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 offered to make the wine and bottled it under the Caymus label with a Grace Family Vineyard designation. 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 soils are ancient and volcanic and change sharply across a very short distance, with red, rocky ground in the upper block.
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 Vineyard 29 in 1989, and Grace budwood went on to other Napa vineyards.
The Wines
Production of the estate Cabernet is very small, a few hundred cases at most. The wine is aromatic and translucent rather than extracted, with red currant, pomegranate, rose petal and cedar. The estate also bottles Cornelius Grove, from Heath Canyon Ranch west of St. Helena, and for many years made a Blank Vineyard wine from a site in Rutherford.