History
Terry and Juli Pringle established the property in 1998. The name came from a passing remark by a server at Bouchon in Yountville about the drive back up to their outpost. Frank and Kathy Dotzler bought it in 2003 and kept Thomas Rivers Brown, who had worked on the wines since the first vintage and built its reputation for dense mountain reds. In July 2018 the French group AXA Millesimes, owner of Chateau Pichon Baron and Domaine de l'Arlot, acquired the property for a reported forty million dollars, with Brown staying on.
The Site
A home ranch on Summit Lake Drive above Angwin, sitting at 2,200 feet and permanently above the fog line that fills the valley below. Mornings are clear and cool rather than cold and grey, and the hang time runs long, with a late harvest. The soil is the Howell Mountain volcanic series: rocky, iron-rich Aiken loam and clay that drain well. Farming is organic.
Vines and Blocks
The home ranch is planted to vines, split into single-variety blocks. Heritage Zinfandel takes the sunniest ground. A small parcel carries Grenache. A second owned property nearby, the nine-acre True Vineyard, is skeletal and rock-strewn and planted to Bordeaux clones; it is the source of the True Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and of The Immigrant, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
The Wines
The estate Zinfandel is fresh and peppery rather than jammy, marked by briar and mountain thyme. The Cabernets from True are the structural end of the range: slate, ink and dark cassis over cast-iron tannin.