But in relation to our Napa Valley location, this variety is something of an outlier. 

The first fifteen vintages came from an improbable spot in the fertile farmland of the San Joaquin Valley: John Simpson’s vineyard near Fresno, a low-yielding site that was a dependable source of viognier and helped put Miner’s version on the map. 

Eventually, wanting to make a change to a different region and microclimate, Dave Miner and Michelle Shafrir opted to start working with the owners of Steinbeck Vineyard. This expertly farmed property in the Geneseo District of Paso Robles is a widely recognized site for a number of wine grapes, viognier prominent among them. It’s been a successful partnership since our first forays with the Steinbeck fruit a decade ago. 

Around that same time, after the 2013 vintage, a second and much smaller viognier program came to an end at Miner: our Wild Yeast Viognier, also made from Simpson Vineyard grapes. It was a cousin to Miner’s popular white wine, the Wild Yeast Chardonnay. 

Each was notable for its spontaneous fermentation started by “wild” yeast living within the winery walls—as opposed to in the vineyard, as Michelle explained to us recently. “The yeast is just hanging out all over the winery; it’s on the floors, on the walls, and probably all over us, too!” she laughed. 

“Then this amazing thing happens when, right before harvest, somehow the yeasts know what’s going on. Their populations actually start to grow, especially at the winery doors, like they anticipate something coming.” The primary fermentation in the cellar, as she described it, “must be like a volcano of yeast that we just don’t see.”

Before this pair of wild-fermented wines went into bottle, they were further differentiated from other Miner whites by the addition of 100% malolactic and barrel fermentation—a protocol unchanged in the chardonnay since the ’99 harvest. 

In 2023, Dave decided it was time to revisit the past.

“We were talking about our viognier at one point last year,” Michelle said. “Dave mentioned to me how much he loved the Wild Yeast Viognier that we made years ago. So, then he asked the question: ‘Why aren’t we making it anymore? I think we should try this again.’”

She pointed out that that the ’23 vintage was an ideal window to revive this special bottling of viognier. Well before the harvest, she and Dave had initiated a conversation with a Mendocino County grower whose name was synonymous with some of the most forward-thinking viticulture in California: Stuart Bewley. Working out of his 150-acre Alder Springs Vineyard near the town of Laytonville, Stuart was known for producing small lots of extremely high-quality grapes, sought after by vintners up and down the state. Of the astounding 90-plus varieties he grows, viognier was the one that caught this winery’s attention. 

“The first time I met Stuart several years ago, we got along really well,” Dave recalled. “After that, I was pushing to try to get some viognier from him, which would let us play around with grapes from a different climate than what we’d been doing up to that point, the viognier from Madera County and then Paso Robles. I wanted to see what a little bit colder climate would do.”

He added that Michelle was enthusiastic about the new grape source. And she agreed that Alder Springs represented an opportunity to create a counterpoint to one of Miner’s signature wines. “Getting a little bit of ‘23 viognier from them, this was a chance to make it all by itself, and in a different style than we’ve been making the Steinbeck Viognier,” she said. 

If the stylistic detour up to Mendocino signaled a conscious effort to do things differently with this noble grape, as Dave and Gary Brookman had done with the earlier version of Wild Yeast Viognier, it also served as a sort of geographic bookend to the Paso Robles program. Going back to 2014, Steinbeck Vineyard has been the southernmost site to supply the winery with fruit. Now, with the soon-to-be-released ’23 Alder Springs bottling, Miner is delving into a grape source at a near-opposite end of the viticultural spectrum. 

These points north and south on the California map are a study in contrasts. And yet, to both Michelle’s and Dave’s palates, the vineyards are tied together by how the viognier grown in each reminds them of one of France’s great white wines made from the same variety: Condrieu. 

Based near this historic appellation in France’s Northern Rhône Valley, a trio of respected winemakers whom Dave counts as friends—Yves Gangloff, François Villard, and Yves Cuilleron—have been visiting Napa Valley and Miner since the early 2000s. Back at home, these vignerons produce their own unique styles of Condrieu: extraordinary takes on viognier that have exerted a long-distance influence on Dave’s own goals for the grape. 

From 2004 to 2011, he and François even collaborated at Miner on a second label, La Diligence, focused on the Rhône varieties marsanne and syrah grown in Stagecoach Vineyard. While viognier was never part of that program, François and his friends have paid attention over the years to how this cherished Rhône grape has been rendered in Miner’s cellar. 

“Those guys always loved both wines—the Wild Yeast Viognier and the regular version,” Dave shared. “For them, the Wild Yeast was more like a very traditional Condrieu style. But they were also into the regular Simpson Viognier because it had the viognier ‘fleshiness’ and texture, but at the same time it had brightness. There was a freshness to it that they appreciated.”

As a reminder of how small the wine world can be, Dave’s three friends have, together and separately, also made past visits to Stuart Bewley’s property. In mid-2024, the grower shared this piece of information with us during a (very bumpy) two-hour tour of Alder Springs in his burly Land Cruiser. It was just one of many stories he had to tell. 

Though grapegrowing is Stuart’s primary activity, to call Alder Springs a “vineyard” is a bit of a misnomer. His 150 acres of vineyards are planted within a massive, 6000-acre ranch of wild forest, steep hillsides, and 1000-foot changes in elevation. Just twelve miles inland from the tiny town of Westport on the Mendocino Coast, the Pacific Ocean is a constant, climactic presence; the place, he emphasized while driving slowly past one of the property’s numerous ponds, is very wet. 

“We have about six ponds like this one,” he explained over the growl of the truck engine. “All of them are for rain runoff storage. And so we don’t pull any water out of the creeks or anything like that. We store it in the winter. There is so much water here in the winter, it’s ridiculous.”

Managing that water—in particular the runoff from his dozens of vineyard blocks, which gets fed back into the adjacent forest through a complex series of what he described as “reverse French drains”—is one of the many innovative approaches Stuart takes to growing wine grapes. Some of the strategies he, his Vineyard Manager José Guillen, and Viticulturist Dalton Shepherd put to use are more recent, while others have been evolving for the 30-plus years he’s owned the property. 

When, back in 2003, Stuart had been farming grapes for ten years, the “two Yves” from the Rhône Valley—Gangloff and Cuilleron—arrived one day for a tour of the vineyard with a mutual California winemaker friend who wanted him to plant some viognier and marsanne. The result of that visit was a block of vines that he half-jokingly called “The Two Yves Block,” after the Frenchmen’s advice on where and what he should plant. “That section is where we started growing our Rhône whites. And, you know, those vines have done really well. They’ve made some really nice wine,” he observed with pride.

It was the genesis of white Rhône varieties at Alder Springs, folded into the much larger project of experimentation with “alternative” and lesser-known vines. Seventeen acres of pinot noir are the largest planting in the vineyard. But, as becomes clear after just a little time spent with Stuart in his Land Cruiser, viognier and the dozens of other grape varieties on the property get his and his team’s full attention.

