Insights & Articles A Study of Our Vineyards
“The vision of the winemaker starts in the field.”
We have the great privilege of farming small select parcels across more than two dozen very special vineyard sites.
It takes time, working with a vineyard, to discover its defining characteristics. Then, it takes even longer to use the right winemaking techniques and sensitivity to highlight those features in the wine. A lightness of touch in our winemaking allows us to achieve a more complex, multi-dimensional, “effortless” quality in our wines.
Over two decades, we’ve gained access to some truly legendary sites. And we’ve achieved close personal relationships with our growers. Our shared respect for the land, our dedication to the work, and our mutual respect for each other, carry through to the final product. We work with good people and we’re going to make some amazing wines.
From first pruning through to the day of harvest, we’re out there farming the land in a way that draws out the singularity of each parcel. We minimize our footprint in the vineyard, stay very close to the “ingredients” and let the vineyards speak for themselves.

MENCÍA MacIntyre Estate Vineyard
CHENIN BLANC MacIntyre Estate Vineyard
NAPA SOILS Haire Clay Loam Haire Loam
Insights & ArticlesReflections on Our 2023 Fall Release

I have no hesitation proclaiming this release to be the single finest in our entire twenty-eight-year history. If you’ve already opened some Spring release wines, you should have a sense of how special this 2021 vintage actually is. This new offering includes the more overtly concentrated Russian River Valley-grown wines, and they are a soulful group full of substance, authenticity, and detail. When the vineyards produce grapes this fine, quality flows naturally and then in the cellar our winemaking can have a light touch - we don’t force the extraction of fruit to wine. The building blocks of quality and style: vineyard site, harvest weather and human intention find a natural equilibrium, and this is expressed in each wine by a harmony between fruit intensity and succulence, savory nuances and structural balance. No single detail dominates, so these special vineyards, captured by this snapshot in time, become the focal point. The wines taste of where they were grown.
Please read the individual notes for each wine and focus on those that appeal the most to your specific taste. We also include a broad range of professional critical reviews you can use to solidify your choices.
The unique beauty of these wines is both the ease with which they provide great pleasure right now, and also their undoubted ability to develop in bottle for many years to come. There’s really no wrong time to open them. In their current youth, they’re expressing a lot of what I term “baby fat” - that youthful translation of sunshine to richness. This will dissolve naturally back into the wines over a couple of years, and they will firm up, becoming longer and more precise with greater complexity.
My notes are from June 2023. Please enjoy the wines and let us know your individual interpretations of each one.
-Andy Smith
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