History
Pat and Duncan Haynes planted twenty acres in 1967 on a nineteenth-century family cattle ranch, choosing the site on the advice of Andre Tchelistcheff and Louis M. Martini Sr. For half a century it was a grower's property, supplying Ancien, Failla, Arnot-Roberts and Tulocay among others. Gaylon Lawrence Jr. of Lawrence Wine Estates, which also owns Heitz Cellar, bought it in 2019 for a reported twelve and a half million dollars and ended fifty years of selling fruit in order to make it an estate label. Matt Taylor makes the wines.
The Site
The southern floor of a collapsed prehistoric caldera in Coombsville, framed to the north by Mount George, with roughly thirty-two to thirty-six acres planted inside a protected amphitheatre bowl. Nothing blocks the path south to San Pablo Bay, so cold marine air and fog pool here first and clear last, and harvest can run into November. The soil is Coombsville gravelly loam over rhyolitic ash, tufa and fractured basalt, with a rare seam of diatomaceous earth through the centre of the old blocks.
Vines and Blocks
The 1967 Chardonnay is planted on its own St. George rootstock from the Old Wente selection and is most likely the oldest planting of the variety still producing in Napa. The Pinot Noir terraces are Martini clone, from cuttings taken at Three Palms in the 1960s. A small block of Syrah occupies the coldest, most wind-funnelled corner of the basin.
The Wines
Haynes Chardonnay is taut and reductive, with lemon curd, beeswax and a saline finish rather than tropical weight. The Pinot Noir runs savoury: tart red cherry, clove, forest floor and black tea.