Dave and Michelle’s conversation last year about bringing the Wild Yeast Viognier back into production at Miner led them to Alder Springs, where they joined an exclusive club of winery clients for Stuart’s grapes. “I think that wines can be so many things,” he told us. “And I don’t think you need to make just one version or just one style. I love all of the interpretations. I mean, we’ve got multiple winemakers making tons of different things. I think it’s fascinating.”Soon, after what Michelle reminded us was a ten-year hiatus, Miner Family enthusiasts will have an opportunity to be fascinated by Wild Yeast Viognier once again. 

The post Embracing the Wild: Miner’s Latest Viognier Release appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

“You know, you can look at each section of a vineyard, and it’s unique,” he said. “You ask yourself, ‘Is
somebody going to be buying those grapes long-term?’ Well, that’s the case with Miner, so we take a
unique approach. Every section of the vineyard is evaluated a little differently.”

Leading us on an August morning walk around the property that his father, the pioneering grower
Volker Eisele, purchased in the mid-70s with his mother, Liesel, Alex stopped several times to reflect on
the relationship of viticulture to winemaking. And circling back to a time before any of their grapes
made it from Lower Chiles Road to Miner’s crushpad in Oakville, he and his wife, Catherine, recalled how
ties eventually formed between Miner and Volker Eisele Family Estate.

When Dave Miner brought a group of his friends to the Eiseles’ vineyard almost twenty ago, Volker’s
name was already established in Napa Valley and beyond. He and Liesel, German students who met at
UC Berkeley in the 1960s, fell in love with the 400-acre property that had been part of a 19th century
Mexican land grant and, subsequently, become one of Napa County’s early wine estates.

Today, the entire vineyard is replanted, as Catherine went over that morning. “This was a vineyard and a
gravity-flow winery building in the 1800s. It was called Lomitas Vineyard and Winery and coincidentally
owned by another German immigrant named Francis Sievers. Alex’s parents came here in ’74 and
replanted to the original footprint when they first began the whole project.”

A little over 1000 acres of grapevines comprise the Chiles Valley District, a sub-region of Napa Valley in
the Vaca Mountains, east of St. Helena and Rutherford, that Volker led the way to establish as an
American Viticultural Area in 1999. The 60 acres of vines he farmed, helped by the multi-generational
Nevarez family and, eventually, with Alex at his side, represent a small fraction of that total acreage. But
the Volker Eisele influence is decidedly outsized to this day.

Alex paused again and motioned toward the mountains on each side of the property. “This place has
always been the Chiles Valley. But my dad worked hard to get it established as a sub-AVA. So to him, one of the biggest, most important aspects here was that we simply replant what was first planted in the
1800s, and not clear any land or cut down any trees. That’s number one.”

“And number two,” he emphasized, “is that the vineyard has always been farmed organically. Never any
other way.”

When Volker passed away in early 2015, Congressman Mike Thompson honored his memory, telling a
local newspaper that he was largely responsible for the county’s foresight to protect its agricultural
land—and the community dependent upon it—through Measure J, passed in Napa County in 1990.
Thompson also said that he “made great wine and was an even better friend who will be missed.” For
this combination of commitment and traits, Dave took notice, which, in turn, brought Miner to Volker’s
attention.

As Catherine pointed out, it wasn’t exactly an overnight process—though it shed some light on how, in
certain circumstances, grapegrowers and vintners can forge a relationship.

“Volker’s been gone for ten years,” she said. “So when he hosted Dave and his friends, it was a while
ago. And then over those years, I’d run into Dave at the market in St. Helena. We would chit-chat and
catch up a little bit. I always had it in the back of my head how Volker talked about what a nice man he
was.”

“I thought, ‘Maybe I should just reach out to him and tell him we’ve got some fruit available.’ So this is
how it started.”

Alex added that the turnaround to Miner’s involvement with the 2019 harvest happened quickly:
coinciding with Catherine’s lightbulb moment, he was motivated to bring on a new grape client. Since
then, two sections of the vineyard—the Hill Block and the Old Block—have contributed cabernet
sauvignon to Michelle Shafrir’s winemaking program.

We followed the Eiseles across a part of the sloping property that afforded close-up looks at each. “Of
those two sections, the Old Block was planted in 1991,” Alex explained. “It was an old planting when we
got here in 1974, and the name just stuck, even when it was newly planted in 1991.”

After a 45-minute walk, we headed back to the property’s historic barn, where Catherine and Alex have
created a beautifully preserved space to host visitors. We sat down in a glass-enclosed kitchen and
lounge while Alex opened a bottle of one of their own estate wines, a 2023 sauvignon blanc that their
winemaker, Molly Lippitt, blends with a little semillon—an unsurprisingly delicious white. (During the walk, Alex told us that they only grow Bordeaux varieties: these two white grapes and cabernet
sauvignon, along with merlot and cabernet franc.)

Then he pulled the cork on the bottle of Miner Family’s 2019 Volker Eisele Vineyard cabernet we’d
brought along. It wasn’t the first time they tasted it—that happened six months after the harvest,
sampled out of barrel at Miner—but it had been at least a couple of years since they’d had the
opportunity to see how it was developing.

“I can get a sense of the vineyard here immediately. It has this savory characteristic,” Catherine noted,
swirling the wine in her glass. “Smelling this wine reminds me of what it’s like at the vineyard the day
after it rains: it’s up in the trees. It’s that oak, and some wet bay leaf. I’m nearly certain that’s what is
contributing to this savory aroma and flavor.”

Alex concurred that it was tasting great and showing a lot of complexity at nearly five years of age.
Though, in contrast to his wife’s savvy palate, his comments on the Miner wine were those of a grower.
“I think it’s interesting. I’m tasting this wine, and I remember every detail about 2019 very clearly: when
we picked, and how the grapes looked. You know, all of it.”

He described a growing season and harvest during which “everything aligned,” with plenty of rain the
previous winter and spring resulting in a heavy crop. As the fruit ripened throughout the vineyard, Alex,
Pedro Nevarez, and their vineyard crew watched it happen at an ideal pace.

“Sometimes,” he observed, “when you get close to harvest, you taste some berries after a heatwave and
they’re quite sweet, but they might be lacking flavor. I can remember specifically that there was this
gradual and very even development. The color was developing evenly, and the flavors were, too. So it
was great from a growing perspective and from a winemaking perspective. I think you had it all.”

For her part, Michelle let us know how happy she is to be working with Volker Eisele Vineyard.

“We get amazing fruit from Alex,” she said a couple days before the first grapes from the ’24 harvest
were scheduled to arrive at Miner.

“When it comes to growing the fruit in the vineyard, he’s just really good at what he does. He knows the
vineyard very well, of course, so I don’t have to chase him to do things. Even if I have to ask him about
something, it’s like he’s already done it.”

Earlier, out in the vineyard, Alex acknowledged that he plans for the Volker Eisele-Miner Family
relationship to be long-term. He said he wants Michelle and Dave “to always be happy with the fruit
they get from us.” In the barn, sharing tastes of his wine and Miner’s, he paid Michelle what we felt was
a well-earned compliment. “Collaborating with her, she’s so kind and easy to work with, I just love that.”

