2023 Year in Review

We have reached a point in our project where we are visiting, tasting and writing about between 40 and 50 new Napa Valley based producers each year. We visited, tasted and added exactly 50 new reviews of Napa wineries/brands to the site in 2023. This leaves us less than 25 new reviews of Napa wineries/brands for 2024 to reach another coveted milestone, 1,200 Napa Valley wineries or brands personally reviewed on this site.

Our revisits and major updates to numerous reviews on this site are averaging about 1.5 wineries each day from March through early December; some days we start tasting at 6am, other days we are finished by 10pm. Regardless every day during these months we are working on securing reservations, logistics, tastings, interviews, writing and significant research.

This year we finally found the right partnership. On a flight from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the middle of the year we were reading several Robb Report articles. In one of their own wine club mentions we noticed the word sommelier was misspelled. So we reached out to them directly and received an email from the person that oversees their wine clubs. And this individual also oversees a number of other wine clubs.

Turns out his name is Dave and he has owned the domain name www.daveswines.com for many years. So we launched the official wine club of the Napa Wine Project in August 2023 focusing entirely on small family owned Napa Valley producers, all of whom I’ve already met with and written about on this site. Currently the focus is entirely on red wines with shipments sent quarterly; wines in these shipments can also be purchased directly through the website.

Other projects continue to keep us busy, building out itineraries as part of our growing concierge business, speaking about Napa Valley and helping promote several small Napa brands including Migliavacca.

Obituaries
Every year we lose contributors to Napa Valley’s wine industry. The following individuals passed on in 2023.

André Minor | Betty Ballentine | Bruce Newlan | Jane Chapin | Chris Peacock | Clay Gregory | David Baker | David Stephens | Dorothy Rossi | Dorothy Tchelistcheff | Fulton Mather | Irma Starke | Jeff Sowels | Kathleen Collins | Manfred Esser | Michael Chelini | Michael Chiarello | Mike Grgich | Tony Peju | Tracy Reichow

Most wanted list:
We have been pursuing some of these properties for well over a decade. We are persistent and eventually we meet the right person or make the right contact or timing works out in our favor for a variety of reasons. If you have any strong connections at any of these wineries/producers, please email us directly: info@napawineproject.com They are all an integral part of Napa Valley’s wine scene and they should be profiled on the Napa Wine Project.

Arcudi | Aubert | Bella Oaks | Bryant Family | Christopher Tynan | Hundred Acre | QTR | Melanson | Mount George | Oro Puro | Pono | Rapport | Revelette |Revik | Rutledge & Vine | Scarecrow | Screaming Eagle | Seaver | Sosabe

Highlights
One of our most memorable vintner visits this year was 2.5 hours with Matt Morris and doing a deep dive into Charbono and some of the other heritage vineyard he works with. We also found inspiration in yet another visit with Bill Hawley high up on Veeder at his Random Ridge property. And we spent a lovely several hours with Laura and Jimmy Regusci.

We popped into Paris in June pursuing places and spaces connected to wineries in Napa Valley.

Iraq in the middle of summer was a wonderful experience including visiting the small village of Mangesh and connecting with some of the family of Work Vineyard in Calistoga.

Israel. We visited Ella Valley Vineyard, 2 days before Spring Mountain Vineyard was sold to its new owners. We wish we had time to visit one of the properties owned by the Schotensteins, the owners of Mayacamas Vineyard. We would have absolutely NO problem returning to Israel right now to visit a couple of other Napa Valley spaces on our list.

We made a trip to New Mexico and Texas with visits to the Winiarski Student Center, Corrales Winery (Anthem Winery on Mt. Veeder) and to remote, Alpine, TX to explore the heritage of the Rubia Wine folks. But alas Rubia announced they were ceasing production about 2 months after our visit. We archived them and Rocca Vineyards the same week. Those were archived Napa Winery or brand #’s 316 and 317 on the Napa Wine Project 🙁

Speaking of archived reviews, since we started this project in 2006 we have noted approximately 600 Napa Valley wineries or brands that are no longer producing for whatever reason. The turnover in this valley is significant if you just look at numbers.

We made a quick trip to Park City specifically to eat at River Horse on Main (Napa winery connection: Spence Vineyards).

California trips: Sinskey eye clinics, new tasting room Alpha Omega in Paso, day trip to Willow Creek Vineyard (Emerson Brown) and visiting a bunch of Foley owned wineries around the state including remote Chalone Vineyard and the ancient Chenin Blanc block. Gravesites in LA & SD with Napa viticulture connections. Restaurants in LA and Long Beach. And numerous other related stops in the southern part of the state. Oh yes, we finally made it out to the Santa Lucia Wind, Wine and Surf tasting at Mer Soleil.

On our second trip Europe this year we spent several epic weeks visiting places and spaces connected to wineries in Napa Valley through heritage and ownership including an intense chateau filled week in Bordeaux and also Champagne, Switzerland and northern Italy. We visited approximately 40 such places and are up to nearly 750 such places visited around the planet connected to wineries in Napa Valley.

Other highlights from that trip were a dinner at Le Clarence in Paris, Mission Haut Brion, Le Dome, Dario Sattui’s remote mountain family village of Carsi and a visit to Giacomo Migliavacca’s original home in Pavia.

We harvested our first Marselan at the small block in Calistoga that we are involved with. And we fermented it at home because we had so few grapes due to still very young vines and being hit hard with hail last year, setting us back a year. Great color, intense flavors – the inoculated ferment went very smoothly. We also made some indigenous ferments of Cabernet Franc from this same property, also at home – they fermented to negative with no interruptions. 2023, what a great vintage across the board in the valley. We love Marselan!

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We hope to make more domestic trips in 2024 than we made in 2023 as the list of Napa winery connections within the U.S. keeps piling up. We always especially look forward to our Napa Valley in the mid west trips in particular where we sleep in the car or camp in random agricultural fields… all part of the experience and helping save money in the pursuit of more Napa Valley content!

And cheers to Napa Valley from our home base of Thailand for the next few months. We will most likely head over to India in February to explore Nashik and one of the the final Chandon properties we need to visit. And if budget and time allows we will cruise over to Calcutta to visit the birthplace of Dr. Revana.

See you in spring for another intense and packed year of revisits, new visits, constant tasting, tens of thousands of words of writing in regard to updating our reviews on this site and more travels pursuing Napa Valley wineries and brands around the entire planet!