Working With Nature

As a family that came to the wine business as farmers first, our love of the land influences everything we do. Our environmental stewardship led us to embrace sustainable and organic farming early on. Our search for superior vineyards sites led us to acquire land in some of Napa Valley’s finest appellations, including Rutherford, Oakville, St. Helena and Carneros. Over the years, as we’ve planted and replanted this land to vines, we’ve experimented with rootstocks, clones, trellising systems and a variety of viticultural techniques, always striving to produce the best possible quality. We were one of the first wineries to pick grapes at night, lugging generators and floodlights through the fields at two o’clock in the morning in order to hand harvest and deliver fruit that was cool and pristine.

Every wine we produce, from Trilogy to our single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons, is crafted to express the singular soils, microclimates, and beauty of its respective vineyard origins.

Farming On Principle

“Love the land and it will love you back.” – Flora Komes

These words of our founding matriarch are deeply ingrained in our hearts and in our approach to everything we do. The sustainable and organic growing practices we utilize in all of our vineyards are an extension of this philosophy, a way of paying tribute to Flora’s love of all things living, and of ensuring that the land she loved is here for the next generation, and the next. It is an integral part of our heritage as well as the legacy we leave.

Sustainable Practices

As our family has grown, so have our vineyard holdings, and we now own nearly 350 acres of vineyards throughout Napa Valley. Farming our vineyards sustainably makes for healthy vines, happy neighbors, an ecologically-sound place to live and work, and what we think are some pretty outstanding wine grapes. While green vineyard practices are considered innovative, many of them are really a return to much older, even ancient ways of growing things.

Building healthy soil: We get pretty excited about dirt around here, just ask Proprietor and Vineyard Director Pat Garvey. He’s been known to stop in the middle of a tour and dig through the soil with his bare hands to show it off! Sustainable and organic farming focuses on building healthy soils rich in beneficial microorganisms and organic matter. Through the use of composts and cover crops (planted in between the vines) we improve the health of our soils and vines and reduce erosion.

Controlling vineyard pests naturally: We use a variety of methods to combat unwanted pests in the vineyard, including installing blue bird and owl nesting boxes as well as raptor perches to control insects and rodents, and mechanically tilling our soils instead of spraying.

Conserving water and biodiversity: We use drip irrigation to carefully control our water usage, and encourage biodiversity by encouraging healthy flora and improving habitat along the edges of our vineyards. 

Making quality job #1: By using sustainable and organic farming methods we naturally force ourselves to care for our vineyards with a focused and ever-watchful eye. The result, if we do our job correctly, is that our vineyards become stronger, and better able to grow better, more concentrated grapes. Hopefully, the evidence is in the bottle!