“It’s just super important to us that what we deliver is top notch and that the winemakers are happy,”
Alex continued. He had a smile on his face to match Catherine’s. They, too, seemed genuinely happy: to
them, the vines planted over three decades ago by Volker spoke through this Miner cabernet.

“The more you work with great people, the more pride you take in really achieving that for them,” he
said. “I mean, we’re not just selling grapes to sell grapes. We want the winemaker to be thrilled with
what she’s getting.”

The post The Vineyard Series, Number Four: Volker Eisele Vineyard + Miner Family Cabernet Sauvignon appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

But after nearly 30 harvests, another thing we’re proud of—especially as we get into the most festive time of the year—is our ability to gather these, and other, delicious offerings into one of Napa Valley’s finest gifting opportunities. 

Going with that holiday theme, we like to describe the wines produced by winemaker Michelle Shafrir and her cellar team as “profoundly joyful.” We think you’ll find no shortage of joy coming out of our Oakville winery this year.

As the message reads on one of Miner’s brand-new gift selections, our Half-bottle Duo Gift Box, the wines included in it are “crafted in a style to encapsulate the distinctive elements and the indelible fingerprints” of the Napa Valley vineyards Dave Miner and Michelle have been sourcing for many years. Individually, the 2023 Chardonnay and 2019 The Oracle are half-bottle standouts; together this duo signifies the winery’s lasting engagement with some of the Valley’s most skilled grape growers—presented in a fantastic new package ideal for gifting. 

Half-bottle Duo with Gift Box

2023 Chardonnay, Napa Valley – 375ml

2019 The Oracle, Napa Valley – 375ml 

RETAIL: $105 | WINE CLUB: $89.25

Accompanying the half-bottle duo in Miner’s what’s-new category this year is our unique Gift Subscription. For three months, recipients will receive two bottles per month of wines that draw from the winery’s diverse portfolio of vineyard sites both in and outside of Napa Valley. From single-vineyard cabernet sauvignon expertly farmed in Chiles Valley, to classic California viognier grown at a historic property in Paso Robles, this subscription—which, of course, includes our beloved Emily’s Cabernet Sauvignon—makes for an enduring, one-of-a-kind gift. 

Gift Subscription

$299 – SHIPPING INCLUDED

A singular Bordeaux blend produced in Napa Valley for over two decades, The Oracle is Miner’s flagship red wine and is featured in a trio of other gift options—The Oracle Vertical, The Oracle with Gift Bag, and our Bordeaux Duo, which also includes Miner’s highly regarded Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon. 

To complement these Napa Valley red bottlings, our Rhône Duo—inspired by France’s great Rhône Valley—features a white and red wine that honor Dave’s love of Greek literature: The Iliad white wine and The Odyssey red. As Miner bottlings, they contribute to our identity as one of California’s most original producers. 

The Oracle Vertical

Three library vintages of The Oracle, Napa Valley Red Wine

2016 / 2017 / 2018 | Three bottle wood box 

RETAIL: $500 | WINE CLUB: $425

The Oracle with Gift Bag

2019 The Oracle, Napa Valley Red Wine

One Miner gift bag

RETAIL: $155 | WINE CLUB: $131.75

Bordeaux Duo

2021 Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville

2019 The Oracle, Napa Valley Red Wine

RETAIL: $245 | WINE CLUB: $208.25

Rhône Duo

2021 The Iliad, Rhône white wine

2021 The Odyssey, Rhône red Wine

RETAIL: $90 | WINE CLUB: $76.50

At Miner Family, we are experts at making wines of, as we like to say, “individualistic style and uncommon quality.” These descriptions apply equally to our gifting and shipping specialists, whose skills are particularly handy when it comes to corporate gifting. Convenience is the key: we specialize in both corporate gifts and multiple-address orders. 

Overall, at this time of year (and every other time, too!), we’re happy to remind you that, if you’re looking for a different kind of wine gift—and the service to go with it—we have a range of unique options for every taste and budget. 

The post Let Miner Handle the Holidays for you appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

Miner’s own customers are another incredibly valuable component of the relationships we share. After nearly 30 harvests, this winery continues to succeed by treating its customers like family, a concept of the greatest importance to Dave Miner and everyone who works with him. 

Considering that many of our customers—longtime supporters and wine club members, as well as those new to Miner—come from places outside of Napa Valley, we know they often will welcome recommendations on a variety of the services that contribute to the Valley’s identity as a world-class destination.

Through the partnerships we created this past summer with a select number of local businesses, we’ve taken the art of lending support to the purveyors who support us (relationships!) to another level. And if you aren’t yet a Miner Wine Club member, you might consider becoming one to get the most out of what our local hospitality partners have to offer. Either way, we hope the following recommendations will enhance your next visit.

•   •   •   •   •

STAY

No one comes to Napa Valley without lodging at the top of their mind (or maybe it’s a close second to wine tasting!) In four unique parts of Napa Valley, we’ve teamed up with hotels, from boutique to full-service, to enhance these already amazing getaways, and offer equally attractive discounts for Miner Wine Club members.

At the north end of the Valley, near the center of Calistoga, you’ll find Dr. Wilkinson’s Backyard Resort & Mineral Springs. It’s “Calistoga’s original wellness resort,” as our friends at this mid-century gem like to refer to their property, where deluxe rooms and cottages sit on top of a natural hot spring that feeds its geothermal mineral pools. Jon “The Doc” Wilkinson founded this resort in 1952, and it endures today as both a testament to Calistoga’s history and one of its must-stay, spa locations.

https://drwilkinson.com/

Use code: MINF, up to 25% off room rates*

20% off spa services. Call and mention Miner Family Winery club rate

Situated in Rutherford, practically at the center of Napa Valley, Rancho Caymus Inn owns a well-earned Michelin Guide Key (the hotel equivalent of a Michelin restaurant star—kind of a big deal!) The respected guide describes this hacienda-style inn as one of the Valley’s “architectural homages to Europe” that “retains much of the character of a private residence”—which is how it started out in the 1980s, built by salt heiress Mary Tilden Morton. Now it’s one of Northern California’s top wine country hotels and a proud Miner partner!

www.ranchocaymusinn.com

Use code: MINERFAM, 15% off room rates

The Meritage Resort and Spa sits at the very southern end of Napa Valley, almost the exact opposite point from the hot springs and mud baths of Calistoga, and just a dozen miles north of the San Pablo Bay. This sprawling property, adjacent to the breezy, rolling vineyards of Carneros, actually encompasses three separate hotels (additionally Vino Bello and The Grand Reserve), a full-service spa, a number of wine-centric hospitality venues, and even a bowling alley. For Miner-bound visitors from San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area, The Meritage is a fantastic getaway option.

https://www.meritageresort.com

Use code: LNRMIN, 15% off room rates and 15% off spa services

Visiting Hotel Yountville Resort & Spa, you might not ever guess you were standing in a mid-century roadside motel that has been transformed into one of Napa Valley’s most graceful spa resorts. Such is 

the ongoing evolution of Yountville into a major dining and wine tourism destination, of which this eponymous hotel is an integral part. Centrally located in a town “where Michelin stars flow freely,” as Condé Nast Traveler puts it, Hotel Yountville offers subtly luxurious lodging that can “feel more like your aunt’s charming B&B.” Miner enthusiasts who have stayed here would readily agree.

