History
Barry and Tracy Schuler bought the property as open pasture in 1998 and brought in viticulturist Mike Wolf to assess it. Wolf identified the volcanic knoll as the asset and the vineyard went in the following year. Its blocks were taken up quickly by Favia, Vineyard 29, Arietta, Lail and Etude, and only later did the Schulers launch their own label with Bill and Dawnine Dyer making the wine. The parcel was originally part of the nineteenth-century homestead of Nathan Coombs, who founded the city of Napa and gave Coombsville its name.
The Site
Thirty-four acres in Coombsville with 22.58 under vine, on the remnants of a collapsed volcanic caldera. Compressed ash, basaltic lava and volcanic gravel are interleaved with rounded river cobbles left by ancient watercourses and uplifted into the vineyard's strata. The combination drains completely and offers almost no fertility. Sitting in the southeast corner of the valley, the site takes the first of the cold air and fog off San Pablo Bay, and ripens far later than Oakville or Calistoga.
Vines and Blocks
Cabernet Sauvignon dominates, worked as a multi-clonal cross-section led by Clones 4, 7 and 337.
The Wines
Perseid, named for the meteor shower, is the estate's flagship Cabernet. The house signature is a cool-climate one: crunchy cassis and red cherry with graphite and crushed volcanic rock, tangy acidity and fine-grained tannin instead of valley-floor weight.