery?
We actually don’t think of ourselves as a cult winery, a term that was popularized in the 1990s but now seems of another era. Our vision for Realm is to become the iconic wine of Napa Valley’s next generation. Instead of talking about cult, we prefer to focus on craft and culture. Craft means the way we work, the technical details we apply in both the vineyard and the cellar. We are constantly refining our craft…searching for 100 different ways to make 1% improvements. Culture means an emphasis on our people, our values…making sure we inspire high performance. Culture also applies to our customers – framing Realm and our wines as being part of a well-lived life. I think craft and culture will be defining characteristics of the next generation of Napa Valley winegrowers.
How did a winery that faced a financial crisis 8 years ago – become cult in such a short period of time? In France it takes ages.
We were really struggling in 2012 – maybe every successful endeavor requires at least one period of difficulty and turmoil. We talk a lot about resilience at Realm. This is agriculture so Nature is always giving us surprises. The Realm journey from scrappy start-up to established domaine certainly involved a healthy amount of luck. I would also say we’ve worked incredibly hard, we’ve stayed true to our values, we are obsessed with wine quality, we are relentlessly curious about the consumer. You can read more about our journey in the Chapters section of our website.
For newcomers: how to buy your wines? Do you sell them through the en-primeur system with very limited allocations?
Perhaps the first place to start is recommending people buy the wines through you! We do not participate in the en-primeur system, instead choosing to focus on building our own relationships. This takes longer and it’s harder, but we hope it leads to more meaningful relationships. Approximately 75% of our wines are sold to members of our mailing list – these are people who sign up on our website to participate in our seasonal releases (spring and fall). 25% of our wines are sold to trade partners around the world who help introduce our wines to new consumers. Despite the current market difficulties, I still believe there is great potential for Napa Valley wines around the world.
Realm Houyi Estate. Photo – realmcellars.com
In Decanter, you once said that Realm Cellars use the Burgundian approach to winemaking. How is it possible with completely different terroirs, Bordeaux varieties and Bordeaux-taught winemaker?
I should probably stop referencing Bordeaux and Burgundy when speaking about Napa Valley wines. We have enough history now that I can speak about our winegrowing philosophy with our own context and definitions. Every domaine balances the influences of site vs. style. In the beginning, when we didn’t own any land or do any of the farming ourselves, I would say our wines probably placed more emphasis on style. Today, with three separate estates, I would say we are migrating toward more focus on site. This is what I meant by the Bugundian approach…focusing on a sense of place for each of our wines. Napa Valley is an incredible diverse place with many different soil types, elevations, exposures, microclimates. Realm is not one wine because Napa Valley is not one place. The Realm portfolio collectively reflects the diversity of Napa Valley, so Realm Farella Estate is a different expression of Cabernet Sauvignon than Realm Houyi Estate, for example. We are continuing to refine our viticultural, vinification and ageing practices to best reflect the nuances of each wine. More and more you will hear us talk about precision and purity in our wines.
“Realm is not one wine because Napa Valley is not one place. The Realm portfolio collectively reflects the diversity of Napa Valley”
Now that Benoit Touquette has left the full-time winemaker position, who will do his job?
Benoit has been a significant part of the journey over the last 13 years, and his contributions have helped to build Realm beyond our wildest dreams. The good news is his context, his palate, and his unique point of view are still part of shaping Realm’s wines as he transitions to a consulting winemaker role. Now, we've welcomed two accomplished winemakers to build on that foundation: Chris Cooney as Chief of Winegrowing and Kelly Fields as Winemaker. Chris brings a wealth of experience from winegrowing roles at Dana Estates and Provenance Vineyards, with a deep understanding of both winemaking and viticulture. Kelly joins us from Tench Vineyards and brings nearly two decades of experience at Joseph Phelps Vineyards, where she was immersed in winegrowing at the highest level. Together, I call this the dream team.