https://www.hotelyountville.com

Use code: WINEPERK, 20% off best available rate with room upgrade | bottle of local wine | welcome amenity

TRAVEL

If you want to get the inside scoop on which wineries to visit in Napa Valley, ask a local. Or, better yet, go with Beau Wine Tours, who provide the relaxing opportunity to be enjoyably (and safely) transported through a day of winery visits. This veteran wine touring company offers chauffeured vehicles and custom concierge services, along with access for its customers to a roster of visitor-friendly Napa Valley (and Sonoma County) winery partners. Miner is, happily, on that selective list. 

https://www.beauwinetours.com

Mention your Miner Family wine club membership to redeem 10% off

The folks at Napa Valley Bike Tours are a reminder that cycling here in the Valley can rival wine tasting’s popularity. Road and e-bikes are, seemingly, everywhere, from the Silverado Trail that snakes past Miner Family to the growing Napa Valley Vine Trail. NVBT’s experienced team leads fully guided e-bike tours, while the company also offers conventional bike rentals: two-wheeled adventures—with winery and gourmet lunch stops—that provide up-close views of the Valley’s picturesque vineyards and stunning backdrops of the Vaca and Mayacamas Mountains. 

https://napavalleybiketours.com

Use Code: CLUBMINER, 15% off

LEISURE

Earlier this year, lucky visitors to Miner Family’s tasting room began to avail themselves of a product not made from fermented grapes: Earth & Sky Chocolates. This artisan chocolatier, with retail locations in Calistoga and Downtown Napa, is headed up by Chief Chocolate Officer (her actual title) Robbie Schmidt. We think Robbie’s description of the bonbons Miner offers as a special chocolate and wine pairing—“artistic beauty, coupled with melt in your mouth texture”—couldn’t be more accurate.  

https://www.earthandskychocolates.com

Use Code: MINERWC24, 10% OFF and free delivery in Napa Valley on purchases of $50+*

Our friends Amy and Peter Hall at Napa Valley Yoga Center are—unsurprisingly—wine enthusiasts and Miner Family fans. But their focus at the spacious Downtown Napa studio they own is, as they note on their website, “to expand the community for yoga, meditation, and wellness for the residents and visitors of Napa Valley.” This health-centered mission goes hand-in-hand with our own desire to promote local businesses that balance wine tasting with activities that can enjoyed by everyone.

https://napavalleyyogacenter.com/

20% off yoga classes. Contact sarah@minerwines.com

*Some exclusions may apply. This includes, but is not limited to, blackout dates and expedited shipping services. For questions or more information, please contact wineclub@minerwines.com.

The post Our favorite spots to stay and play while visiting Napa Valley appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

Those being the five gorgeous instruments in display cases on the wall opposite the front entrance, part of Dave Miner’s prized collection of Benedetto jazz guitars. Three others are found in the winery’s third floor hospitality space—a welcoming room known as the Benedetto Lounge.

And then there are the special bottlings of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon: the Benedetto Signature Series produced here at the winery since the 2002 vintage.

It’s all part of Dave’s longtime collaboration with the jazz guitar manufacturing company of the same name, founded in 1968 by his friend, the luthier—or guitar-maker—Bob Benedetto. While the cross-branding is intentional, signifying his deep engagement with both wine and music, the instruments themselves are much more than objects to admire. “Dave’s pretty unique among guitar collectors,” says his close friend, the renowned jazz guitarist Howard Paul. “He plays every guitar he owns, and he plays them all of the time.”

To hear Dave tell it, “the story with the guitars” is one that started a long time ago.

“When I was growing up, there was always music in the house,” he recalled recently. His parents enjoyed a variety of music, from classical to pop. Just as influential was his aunt Gloria, who played the cello and owned a classical guitar. “At family gatherings at her house, my brother Ed and I would sneak off to play the guitar in her room because there were no other kids our age.”

Around this time, Dave began taking piano lessons from a teacher who, he laughed, “was always yelling at me for not practicing.” During a lesson one day, he noticed a different instrument in the music room: a Gretsch archtop guitar. As a kid who’d already played around with his aunt’s guitar, it caught his attention. “And that just launched my imagination,” he said.

At 13, Dave and his family moved from Chicago to Southern California. His brother had started guitar lessons a couple of years earlier. Like the piano, Dave wasn’t interested in studying guitar, but the memory of that Gretsch came with him to his new home in Orange County.

“When my brother wasn’t around, I’d go into his room, turn on some music, plug in one of his guitars, and try to play along with the music—and not screw up!” he laughed again. “So I taught myself how to play as a teenager. Then around 16, I bought my own first guitar.”

That instrument, a Guild brand acoustic (“just a folk guitar,” as he described it) is long-lost. But the fascination with jazz he developed while in high school—the music of the great guitarist Joe Pass, in particular—predicted bigger things for his guitar-owning future.

A few years later, as an undergrad at UC San Diego, Dave got to see Pass at Elario’s, a storied restaurant and jazz club in La Jolla. “It was my real introduction to live jazz and the archtop,” he said, pausing to explain that this type of guitar is made in the style of a violin: hand-carved from a single piece of wood, with an “arched,” or curved, top and back, and thicker in the middle than at the sides. It has been Bob Benedetto’s signature method since he began his career.

“There was another famous player I followed, Bucky Pizzarelli, who I didn’t realize at the time played a Benedetto, but I’d been hearing about these guitars probably from the early 80s on. And to any guitar nut, if you’re talking about an archtop guitar, the Benedetto was what everybody wanted. Couldn’t afford, but wanted!”

Out of college in the mid-80s, Dave enjoyed success in the early Bay Area tech industry. He and Ed were living in Palo Alto. They saw jazz shows together, and Dave regularly attended the Monterey Jazz Festival. He would even spend hours on the weekends hanging out near his apartment at Gryphon Stringed Instruments. “It’s one of the best guitar stores in the country. Some well-known, local guitarists would be in there all of the time.”

But he was quick to point out that guitars and music meant something different to him.

“It was a big part of my life by then. It was something I did for fun and relaxation, but not professionally, and I never played in a band. But I’ve always had a good ear for music, and I have a really good ear when I play a guitar. I can tell in twenty seconds whether it’s a well-made guitar just by listening to it. I’ve always kind of had that knack and ability.”

Dave also had the understanding that Bob Benedetto’s company was behind some of the best-sounding, best-made guitars in the world, though he had yet to hold one in his hands. This changed after he met his future wife, Emily.

As a wedding present in 1999, Emily’s stepfather brought Bucky Pizzarelli and another virtuoso jazz guitarist, Howard Alden, to Napa Valley to perform at the new Miner Family Winery. “They both played Benedettos,” Dave remembered. “By that time, I had a growing collection of guitars. But the first time I ever touched a Benedetto in person was with Bucky and Howard.”

Coincidentally, he had just reached out to Bob about building him a guitar, as a handful of other custom builders had done for him. In 2003, the master luthier took him on as a client.

