The California wineries every collector should have in their cellar

While the current form of California’s fine wine history is a postwar story, its roots run deeper than many observers allow. The estates explored in this guide in particular trace a meaningful arc from the late nineteenth-century terraced hillsides of immigrant pioneers through the modern era’s most rigorous boutique projects. What follows is a specialist’s selection of Californian producers particularly worthy of cellaring today, roughly sequenced from oldest to youngest by the founding (or refounding) of the winery. These are estates whose wines have repeatedly rewarded patient ageing in the cellar while commanding considered attention at auction.

Ridge Vineyards

Ridge’s story begins in 1885, when San Francisco physician Osea Perrone purchased 180 acres atop Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, terraced the slopes, built a three-level limestone winery into the mountainside, and bottled the first Monte Bello in 1892. The modern Ridge Vineyards dates to 1959, when four Stanford Research Institute engineers — led by Dave Bennion — bought William Short’s replanted vineyard just below Perrone’s (Perrone’s old winery followed in 1968); the first commercial Monte Bello of the new era was 1962, and Stanford philosophy graduate Paul Draper arrived in 1969 and stayed on until 2016. The 1971 Monte Bello famously placed fifth at the 1976 Judgment of Paris — yet it won Steven Spurrier’s 30-year retrospective in 2006. Monte Bello, grown on California’s rare limestone soils at 1,300–2,760 feet and aged in American oak, remains — as collectors and critics have long argued — one of California’s most cellar-worthy wines.

Mayacamas Vineyards

The German-born San Francisco pickle merchant John Henry Fisher built his stone winery and distillery atop Mount Veeder in 1889, planted Zinfandel, and shipped his barrels by horse-cart and barge down to San Francisco. Bankrupted by the 1906 earthquake, the property lay largely dormant — save for some Prohibition-era bootlegging — until Jack and Mary Taylor purchased it in 1941, renamed it Mayacamas (a Wappo word said to evoke the howl of the mountain lion), and replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. Bob Travers’s 1968 acquisition — following a vintage under Joe Heitz and ongoing counsel from André Tchelistcheff — established the canonical Mayacamas style: low-yielding fruit from up to 2,400 feet in elevation, fermented in concrete, raised in century-old foudres with vanishingly little new oak. Alongside Ridge, Heitz, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Chateau Montelena, and others, the 1971 Mayacamas Cabernet Sauvignon competed in the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting. Since 2013, the Schottenstein family has been the steward; Braiden Albrecht now makes the wines, having maintained the ageworthy, tense, classical style.

Heitz Cellar

Joe Heitz — a seven-year protégé of André Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyard — founded his eponymous winery with his wife Alice in 1961 and then made history with the 1966 Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, regarded as the first vineyard-designated wine bottled in Napa Valley. The vineyard, planted on the bench above Oakville in 1961 by Barney and Belle Rhodes, owned since 1963 by Tom and Martha May, and famously hemmed by eucalyptus, has long been the subject of debate about its signature minty character. Fermented in stainless and raised first in large neutral American oak before barrique, the 1966, 1968, 1970, 1974, and 1985 Martha’s Vineyard remain among the most ageworthy Cabernet Sauvignons ever produced in the United States, and many well-aged Heitz bottlings continue to drink superbly today. Since 2018 the Lawrence family has owned the property; Brittany Sherwood is just the third winemaker in the estate’s history. Bella Oaks, Trailside, Linda Falls, and the rare Lot C-91 are also certainly worth collecting.

Diamond Creek Vineyards

Al Brounstein, a pharmaceuticals wholesaler from Saskatchewan via Minnesota and Los Angeles, purchased his 70 acres on Diamond Mountain in 1967 and — on the advice of Tchelistcheff and Louis Martini, Sr. — planted mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, importing budwood reportedly smuggled in via Mexico from Bordeaux’s First Growths. Diamond Creek was among the first single-variety estates in California, and Brounstein was the first vintner in California to bottle three (and later four) wines as individuated vineyard-designates: Volcanic Hill, Red Rock Terrace, Gravelly Meadow, and the postage-stamp Lake Vineyard. He famously priced Lake 1978 at $100 — also a California first. The winery’s inaugural 1972 vintage was made by Jerry Luper; the long-tenured Phil Steinschriber led winemaking from 1991. In 2020 the Rouzaud family of Champagne Louis Roederer acquired the estate, with Graham Wehmeier recruited from Futo as winemaker. The wines remain quintessential vins de garde.

