History
The Chappellets founded the estate in 1967 on the eastern side of Napa Valley, on terrain nobody had shown could work. Philip Togni was the founding winemaker, and the 1969 Cabernet Sauvignon from the original hillside blocks became one of the wines that established Napa mountain fruit as capable of Bordeaux-scale structure. Phillip Corallo-Titus has made the wine since 1990 and Cyril Chappellet is chief executive. Pritchard Hill is not a federally approved AVA: Chappellet trademarked the name in 1970 and 1971, and by most trade accounts that is why the appellation petition has never moved, so labels read Napa Valley with Pritchard Hill used as a locality.
The Site
Roughly 600 acres with about 110 under vine between 800 and 1,800 feet, on the estate's reddish, rocky Sobrante loam. The whole estate has been CCOF certified organic since 2012.
Vines and Blocks
Forty-eight distinct blocks, forty of them Cabernet Sauvignon across nine clones, farmed separately and blended late.
The Wines
The estate's three-sided pyramid winery, conceived by Molly Chappellet with the artist Ed Moses and built from 1968, still houses the gravity-flow production and barrel caves that make the wines.