Tell a bit about your new tasting room in Calistoga, called Realm North…
In 2024 a rare opportunity emerged to lease a relatively new winery in Calistoga. Renamed Realm North, we outfitted the winery with the tools, technology and team necessary to provide a devoted home for The Bard. Just as The Bard is crafted to be approachable and accessible, we aim to nurture that same spirit with Tastings at Realm North. Guests can taste a flight of current release wines in our new intimate lounge which showcases our label art and illustrations of our journey and features spectacular views of the Vaca Mountains.
The Bard. Photo – realmcellars.com
There are many articles on the web about Realm Cellars’ history but really not much about your winemaking techniques. Could you disclose some of those?
There’s an old saying from a children’s book, “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” In other words, we have to start with a clear vision of the destination. In our case, we have a clear sense of the character of wines we want to produce. I would describe our wines as big but light on their feet, a balance of richness and freshness. The distinctive element in our wines is their texture and midpalate weight.
I start with the above because all of our techniques must follow from this clear sense of direction that we are setting. It starts in the vineyard. We don’t subscribe to one particular philosophy for all vineyards but instead we adapt our practices based on the site and the season. There are some important rules – we don’t use glyphosate, for example, because we are trying to do the right thing for the soils long-term. We follow some elements of sustainable, organic and regenerative farming but we don’t follow them all. We look at each site, the age and health of the vineyard…these are all factors. We generally try to irrigate as little as possible but we don’t subscribe to a dogmatic view on water use. What’s the right thing for the plant, for the fruit, for this season? We are looking for phenolic ripeness without losing acidity and moisture content in the berry. There are hundreds of little details and decisions that are made each year that go into farming for phenolic ripeness.
“We follow some elements of sustainable, organic and regenerative farming but we don’t follow them all”
The path continues in the cellar. Fermentations are done entirely in stainless steel. The growing season will guide fermentation temperatures and whether we are looking for more or less extraction. We keep the press lots separate from the free run and will gradually look to introduce some press lots through blending. Elevage is done in a combination of new and used oak, concrete eggs and clay amphorae. We are continually refining the barrel regimen based on the site – how much used vs new oak, thick vs thin staves, the length of seasoning, amount of toast. Today roughly 20% of our wine is spending time in concrete eggs, and we like the impression of freshness we get from the wines in these vessels. You could probably consider some of our winemaking practices to be almost reductive in nature, whereas our approach in the vineyard is a bit more oxidative. That balance or tension is what creates the paradox of big and light, richness and freshness.
Our technique is constantly evolving. The way we make wine in 2025 is very different than the way we made wine in 2012. Perhaps that will be equally true in 2030 or 2035. We are guided by both data and instinct. With so much replanting going on, we can expect the wines at Realm to continue to evolve. But it’s an evolution not a revolution. We aren’t looking for major changes, but rather constant refinements to our craft.
Realm North tasting room. Photo – realmcellars.com
Can you share some details about your vineyard management practices? How do you ensure quality from the vineyard to the bottle?
When we finish replanting our Moonracer, Houyi and Farella Estates, we will have close to 75 acres in vine in Napa Valley. There is so much that goes into this winegrowing craft but in the end it comes down to attention to detail throughout the entire season and life of the vine. Vineyard sensors that detect heat stress and precision irrigation and misting systems that can be controlled in real time through our phones are just two examples of management practices we use. We are measuring nutrient uptake, soil health and moisture and lots of other data points to help inform our decisions. But the magic also comes from constantly walking vineyards, having a constant dialogue with Nature about the true character of a site. What does this land tell us the wine wants to be? We are always asking ourselves that.
The concept of your wine called Absurd raises many questions especially from those who never tried it. Could you tell us – what is it about?
Quite simply, we think of The Absurd as the best wine we produce. We don’t disclose the exact blend or vineyard sources – that’s not a marketing tactic, but instead that’s because we try to forget the sources for this wine. The wine is a blend of the top barrels from the vintage and there are no rules about what varietal or which vineyard is used. We are guided simply by our palate impression of the wine through elevage. We try to tease out the very best from the vintage. As a result, The Absurd tends to be the most hedonistic wine in our portfolio, probably the densest wine too. We think The Absurd is special – almost more than a wine, it becomes a philosophy, a way of thinking about life. That’s where the name comes from – absurdism implies questioning the meaning of life. Yet it’s not uncommon for someone to say they prefer The Bard or one of our Estate wines…and we love hearing that! Only with the benefit of time does The Absurd really start to stand out from the rest of the portfolio.