Spottswoode Estate

The pre-Prohibition Spottswoode estate on St. Helena’s western edge was established in 1882 by the German immigrant hotelier George Schonewald (the Victorian home depicted on the label was his); the Spotts family christened it Spottswoode in 1910. Mary and Jack Novak acquired the estate and its aged pre-Prohibition vineyard in 1972 and, after Jack’s sudden death in 1977, Mary stewarded it alone, initially selling fruit to Shafer, Duckhorn, and others. The first Spottswoode Cabernet was bottled in 1982 — exactly a century after the estate’s founding — with the young Tony Soter as winemaker. Soter began organic farming in 1985, nearly unheard-of at the time; CCOF certification followed in 1992. Critics have long counted Spottswoode among Napa’s ‘first growths’, and Robert Parker repeatedly compared it to Château Margaux, once writing that ‘if Château Margaux were in Napa Valley, it would be Spottswoode.’ Beth Novak Milliken now leads the family estate; Aron Weinkauf makes the wines. The Cabernets are among Napa’s most reliably elegant and consistently ageworthy.

Dominus Estate

Christian Moueix — son of Jean-Pierre Moueix of Libourne, and longtime steward of Petrus, Trotanoy, La Fleur-Pétrus, and Magdelaine — established Dominus in partnership with John Daniel Jr.’s daughters Robin Lail and Marcia Smith on the historic Napanook vineyard in Yountville in 1982-83 on Robert Mondavi’s recommendation. Napanook’s viticultural history extends back to 1838, when George C. Yount planted Napa’s first vines on the site. Moueix took sole ownership in 1995; the wine had borne the name ‘Dominus,’ lord of the estate, since its 1983 debut. An eco-brutalist basalt-cage winery, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, was completed in 1997. The vineyard is famously dry-farmed (and CCOF organic since 2021); Tod Mostero — Haut-Brion, Petrus, DRC, and Almaviva-trained — is the current Director of Viticulture and Winemaking. Particularly outstanding vintages include the 1991, 1994, 2001, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2018.

Harlan Estate, BOND, and Promontory

By the 1980s, Bill Harlan had found himself to be a real estate developer with a rapidly expanding interest in Napa Valley, and, following an investment in St. Helena that would become Meadowood, he found and purchased a large, wild, rocky spit of land in the Mayacamas foothills of western Oakville just above the inimitable Martha’s Vineyard in 1984; Bob Levy was brought in from Merryvale (prior to which he was at Rombauer) to make the wines, and the first commercial vintage of Harlan Estate was 1990. BOND was founded in 1996 to address what Harlan called the ‘Grands Crus’ of Napa — today five distinct, contracted, mostly hillside vineyards across disparate Napa AVAs (Vecina, Melbury, St. Eden, Pluribus, and Quella). Promontory, found in the hills south of Harlan (and previously known as Lone Canyon, stewarded by Girard and later Ladera), was acquired in 2008. Will Harlan succeeded his father as managing director in 2021; Cory Empting now directs winemaking across all three properties. Levy remains an active emeritus advisor.

Corison Winery

Cathy Corison — Pomona biology graduate, UC Davis Enology master’s, an early intern at Freemark Abbey under Josephine Tychson’s long historical shadow, and nearly a decade as head winemaker at Chappellet — founded her own label in 1987, buying fruit (and barrels) from the alluvial Rutherford–St. Helena benchlands where great Cabernets have been grown since the late nineteenth century. She and her husband William Martin acquired the old, low-yielding 1971-planted Kronos Vineyard, immediately south of St. Helena, in 1995, and the Tchelistcheff-planted Sunbasket in 2015. The wines, broadly if not exclusively 100% varietal, are picked on the earlier side, lower in alcohol (typically 13.6–13.9%), and built on classical Bordeaux lines. Perspicacious critics have written admiringly of Corison’s steadfast classicism, and Jancis Robinson MW has famously called her wines ‘the essence of Napa Valley minus the bludgeoning force.’ Corison library Cabernets, especially the great 1990s vintages, are consistently remarkable.

Sine Qua Non

Manfred Krankl — the Austrian émigré who co-founded Los Angeles’s Campanile and ran its wine program — and his wife Elaine launched Sine Qua Non with the 1994 Queen of Spades, a hundred cases of Syrah from purchased fruit that Robert Parker promptly rated 95 points. Every release through the 2018 vintage bore a never-repeated name and Krankl’s own label art; the near-impossibility of registering new names then prompted the numbered Distenta series, drawn principally from four estate vineyards. Its Syrahs, among the first from America to trade in real volume at auction, include perfect-scoring benchmarks such as the 2002 Just for the Love of It and 2005 Atlantis Fe2O3.

