Gandona Winery

The legacy of Pritchard Hill began in the 1870s when Charles Pritchard homesteaded the top of the now-famous knoll and planted vines. At the time, the Northern Californian wine industry was lucrative and already supported by 139 major wineries whose wine and brandy crop was valued at more than two million dollars in gold. Pritchard’s success led to continued vine propagation on the hill and earned the area the nickname, Pritchard’s Hill.

The site of Gandona Estate had its beginnings just a few years earlier, when in 1862 Daniel K. Dille homesteaded

the property, located just downhill from Pritchard’s future home. California had just experienced the silver rush and Napa County had recently been formed. Here, Dille worked as a laborer and maintained the land. The property was sold several times throughout the years until the Bob Long family purchased it in 1966 and planted the site’s first vineyard. In 1977, they entered the wine business in earnest and founded a small winery called Long Vineyards, producing Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and a late harvest Johannisberg Riesling.

Farming at Gandona Estate is based on long-term sustainability and enacting practices to support sustainable farming relative to the estate. For us, farming sustainably is not an end result, but instead an ongoing effort that will evolve over time to maintain and enhance the quality of air, soil and water at Gandona Estate. Our sustainable practices include water conservation and monitoring, erosion control, reduced-risk fungicides for mildew, botrytis, pests and diseases and implementation of cover crops appropriate for each vineyard block.

Our vineyards are meticulously hand-farmed with careful attention by our staff to produce the very best fruit possible. Pruning takes place in late winter followed by budbreak in late March or early April. The vines flower in early June and continue their gradual maturation until sometime in mid to late October when harvesting takes place.

The soil composition on the estate itself is intensely fragmented and Gandona Estate’s four vineyards are made up of several soil types, producing grapes with an array of flavors. The foundation for our vineyards is Sobrante Loam and is formed from basic igneous and metamorphic rock.

Each vineyard is harvested in several small batches, isolating flavor variations that, when blended, create the complex wines of Gandona Estate.

Seventeen acres are planted to vine with the majority of vineyard space devoted to Cabernet Sauvignon and other Bordeaux varietals.

We’re single-minded in our approach to ensuring quality. That’s why we do not purchase outside grapes and we custom-built a winery to control every stage of the grape growing and winemaking process.

The winery was completed in 2010 and was designed to embrace the best of both old- and new-world winemak- ing techniques. Adopting an old-world practice used by the legendary Chateaux of France, concrete fermenta- tion tanks were incorporated into the winery’s design. Wines are barrel-aged in a cave tucked inside Pritchard Hill’s rocky interior, providing consistently cool temperatures and an ideal degree of humidity. A separate, temperature-controlled room inside the cave can be heated or cooled as needed.

Reclaimed wood and other repurposed materials were used in several areas. The boulders and rocks excavated from the cave were used to create the winery’sexterior walls; the property’s old redwood water storage tank was dismantled and transformed into beautiful doors for the winery and cave; and the winery’s interior oak doors were made from trees harvested from our former home in Connecticut. The winery’s bathroom sink was chiseled from a large boulder excavated from deep inside the hill.

Grapes arrive to the winery immediately after picking to be vinified in small lots. The winemaking team first hand-sorts individual clusters, selecting the finest for crushing and de-stemming. Then, individual berries are sorted, removing those with imperfections. The remaining grapes are then transferred to concrete tanks for fermentation by a bin/gravity flow process. Once fermentation is complete, the wine is pressed and placed in French oak barrels for aging in Gandona Estate’s cave.