Meanwhile, Dave had a friend at another top manufacturer, Fender Guitars, who was a wine enthusiast and a participant in the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction. His friend, Rick Anderson, approached him with an idea: a custom Fender guitar, stained during the finishing process with Miner’s Napa Valley cabernet to create a beautiful, unique instrument. Rick pitched it as an attention-getting—and funds-raising—item. The Fender achieved both at the 2005 live auction, going for forty thousand dollars.

Soon afterward, Dave called Bob to check on the progress of his Benedetto guitar. When he shared the news about the wine-stained Fender at the auction, a light went off in Bob’s head.

“He said, ‘Wow! That’s interesting, because your guitar is getting to the point where I’m starting to think about finishing it.’ So he asked me to send him some red wine to try out as a stain. Three weeks later he called me and was very excited. ‘This is really cool! I have some wonderful ideas about what I’m going to do.’”

“But then he told me, ‘I drank all the stain!’”

Dave obligingly shipped Bob another case of wine, and the result was a guitar they christened, unofficially, “Vinodetto One.” Roughly a guitar every other year has followed. To date, a dozen of these masterpieces—officially known in the Miner and Benedetto universes as the Vinodetto Guitar Series—have been crafted.

For Dave, they’re jewels in a larger crown.

“When I got out of college, had a job, and was making good money, I started getting more serious about what I was buying. Now I have guitars that are all over the map: I have old and new acoustic guitars; I have flattop electrics, like Fenders and a Gibson or two; I have a couple classical guitars; I’ve got a mandolin. Almost all the rest are archtops, and many of those are Benedettos.”

“Every day, Dave’s got a guitar in his hand, and every week he’s switching to another guitar,” his friend Howard Paul told us. “So they all get played. I think they’re kind of like children to him. And he feels like he can’t ignore them. For a collector, he’s a little unusual in that way.”

Howard and Dave got acquainted through Bob and his wife, Cindy, in 2001 when Dave was traveling near Howard’s home in Savannah, Georgia. Hearing from the Benedettos that Dave played guitar, he invited him on a gig one evening with his band. “I think he was a little bit stressed out about being there,” Howard recalled with amusement. “But it was a really loud and crowded room, so nobody could hear us. I stuck Dave behind me with a guitar. He played a few notes here and there, and he had a good time. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

Dave Miner with Howard Paul

They are also cross-country business partners: Howard is CEO of Benedetto Guitars (and one of its more prominent players). In 2006, when Bob moved his manufacturing facility to Savannah, Dave became an investor in the company.

He recounted how, the previous year, he and Howard conceived of a summer dinner and concert at the winery to “show off this Vinodetto, the first guitar Bob made for me.” Being an ambitious vintner, Dave took it to the next level. “I decided to make a little wine—a cabernet that’s unique and maybe we would age a little longer. Just a couple hundred cases that we could sell at this concert we were talking about doing.”

“We came up with Benedetto Cabernet to release for the dinner and show, which evolved into the Benedetto Concert, and I got my guitar. I was overjoyed.”

Nearly 20 years later, the story with the Benedetto guitars, and the wines made to complement them, have only become more intrinsic to Miner’s identity.

“The Benedetto red is something different every year, but it’s always a high-end, Bordeaux-style blend designed to age,” Michelle Shafrir says of the special bottling she and Dave collaborate on to offer to Miner customers.

Made since its inception from a large percentage of cabernet sauvignon, Michelle notes that “the last couple vintages have been cabernet franc-based because that’s what Dave loves to drink.”

Another thing he loves is listening to live jazz guitar, whether performed locally in Napa Valley, at favorite San Francisco and Bay Area clubs, or clear across the country, from Chicago to New York. Unsurprisingly, Benedetto Guitars’ backyard of Savannah has its share of venues, as does Hilton Head Island a little ways across the state line in South Carolina. His knowledge of the best places to find live jazz is impressive.

As Dave told us, he’s a great listener. And as Howard mentioned, his friend and business partner plays all of the many guitars he owns and plays them well, including here in Oakville. Past Benedetto Concerts at the winery have seen intimate, outdoor performances by Howard and his group of fellow, world-class guitarists and other musicians. A less nervous—or, according to Howard, a more confident—Dave Miner has sat in with the band, playing one of his own Benedetto archtops to help entertain the audience. “That’s everything to Dave,” he said. “And, I think, to all of us. I mean, it’s why we’re in the businesses that we’re in.”

When Dave observed, while sharing the Miner-Benedetto story, that “it’s way more of an art than a science,” he was talking at the same time about winemaking and guitars—both their crafting and playing. It was a comparison that Howard, a knowledgeable and well-traveled wine enthusiast, echoed more than once.

“The way we make our guitars and the way Miner makes wines are really similar: for the consistently great outcome,” he said. “We’re both doing it for the integrity of the finished product. And we’re trying to make the very best product that we can make.”

The post The Harmony of Wine and Music: Dave Miner’s Benedetto Guitars appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

Bordeaux Duo
If there’s another wine producing region that Napa Valley most closely aligns with, it has to be Bordeaux in France, where blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc reflect those vines’ most noble potential. At Miner, we’re proud to strive for the same goal with our flagship bottling of The Oracle and our signature Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon—a pair of red wines that demonstrate the combined skills of the Napa Valley growers we work with and our great winemaking team.
RETAIL: $250 | WINE CLUB: $212.50
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Rhône Duo
Not to be outdone by their Bordeaux neighbors, growers in the Rhône Valley create some of France’s most intriguing red and white blends. Miner’s parallel versions—Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvèdre for The Odyssey; Marsanne, Roussanne, and Viognier for the Iliad—are complex and delicious counterparts to our traditional Napa Valley wines.
RETAIL: $80 | WINE CLUB: $68
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The Oracle with Miner Gift Bag
Is there anything better than getting one’s hands on a bottle of The Oracle, Miner Family’s flagship Napa Valley Red Wine? Only if it’s around the holidays and comes in a sturdy yet elegant, reusable gift bag.
RETAIL: $155 | WINE CLUB: $131.75
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The Oracle Vertical
More than just a trio of Napa Valley reds, The Oracle Vertical is a foray into the winery’s extensive library of its celebrated Cabernet-Merlot blend from three outstanding, back-to-back vintages. Virtually all of the grapes were harvested from the legendary Stagecoach Vineyard. Encased in a branded pine-and-birch box, The Oracle Vertical is a hefty gift package, worthy of this great wine’s reputation.
RETAIL: $500 | WINE CLUB: $425
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Happy Holidays Etched Bottle
Miner’s 2018 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon was produced from one of the finest vintages of the past two decades. Made holiday-ready through the addition of custom-etched season’s greetings, you can think of it like a holiday greeting card—but even more fun to open!
RETAIL: $80 | WINE CLUB: $68
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Personalized Etched Bottle
Named for our muse, Emily Miner, the Emily’s Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is one of our proudest offerings. In the classic 2019 vintage, we sourced grapes from several of Napa Valley’s best vineyards sites. A custom message or logo etched across the front of this singular Miner wine makes for an equally unique gift.
RETAIL: $110 | WINE CLUB: $95
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Single Bottle Gift Bag
This densely woven, durable gift bag, imprinted with our distinctive Miner logo, completes any Miner Family wine gift.
RETAIL $5
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2-Bottle Wood Box
Skillfully crafted from a combination of birchwood and pine and cushioned with straw, our 2-bottle box comes with a sliding top. This well-constructed, logo-branded wood package complements any pair of Miner wines.
RETAIL: $45 | WINE CLUB: $38.25
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Wine Club Membership
Give friends, loved ones or colleagues a gift that lasts all year long with a wine club membership. Our wine club ships four times per year, and comes in four, six or 12 bottle shipments. The wines shipped in each shipment are also completely customizable – so your gift recipient will get to choose from a list of curated options based on personal preference. Club members also receive a variety of benefits, including complimentary tastings for groups up to four, exclusive first access to small production wines, event tickets and more. Make every season special with Miner’s wine club membership!

