Growing up, Napa Valley was David Abreu's playground as well as his classroom. Born into a family of ranchers, he spent the better part of his youth working in Napa's original vineyards. Over time, David's sense of what makes a site stand out—why one vineyard makes great wine and another's is just good—was sharpened beyond the ordinary.
Eventually, intuition and experience led him to four exceptional vineyard properties: Madrona Ranch,...
Cappella
Cappella is one of the oldest vineyard sites in St. Helena, six acres that sit alongside a Catholic cemetery on the west side of town. In the 1980s the church asked David to tear out the old vines, then he watched as the land lay fallow for close to two decades. When he finally got the chance to replant, he jumped. He'd tasted fruit from Cappella in the 70s. He knew what kind of wine it could make. But that first replant was ill-fa...
“Sometimes the best experiments are the ones that just happen. When David started making wine in the 90s he only had two tanks. He didn't have a winery, so he had to bring in all his fruit on a single day. He had to pick it all at once. First the Cab and Cab Franc came in together and went into the same tank; then came the Merlot and finally the Petit Verdot. It was two tanks of whatever he picked. That's how the blend was made. It's different...
Our guys know their vineyards like the back of their hands. Each vineyard has one crew that tends it all year, every year. They prune, position, thin. Towards the end of the season they thumb unripe berries off the clusters. And they harvest. After the pick they man the sorting table at the winery. It's about them having ownership of that fruit. They grew it, they know it. They're proud of it. “They're actually pretty competitive about it,” sa...
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