“The Absurd tends to be the most hedonistic wine in our portfolio, probably the densest wine too”.
Tell us about your approach to labels creating and in general – the connections between your wine brand and modern art
We produce a dozen different wines now and that’s probably the upper limit in terms of how many labels to include in a portfolio. So if we are going to make these different wines, they each need to have their own reason for being, their own identity and character, their own story to tell. Each wine has a different label, and we try to begin telling the story of that wine or place with the label art. The one common link between the labels is that we laser-etch the R out of the paper, and that’s how you can quickly recognize that it’s part of the Realm family…the R is literally cut out of the paper.
We work with various artists for the labels. Sometimes we commission a new artwork, sometimes we find an object. It really all just depends on the story. For example, Beckstoffer Dr. Crane is a vineyard in St. Helena that was once the home to Chinatown in Napa Valley in the early 1900’s. Most people don’t realize how important the Chinese immigrants were to Napa Valley and California agriculture in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. So for the label, we asked ourselves how we could pay tribute to that past in a respectful way. We worked with a Chinese artist to commission a new artwork that describes the place using symbols – cranes and a scholar rock. If the artwork on the label inspires the consumer to ask the question, “what does it mean?” then we think that’s the beginning of a dialogue about the purpose and meaning behind each wine.
Realm Portfolio. Photo – realmcellars.com
Can you discuss any challenges that Realm Cellars has faced in the wine industry, particularly in the current few years?
We’ve seen extreme heat events in recent years and that’s a real focus for us in the vineyard. Of course we also know wildfires are a reality and we experienced those in 2017 and 2020. Nature is always challenging us and we must adapt. It’s also challenging in the market right now, as we witness a generational transition in consumers – who they are, how and when they consume. There is no shortage of challenges now but we continue to try to take the long view toward building our domaine, building our reputation in the market. Winegrowing has always required resilience.
What role does innovation play in your winemaking process? Are there any new projects or experiments you are currently working on?
Yes innovation is a big part of our DNA. Take the extreme heat events I mentioned above. As we continue replanting various blocks in the vineyard, we are installing a misting system so that we can cool down the microclimate around the fruit zone. We can mitigate the effects of extreme heat by reducing temperature and vapor pressure deficit (a measure of the drying power of the air). In order to use this system, you must first have sufficient water supply, then you need to have the ability to distribute that water sufficiently, then you must make sure the water is filtered properly so it doesn’t clog the nozzle. It sounds so simple to execute but it’s incredibly elaborate to construct and use effectively. That’s just one example. Every season we are conducting a handful of trials and experiments to improve our practices both in the vineyard and in the winery.
“The Realm journey is unique. For better or worse, it would be hard to replicate today”.
What do you believe sets Realm Cellars apart from other wineries in Napa Valley?
All of the above! Our vision, our values, the ethos of Realm…our people, the land we now steward, our obsession with quality and the customer. The Realm journey is unique. For better or worse, it would be hard to replicate today. The transformation from a virtual wine brand to an established domaine is very difficult today given land prices and a competitive market. Realm stands on the shoulders of giants – the Hartwells, the Chang family from Houyi, the Farellas. We have one eye toward respecting the past and one eye looking toward the future. That is a hard balance to maintain but it’s one that makes us who we are.
Tell us about the 2023 vintage that was released not long ago.
One of the most interesting growing seasons in many years. We can say it was essentially cool most of the year so we had a long growing season. The extended hang time allowed the fruit to develop and ripen slowly and naturally. I think the wines are defined by their tannins and length. There’s still plenty of fruit but the wines are not as juicy or fleshy as some of the more recent warmer vintages. These are more classic wines that will reward patience in the cellar. Quite a contrast from 2022! The beauty of Napa Valley these days is that there is something for everyone – quite a range of diversity in terms of styles and philosophies. Personally I will be collecting a lot of 2023’s from the producers I follow.