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The post Spread the Joy of Giving with Miner Family Winery’s Gift Guide appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

Whether discussing growing and harvest conditions spread out over a decade’s worth of vintages or delving into a specific year in the life of this signature cabernet blend, Dave displays an impressive knack for recall. It’s no surprise, considering how closely The Oracle is tied to the identity of his winery.

On that subject, we asked him recently to name a couple of vintages that stick out in his memory going back to The Oracle’s debut vintage of 2001, just a few years after the winery’s founding. 

 “2001 is a vintage that I love because it’s super Bordeaux-like,” he said. “There’s not a lot of it left to try, but I had it not too long ago, and it’s still singing. It’s very old-world in style”—in part because of the two decades the wine has spent in bottle, and because a Bordeaux blend based on cabernet sauvignon, but not dominated by it, was his stylistic goal for The Oracle from the beginning.

“2005 was also a really strong vintage because it wasn’t super-hot, and there weren’t a lot of big, heat spikes. It was a long, even growing season. So for me, the 2005’s were really classic wines. They had beautiful fruit, with acids in balance and no rough edges—just really beautiful structure.”

Back-to-back, 2012 and 2013 also stirred some great memories for him. 

“I think they’re both fantastic vintages,” Dave said. “2012 was maybe a little rounder than the ’13. But in both of those years, there were huge crop sizes and great quality. We seemed to have a string of those vintages right around then, though sometimes things got a little more extreme.”

With his characteristic frankness, he recapped some of the battles he and his winemaking team have had over the years with Mother Nature—namely the rainy harvest season of 2011, along with Napa Valley’s dramatic, fire-challenged vintage of 2017. He was, however, upbeat about the wines that came out of those harvests, the 2017 in particular. “It was an unusual vintage because of the fires,” he remembered, “and it ended up being predominantly cabernet, about 80%, which was also an unusual blend for The Oracle.”

He explained that, in most vintages, the wine is typically between 50 and 60% cabernet sauvignon, balanced with merlot, cabernet franc, and small amounts of petit verdot and malbec—a classic, Bordeaux-inspired blend. Despite that varietal adjustment in 2017, “it was a very good vintage, and it’s a current release from the winery that I really like.” 

The great French wine region of Bordeaux has long influenced both Dave’s palate and his winemaking aspirations. 

Back in the late 80s, while working in the software industry, he started to dabble in wine collecting. His late uncle, Bob Miner, introduced him to what he called some “really profound” Bordeaux wines that are all blends. “I got to drink stuff like ’61 Figeac from Saint-Émilion, which I recall so distinctly as being one of those ‘ah-ha!’ moments. It was at a French place in San Francisco called Le Piano Zinc. I don’t know if they’re even still around. Probably not!”

That popular French bistro may be long gone, but Dave’s memories of those days in the 80s and 90s—and how cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc fit into them—have endured. 

“I got to drink Cheval Blanc with Bob a couple times,” he said, remembering how his uncle shared with him one of France’s greatest cabernet franc-based wines. “It was like one of those ‘religious’ experiences a wine drinker can have, you know? Cab franc was such a powerful, beautiful, elegant wine to my mind. It later became a big focus for me at Miner.”

The winery takes its name, of course, from Dave and Emily and the family winery project they started together in the mid-90s. But before this Oakville property acquired its current identity, Dave’s uncle owned and operated it as his and his wife Mary’s winery, Oakville Ranch, along with their large estate vineyard of the same name in the hills just southeast. 

When Dave left his position at Oracle Software in 1993, which Bob co-founded back in the late 70s, he moved to Napa to assume the role of President of Oakville Ranch for his uncle. With access to grapes from Oakville Ranch, he and Emily soon started to produce their first Miner Family-branded wines at the winery they would eventually take over after Bob’s untimely passing in 1994. 

All of this shared history, Dave explained, served as a foundation for The Oracle. 

“In the beginning they were pretty tied together, Miner and Oakville Ranch,” he recounted. “So the idea for The Oracle was already in my head long before we started to make the wine. Cabernets were the first things that we produced, but we didn’t really get enough fruit from Bob and Mary to make varietal Miner wines and a Bordeaux blend.” 

“When we started buying grapes from Jan at Stagecoach Vineyard, within the first couple of years my goal was to do a Bordeaux blend.”

The grapes for that 2001 bottling of The Oracle came entirely from Jan Krupp’s legendary estate high above Napa Valley near Atlas Peak—a rugged, mountain vineyard that Dave put in the same quality category as Oakville Ranch, and one that increased the amount of fruit he could purchase. From 2001  through the 2015 harvest, Stagecoach was the source of all the Bordeaux varieties that Dave and longtime Miner winemaker Gary Brookman put into bottle under The Oracle label. 

Starting in 2016, they began to look to other sources of grapes, while still relying on Stagecoach fruit. It’s a program that Dave and Michelle continue to this day. They also team up every year to finalize The Oracle blends through extensive tasting trials.

But what about the name? 

“In coming up with a brand and name for the wine, I would say it’s primarily a Greek mythology-inspired thing,” Dave told us. “And the reason that I say that is because Bob named the company ‘Oracle’ for the very same reason, because and he was a big fan of Greek mythology and Greek literature.”

It was an interest shared by uncle and nephew. As an English major in college, Dave studied and read Homer and other classic Greek literature (Miner Family customers and fans know that the winery’s white and red Rhône blends are called, respectively, The Iliad and The Odyssey). In Bob Miner’s case, having conceived in the 70s of a software language that could translate data into understandable information for its customers, he connected his work to the ancient Greek concept of an oracle: a person or entity that could offer people insights and even prophecies.

“So with the software, the data’s a mystery until they translate it into normal language,” Dave explained. “And for me, making The Oracle and blending wines is completely parallel to that: you’re taking all these lots of wine and these varietals, and you start putting them together, and then suddenly you discover what they’re supposed to be. That was a very powerful image to me, and it felt so right about how we do blends.”

One wine enthusiast who has gotten The Oracle’s message over the years is Dave Thompson. In 2006, the Santa Rosa-based wine writer launched The Napa Wine Project, an exhaustively researched website designed to profile hundreds of Napa Valley wineries. Under his detailed Miner Family entry, he highlights much of the same backstory around The Oracle that Dave related. 

