Diamond Creek Vineyards

Louis Roederer Champagne to buy Diamond Creek Vineyards

Roederer is about to add another gem, Diamond Creek Vineyards in Napa Valley, to its sparkling portfolio.

Champagne house Maison Louis Roederer is to buy Diamond Creek Vineyards in Napa Valley. The acquisition comes less than a year after Louis Roederer bought Merry Edwards in Sonoma County.

Xavier Barlier, vice president of marketing and communications at Louis Roederer, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the purchase was “a long-time dream for the Roederer family”, and that the late founders of Diamond Creek – Al and Adelle ‘Boots’ Brounstein – had been friendly with the Rouzaud family, owners of Roederer, since the late 1990s.

According to the same report, Boots Brounstein had been talking about a possible sale with Roederer’s president Frédéric Rouzaud before she died in 2019, aged 92.

Diamond Creek was founded in 1968 by Al Brounstein of Minnesota, who became the first California winemaker to charge $100 for a bottle of wine. Boots Brounstein once said her husband had fallen in love with wine later in life, taking his first wine class aged 40.

One of his great innovations was to plant on Napa’s slopes, rather than on the valley floor, as was done at the time. The Brounsteins went further, creating vineyards according to soil type. Today, Diamond Creek is one of the region’s most highly regarded wineries and is devoted exclusively to Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Diamond Creek acquisition is just the latest for Louis Roederer, which now has a significant portfolio of prestige wineries. The company owns Deutz in Champagne, Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande and Château de Pez in Bordeaux, Domaines Ott in Provence, Delas Frères in the Rhône Valley and Ramos Pinto in Portugal, along with Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley, California and Merry Edwards, Sonoma.

“[California] is a region that has created notoriety, quality and very interesting developments,” Rouzaud told Le Figaro in 2019. “Contrary to what has been achieved in France where notoriety is based on appellations, the approach to wine is freer in the United States. You are free to plant your vine wherever you want. The market will be the sole judge.”

Louis Roederer also bought its first hotel, the Christiania in Val d’Isère in the French Alps in 2018.

“Ultimately we should be able to create a wine tourism network of hotels from our own estates,” Rouzaud told Le Figaro. “There is great potential.”

Louis Roederer was founded in 1776 and has been in the same family since the 19th century.

Founded in 1968, Diamond Creek is California's first exclusively Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Vineyard. Visionary pioneer Al Brounstein defied modern conventions and planted Bordeaux varietals on secluded Diamond Mountain. The three vineyards produce a small amount of long-lived wines that are elegant with great depth and richness, honored and cherished by connoisseurs the world over. Taste the differences imparted to the wine by the distinct soils and micro-climates of Diamond Creek Vineyards.

©Diamond Creek Vineyards. All Rights Reserved.

Our mountain canyon creates a diverse weather pattern. Cooling afternoon breezes from the ocean on the West mix with the Napa Valley heat on the East. Diamond Creek meanders through our vineyards and separates them into three distinct soil types; volcanic, gravelly and red rock.  Our cabernets include a small amount of merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

Typically, the harvest of our vineyards takes place over a month period. Because we want to pick each section of the vineyard at its optimum ripeness, we have as many as 15 to 20 different pickings. As the wines age in barrels we taste their development. If the barrels from one pick of a vineyard are particularly distinctive, we will bottle them separately as a microclimate wine

Red Rock Terrace

Red Rock Terrace, a warm microclimate, is 7 acres of north facing vineyard.  The red tinted soil is high in iron content.  The wine from Red Rock Terrace is the most accessible and earliest drinkable of all our wines.  

Our winemaker describes Red Rock Terrace as "having velvety tannins, rich and well balanced, medium dark ruby color with cherry, mint and black currant flavors."

Gravelly Meadow

Our second coolest micro-climate is our five-acre Gravelly Meadow vineyard. Originally a pre-historic river bed, this stony, gravelly soil drains rapidly and the vines struggle for moisture. 

Gravelly Meadow is our lowest yielding vineyard. The wines are described as "earthy, cedary, jammy and ripe blackberry with a spicy expansive finish." 

Volcanic Hill

Volcanic Hill is comprised of 8 acres of south facing hillside vineyard.  It is the warmest of all our micro-climates.  The color of the soil is gray, and the consistency is that of fluffy, volcanic ash, originally deposited from the eruption of Mt. Konocti 8 million years ago.  

Volcanic Hill is the longest lived of our wines. Our winemaker describes these wines as "full bodied, loaded with intense ripe berry fruit, cassis, violets and a smoky richness, finishing with good length and firm tannins." 

The Volcanic Hill bottling includes a small amount of the extra-ordinary Petit Verdot grape.

Lake Vineyard

This tiny ¾ acre vineyard nestled by our lake is the coolest of our microclimates because of the cool Pacific breezes that travel down the Russian River corridor each afternoon.  

The grapes require a long hang time to ripen, and when they do ripen, they make an exceptional wine.  In fact, Lake wines have been produced only ten times since 1972.

©Diamond Creek Vineyards. All Rights Reserved.

© All Rights Reserved. Diamond Creek Vineyards