Eisele Vineyard

Just east of Calistoga at the foot of the Palisades, the alluvial Eisele Vineyard was first planted in the 1880s by the Pickett family, replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon in 1964 prior to the Eiseles’ 1969 acquisition, and supplied fruit to a procession of legendary vineyard-designated bottlings: Ridge in 1971 (Paul Draper’s legendary sole Eisele), Conn Creek in 1974, and Joe Phelps from 1975 to 1991. Bart and Daphne Araujo acquired the site in 1990 and founded what would become Araujo Estate, with the first Estate Cabernet from the 1991 vintage, farming the vineyard organically from 1998 and biodynamically from 2000. In 2013 François Pinault’s Artémis Domaines (also of Latour, d’Eugénie, Grillet, Clos de Tart, et al.) acquired the property, and the wine was renamed Eisele Vineyard Estate from the 2013 vintage. Hélène Mingot makes the wines; Antoine Donnedieu de Vabres is general manager.

Screaming Eagle

Jean Phillips — then a real estate agent who had sold Gustav Dalla Valle his property — bought this mythical plot of vines near Oakville Cross Road’s eastern terminus at Silverado Trail in 1986. Here, from 1992 through early 2006, she fashioned illustrious vintage after illustrious vintage alongside Heidi Peterson Barrett. While the parcel’s neighbors include other lauded vineyards — Tench, Tin Box, Harbison, Leopoldina, Dalla Valle, Gargiulo, and BOND’s St. Eden — the complex soils of Screaming Eagle are simply sui generis. The contiguous 57 acres at the foot of the Vaca range variously comprise alluvial fans, clay, volcanic rock, gravel, and underground streams. The 1992, released in 1995 under Phillips, was awarded 99 points by Robert Parker, and the rest is history. Stan Kroenke (also of Bonneau du Martray and Jonata) has been sole proprietor since 2009. Today Nick Gislason, who has made the wines since 2011, directs both vineyard and cellar with the estate's own team.

Scarecrow

The 1945 Cabernet Sauvignon plantings at the historic J.J. Cohn Estate — immediately adjacent to Inglenook in Rutherford — are among the oldest commercially producing Cabernet vines in North America. Cohn, the MGM production executive behind The Wizard of Oz, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Ben-Hur, was prevailed upon by his neighbor John Daniel Jr. of Inglenook to plant the property in 1945, fortuitously on St. George rootstock that resisted the phylloxera devastation of the 1980s–90s. Cohn fruit, sold for decades by handshake, found its way into legendary Inglenook bottlings, as well as into Insignia, Opus One, and others. Following Cohn’s death in 1996 and a 2002 estate sale to Francis Ford Coppola and Cohn’s grandson Bret Lopez, the Scarecrow label was born; the 2003 inaugural was made by Celia Welch. The wines — anchored by the two-acre 1945 ‘Old Men’ block — are deeply terroir-driven, ageworthy, and exceptional.

Colgin Cellars

Ann Colgin’s first wine, a 1992 Cabernet Sauvignon from thirteen rows of the great Herb Lamb Vineyard in the Howell Mountain foothills, was made by Helen Turley with David Abreu as vineyard manager, and Colgin bottled the site through 2007. Estate wines followed from Tychson Hill, north of St. Helena, in 2000 and from the 125-acre IX Estate on Pritchard Hill (purchased 1998) in 2002; Allison Tauziet has made the wines since 2007, and LVMH acquired a 60% stake in 2017. The wines only truly blossom at around ten years of age.

MacDonald Vineyards

The MacDonald parcel, the rockiest fifteen acres of the historic To-Kalon vineyard — originally established by H. W. Crabb in 1868 — was purchased by brothers Alex and Graeme MacDonald’s great-grandparents Richard and Hedwig Detert in 1954, who planted Cabernet Sauvignon and sold fruit to Robert Mondavi by handshake for some six decades, contributing to Mondavi’s Reserve and early Opus One bottlings. Mondavi himself called the family ‘the best grape-growers in the Napa Valley.’ The brothers established the eponymous MacDonald label in 2010, beginning with just 92 cases of 100% Cabernet Sauvignon; Graeme — also winemaker at Blankiet — farms the vineyard by hand, dry-farms wherever possible, and has worked tirelessly to defend To-Kalon as a place rather than a brand. Critics and collectors have rightly championed these wines from the earliest vintages. Production remains tiny — around 500 cases — and these are among Napa’s most allocation-limited Cabernets. Buy them whenever and wherever you can.