“The Oracle is lovely in its youth, but it obviously has the ability to age,” Thompson told us over the phone recently after tasting two vintages, the 2013 from library and just-released 2019. 

He went into more detail, noting The Oracle program is “not one of these overly showy, opulent wines straight out of the gate, which some flagship wines can be. These two vintages I had recently, and others, they’re structured wines but not overly so. I think The Oracle is a very well-made wine for the price point. It’s probably a little undervalued for a flagship wine from a well-established winery.”

The hospitality team at Miner has recently begun pouring the 2019 vintage in the current release tasting line up. Like the celebrated 2012 and 2013, Dave is excited for its aging potential. He certainly has a track record to fall back on. 

“As I mentioned, I’ve had the ’01 Oracle recently, a wine that’s 22 years old. And that wine to me is almost perfect right now,” he said. “Every vintage is slightly different depending on a bunch of variables, but I feel they always have a sense of balance. And even in a warmer or riper vintage, the great thing about The Oracle is that we get to mix all of these different lots and varietals together. In the big picture, it brings a better balance to the whole program.”

From the get-go in 2001, and the preceding years when he and Emily were building Miner Family into the brand it is today, Dave wanted the wines “to be more elegant, more balanced, and have more layers of flavor.” 

“For me, I wanted it to be more of an old-world style wine,” he shared, “but with more power from California. Naturally, it’s just going to be that way.”

The post Of Myth and Memory: Dave Miner on The Oracle Red Wine appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

For those who made their way to the Miner Family Winery table that day, the event wasn’t just a wine tasting. It was a study in contrasts.

Since the late 1990s, the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA has been the focus of Miner Family’s Pinot Noir program. To Dave Miner, it’s a consistency driven by intention. “In my mind, Santa Lucia Highlands is the ideal pinot location in California,” he told us recently. “The combination of special terroir—the soil type, microclimate, and other factors—and passionate growers makes for the perfect location for elegant and expressive pinot noir.”

Expressiveness was certainly a theme at the May festival, with dozens of wineries showing off some delicious versions of SLH pinot noir. Several poured wines made from the same trio of vineyards—Garys’, Sierra Mar, and Rosella’s—that Miner Family has been accessing for many years. Where we really saw the contrast was at our own table: we lost count of the number of tasters who commented on how “light-bodied,” “restrained,” and just plain “different” our pinots were compared to many other wineries’.

In keeping with Dave’s description, “elegant” was another word we heard time and again. For that, it’s important to highlight this narrow band of a grapegrowing region, situated thirty miles inland from the Monterey Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean, and set against an enormous backdrop of Monterey County farmland not devoted to viticulture.

The Santa Lucia Highlands AVA sits above the Salinas Valley—or what the veteran grower Gary Franscioni calls “the salad bowl of the world.”

To better understand where their vineyards and AVA fit into Monterey’s larger viticultural map, we recently got on the phone with Gary and his son, Adam. For the winery’s entire history of bottling pinot noir, the Miner and Franscioni families have collaborated to produce single-vineyard versions from Santa Lucia. Dave’s reverence for SLH fruit makes even more sense when you talk grapegrowing with this father-and-son team.

“For eight months of the year, roughly 90% of the nation’s vegetables come out of Salinas Valley,” Gary told us on the call. He noted that, on top of Monterey County’s 200,000 acres of farmland, there are another 40,000 acres of grapevines. “But then, if you just take the SLH, there are only 5,500 acres of grapevines. So that kind of puts it all in perspective.”

It was a perspective that Dave started to appreciate years ago. In 1996, through a close, mutual friend named Duffy McGinn, he got connected to the Santa Lucia Highlands grower Gary Pisoni and made the very first Miner Family Pinot Noir. His partner in the effort was yet another Gary: longtime winemaker Gary Brookman.

Sharing Swiss-Italian heritage, the two “Santa Lucia Garys”—Franscioni and Pisoni—came from multi-crop farming backgrounds before getting into wine grapes. Together, in 1997, they planted Garys’ Vineyard outside the town of Gonzales. Over the phone, Adam Franscioni described the 50-acre parcel at the time as “just barren, virgin ground.”

What a difference a quarter century and the two families’ efforts have made. Today Garys’ is perhaps the most acclaimed viticultural site in Monterey County. During the Sun, Wind & Wine Festival, it was the go-to wine requested by visitors at our table.

“Garys’ Vineyard is co-owned between 50% Franscioni family and 50% percent Pisoni family,” Adam explained. “My dad and Gary Pisoni started that in ’97. It’s sort of a story unto itself.”

A decade later, the Franscioni side of that story carried over, six and a half miles south “as the crow flies,” Adam recounted, to Sierra Mar Vineyard. This property has been in his family since the 1950s but was only planted to grapevines in 2007. Miner’s first vintage from the high-elevation site was 2010.

A mile and a half up River Road from Garys’, you find the third Franscioni family property—the one to which they have the closest connection: Rosella’s Vineyard. It’s the home ranch where Gary lives and the most northern SLH property in the Franscioni family. Named for Adam’s mother, he shared his own ties to the place: “I grew up on Rosella’s Vineyard and spent summers doing tasks, anything from general hand-labor to some basic tractor driving.” For the last five years, he added, “I’ve pretty much been farming with my dad full-time.”

If Rosella’s, Sierra Mar, and Garys’ Vineyards are bound together by ownership within a single AVA, they’re differentiated by soil types, elevations, and even other SLH growers’ viticultural practices. “In the north, we’re predominantly Chualar loam,” Adam noted, “while in the south at Sierra Mar, it’s mostly decomposed granite. So it’s a little bit harder ground. The soils are more marginal at Sierra Mar .”

“As far as farming practices, we are pretty similar all the way around,” he pointed out. “We do everything by hand, and we’re very old-school that way. We feel it’s the best way to be.”

He emphasized that the grapegrowing can vary around the Santa Lucia Highlands—another study in contrasts. “If you drive down the whole of River Road, you’ll see some vineyards that are cropped to be seven or eight tons. Our goal is to really be three tons per acre.”

“Each vine gets touched every twelve days,” Adam said, “whether it’s canopy management and making sure that the canopies are nice and tidy so that we don’t have too much vigor, or overgrowth and shading.”

Such hands-on attention to detail makes a big difference in the quality of the grapes delivered during harvest. After several vintages, Michelle is highly attuned to the unique characteristics of each vineyard site. And, she says, she loves how they express themselves differently. “Looking at the map, you’ll see the Garys’ and Rosella’s Vineyards are further northwest, closer to Monterey Bay, while Sierra Mar is further south, but also at a much higher elevation, like a thousand feet above sea level. So I think that’s probably, for me, where a lot of the differences come from.”

She explained that, for the past few vintages, Miner has been getting grapes from all three vineyards grown on Pisoni Clone vines—the clone of pinot noir named for Gary Pisoni and long rumored to have come to California in his suitcase via the great Burgundy village of Vosne-Romanée (Miner’s fourth and smallest pinot noir bottling, Rosella’s 777, is named for yet another clone). “So it’s the same clone but with different soil types. And with those unique locations, I feel like the Pisoni clone is expressed differently from each site.”

