History
Dick and Ann Grace bought an 1881 Victorian north of St. Helena in 1976 and planted about an acre of Cabernet Sauvignon in the front yard as a family project. They took the first crop to Caymus in 1978, where Charlie Wagner tasted it and insisted on bottling it separately. The hand-numbered bottles that followed built the first collector market of its kind in California, years before Screaming Eagle, Harlan or Colgin existed. The Graces sold the estate in April 2019, after forty vintages, to grower and vintner Kathryn Green, who kept consulting winemaker Helen Keplinger and moved the farming toward regenerative practice.
The Site
A home parcel of about three and a half acres on a low bench at the base of the western foothills north of St. Helena, with under three acres planted. The soil is Cortina and Perkins gravelly loam, but it changes sharply across a very short distance: the upper block is choked with river cobbles and drains instantly, the lower block runs into deeper alluvial volcanic silt.
Vines and Blocks
Two small plots, upper and lower, separated by about three hundred feet of yard. The original wood came from the Bosche vineyard at Freemark Abbey and adapted over decades into a loose-clustered, low-yielding selection now recognised as the Grace clone. David Abreu used cuttings from these rows when planting for Colgin, Bryant Family and Pahlmeyer, which is how a garden vineyard ended up seeding a generation of hillside Cabernet.
The Wines
Production averages around 650 cases. The wine is aromatic and translucent rather than extracted, with red currant, pomegranate, rose petal and cedar. Under Green the estate has added the Blank and Cornelius Grove bottlings from neighbouring sites.