For more than three decades, Joseph Phelps Vineyards has been making wines that rightfully belong on the table with the best of both Old and New Worlds.

A Colorado building contractor, Joe Phelps built a couple of wineries for others in the area before deciding to go into the wine business himself — erecting his own winery on Taplin Road not too far from another hallowed cellar, owned and operated by Joe Heitz.

Not only did he give wine lovers elegant cabernets and rich chardonnays, he was a pioneer in producing a Bordeaux-inspired proprietary wine, Insignia, that by the late 1970s had become one of the valley’s widely sought bottled treasures.

And he showed that a Napa Valley vintner could produce syrah that could compete with the best of the Rhone.

Joe and son, Bill, along with company president Tom Shelton and winemaker Craig Williams, family and staff are chairing 2007 Auction Napa Valley as the Phelps winemaking team.

Since it has been some time since we’ve written about Phelps wines, we thought it was high time — especially with the Phelps family in the spotlight at auction time — to taste and reflect on the winery’s current releases.

The Phelps winery got off to a great start in 1974 with Walter Schug as winemaker, the first year Joe Phelps had us sit up and take notice with a spicy, fruit proprietary wine called Insignia. Since 1983, Phelps’ outstanding portfolio of wines has been made by Craig Williams.

On a recent morning, we sat down with “new” master sommelier Alvaro Gamboa and Phelps’ hospitality coordinator Keith Grimson to run through five of the wines now in release.

Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2003 Insignia ($165): Consistently ranked at the top of California’s best wines, Insignia is a grand, elegant Bordeaux blend. This particular vintage is not the usual blockbuster, but a more subtle blend of cabernet sauvignon (84 percent), petit verdot (10 percent), merlot (3 percent) and malbec (3 percent), primarily from estate-owned vineyards in St. Helena, Rutherford and Stags Leap District. This is the first proprietary blend produced in California and continues to be Phelps’ flagship wine. This 30th vintage of Insignia is a rich, complex wine with layers of Bing cherries, blackberries, a little coffee and a hint of licorice. A wine with an extremely long finish, the 2003 Insignia may rise to even greater heights with a little age on it. A reportedly riper, more intense 2004 Insignia is set for release Sept. 1.

Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon ($54): The cabernet sauvignon is Phelps’ largest annual production wine, with up to 30,000 cases bottled in a bumper crop vintage. This one has 14 percent merlot in the blend. For being such a young wine, it’s surprisingly round and soft, with spice and a bit of olive in the nose and the taste of quite ripe Bing cherries and blackberries that continue through to a lingering spicy finish. This is a lush, concentrated wine, and well worth the tab. Phelps should have even more cab in the near future as its vineyards south of Napa come on line.

Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2003 Syrah ($35): A blend of estate and purchased Carneros fruit (starting in ’05 the grapes will come from Larry Hyde’s Carneros vineyard), this is a beautiful expression of this grape. It’s a marvelous purple and its perfume shows off both black fruit and spice, with a mouthful of ripe blackberries carrying through to a marvelously long finish accented by licorice and spice.

Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2005 Le Mistral ($40): Named for the wind that blows through the south of France (a favorite haunt of founder Joe Phelps), the blend for this wine, which changes from vintage to vintage, is what you might expect to find in the Rhone — and more: syrah, grenache, petite sirah, carignane and, to give some rich color and spicy tannins to the mix, a little red-juiced alicante-bouschet. The fruit all comes from Phelps-owned vineyards in Monterey County. The mixed berry aroma also has a hint of spice and tarragon, again a mix of juicy berries and spice on the palate. It’s a wine that’s easy to quaff, what staffers at Phelps term a “starter” wine. Although, I think I’d start people new to wine on something that costs a little less.

Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2005 Sauvignon Blanc ($30): Because the winery is discontinuing its chardonnay after the ’04 vintage (save for some to be produced at Phelps’ new Sonoma County wine project, Freestone) and makes but a few hundred cases of viognier, consumers who want a white from Phelps will have to make do with sauvignon blanc. We should be so lucky. This is not any ordinary sauvignon blanc, mind you. It’s made in the crisp, dry Graves style, nowhere near that of New Zealand with its, shall we say, distinct aroma. The fruit for this wine comes from the vineyards adjacent to the winery. There’s 10 percent semillon in the blend, reducing the acidity and giving the wine a very nice texture. It has a floral nose and a crisp lemon peel finish. Pop a cork on a bottle and order up a dozen oysters.