“Sierra Mar is definitely the more fruit-forward out of the three vineyards. With Garys’, I’d say it’s more plummy, with a richness and a dark fruit character, versus Rosella’s, which is the most floral out of the three sites.”

“These are all small nuances between the wines,” Michelle summed up. “But what’s lovely about pinot noir is that, even with one clone, it expresses differently from place to place.”

With vineyard practices in mind, we asked assistant winemaker (and Napa Valley native) Rebecca Brookman to comment on the differences between Monterey County pinot noir and Napa cabernet and other Bordeaux varieties. “Pinot noir is definitely more delicate and, if you will, ‘sensitive,’” she believes. “Obviously the grapes that grow around here in Napa Valley in this hot-hot heat are just tougher and less likely to get sunburned. So for pinot, we prefer Santa Lucia Highlands. We think it’s the best site for it.”

Over the twenty harvests that the “other” two Garys—Rebecca’s dad and Gary Franscioni—collaborated, it was, according to the latter, a close working relationship. “I give credit to Dave Miner for pursuing pinot noir and finding us,” he said. But he also pointed out that Miner’s former head winemaker laid extensive groundwork for a quality-driven pinot noir program, now continued by Michelle Shafrir.

For her part, Michelle insists that it really goes back to the farming.

“They know their vineyards so, so well. I talk to Adam to check in on him, to make sure that I know where things are at in the vineyards, and he’ll tell me what they’re expecting. However, with those guys, they’re such amazing farmers. I couldn’t even presume to give them suggestions on what to do in terms of farming. It’s second nature to them. So I just trust them to grow the most amazing and best fruit that you can get from those spots.”

At the end of our call with Adam and Gary, the younger Franscioni shared some final thoughts.

“We consider a lot of the wineries that buy from us ‘partners.’ So to have the partnership that Miner and my dad and I—and now Michelle, having been brought into the fold—have had for this long is just a testament to the commitment on each side to make fine wine,” Adam summed up. “It seems to be happening less and less as you see more consolidation in the industry. I think it’s something to be celebrated because people out there still need good, quality wine.”

The post The Vineyard Series, Number Three: Exploring the Santa Lucia Highlands + Miner Family Pinot Noir appeared first on Miner Family Wines.

In a year that started out wet and cold and stayed that way, off and on, through the normally mild days of spring, Mother Nature’s chilly mood has turned out to be a bellwether of the delayed ’23 grape harvest.

From our head winemaker’s point of view, that’s potentially a very good thing.

“It’s been relatively cool all summer,” she said recently. “And then with everything being delayed at this point—delayed veraison for example—the vineyards are still looking good. We have such big canopies: big leaves with lots of photosynthesis potential there. The soils have a lot of retained moisture for the vines to draw on. So everything looks very healthy.”

She ticked off examples of the atypical 2023 growing season. The year’s overall cooler conditions have caused calendar markers like budbreak, bloom and veraison to happen two to three weeks later than they would in an average year.

Michelle consulted her records from the ’22 harvest and noted that grapes started getting picked in the last two weeks of August—basically, a normal schedule for the first harvested fruit, sauvignon blanc.

“I think we’re looking at just about everything being late,” she said. “With the sauvignon blanc, unless we have a lot of heat accumulating over the next month, I can’t see things coming in early. So, we have to be patient, because it’s just going to take longer this year on the vine. It’s the same thing in Santa Lucia Highlands: I talked to our pinot noir grower, Adam Franscioni. He said we’re looking at something like a mid-to-late-October potential pick date.”

She explained that, for pinot noir, some delayed ripening is beneficial in the development of complex flavors; when it occurs too quickly, the result can be a very fruit-forward wine. “With our pinot, we’re looking for more nuance. We want the fruit, but we also want those spicy notes and the earthy character to come through. So having the time for all of those different flavors to develop is very important.”

Michelle had a similar thought on chardonnay, especially as it pertained to the huge amount of rainfall Napa Valley and the Bay Area received in 2023. “I was just talking to Chris Hyde earlier, and it’s the same thing with Hyde Vineyard. It looks like we’re going to have good yields this year, versus what we’ve had the past couple of years. All of that water, all that rain that we got this past winter, has really reinvigorated the vineyard so that the vines have a reservoir of water to draw from throughout their growth cycle.”

“Everything is looking even through the vineyard,” she observed of the Hydes’ Carneros property, a key piece of the Miner Family Chardonnay program.

Weather-related delays aside, preparations for the impending crush have continued at a brisk pace. This is where our Cellar Master Wes Raineri and his team enter the picture.

Having seen twenty-five harvests at Miner, Wes can appreciate the importance of where the grapes come from and their condition upon arrival at the crush pad. Overseeing how the fruit then gets to barrel and bottle is his area of expertise.

He took a few minutes out of a busy day to fill us in on the current cellar activities, but first had to give instructions to a driver delivering a twenty-yard pomace bin. The container wouldn’t get used (to collect the dried remains of pressed grapes, or pomace) for another couple of weeks after the onset of crush—more of Michelle’s “hurry up and wait.”

Wes started off with a comparison of this year to last, telling us that the driver had just dropped another bin at a Carneros winery where, in 2022, he’d made the same delivery a full month earlier. “I don’t recall ever getting our first fruit so late,” he said. “Even our sauvignon blanc, we might not get it the first week of September. It might be the second week.”

He added that, in terms of preparations, the late summer days at Miner were otherwise business as usual. “We’re just trying to finish up every aspect of non-harvest related wine work we can, so we can have all hands on deck getting everything ready for the first grapes.”

“We’re still waiting to pick,” Michelle reminded us, her anticipation of this delayed harvest only heightened by what she’s been observing out in the vineyards, and in conversations with Miner’s growers. “It’s a later vintage than the previous two years, but in a very good way. If the weather cooperates, we have the potential here for an absolutely epic vintage. We’re talking moderate yields and loose clusters with smaller berries. And if grapes are able to reach their target ripeness, the wines should have great color and should be intensely flavored. So we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that we have this steady, warm weather—85 or 90 degrees—and it’ll be perfect.”

In the meantime, Wes and his cellar crew are, along with Michelle, embracing the concept of patience. “We just do one thing at a time, trying to make this place more efficient and make better quality wine,” he said. “And now we’re pretty much ready to go. It’s just a waiting game.”

A quick harvest update:

The grapes are in! (the very first of them, anyway…)

On the morning of the second Friday in September, the ’23 harvest and crush at Miner Family officially began with the delivery of fifteen tons of sauvignon blanc from Shartsis Vineyard, a small property off of Whitehall Lane in the northwest corner of Rutherford. Michelle earlier had told us that this longtime source of grapes is usually the very first vineyard to get picked for us every year, and this year is no exception—despite all of the other surprises 2023 has offered.

Next up: a similar quantity of sauvignon blanc from Sage Creek Vineyard in Chiles Valley, and then… Michelle asks us to stay tuned!

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