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 brought in Thomas Rivers Brown, who 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 forty-two acre 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 late into November. The soil is the Howell Mountain volcanic series: iron-red compressed ash and porous rhyolite shards that drain immediately. Farming is certified organic.
Vines and Blocks
Around twenty-eight acres are planted on the home ranch, split into single-variety blocks. Heritage Zinfandel takes the sunniest ground. A cold pocket on the lowest, most wind-exposed slopes 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.