Vineyard 29 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Retrospective
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
Chuck McMinn, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had previously worked for IBM and Intel and founded Covad Communications in 1996, attended Auction Napa Valley for the first time in June of 1999. A wine lover, McMinn was quickly enamored of the area and its denizens. He and his wife Anne decided they wanted to buy a weekend house there (they were living in Los Altos at the time). By coincidence, McMinn purchased a six-liter bottle of the 1997 Vineyard 29 wine in late ’99 and barely a couple months later heard that the property, located in the western hills of Napa Valley just north of St. Helena, might be for sale. In the space of two weeks, he decided to buy it and to get into the wine business, liking the idea that it was another startup, though not one in the high-tech field. Later on in 2000, McMinn also acquired the historic Aida vineyard, a bit to the north of Vineyard 29.
Vineyard 29's Estate Cabernet vineyard
The Early History of Vineyard 29
Vineyard 29 had been established by Tom Paine and Teresa Norton, who purchased the property in 1989 and hired vineyard manager David Abreu to plant a three-acre vineyard, using vine cuttings from Grace Family Vineyards, located just a couple hundred yards to the north. McMinn then planted 1.25 acres of Cabernet Franc a bit higher on the hillside, as well as half an acre of Sauvignon Blanc. Some of the young Cabernet Franc went into the estate’s flagship blend during the mid-‘00s but since then has been bottled on its own (under Vineyard 29’s Cru label). In 2008, McMinn bought his neighbor’s property to the south, which featured seven acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc planted in 1997, also to the Grace clone (actually Clone 7).
Heidi Peterson Barrett made Vineyard 29’s 1994 through 1998 vintages in the tiny Grace cellar, and Tom Paine brought in consulting enologist Philippe Melka to vinify the 1999 vintage at Miner Family Vineyards in Oakville. One of McMinn’s first decisions was to keep Melka on to make his wines. From McMinn’s first release (the 2000 vintage in 2000), Vineyard 29 attracted highly positive press and a loyal consumer following.
Vineyard 29’s Aida Vineyard, as seen in the Vinous Map of the Vineyards of St. Helena & Conn Valley, by Antonio Galloni and Alessandro Masnaghetti
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With his spare-no-expenses winery and meticulous attention to detail, former tech start-up expert Chuck McMinn has fashioned a classic and long-lived Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon at Vineyard 29, his estate at the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains in St. Helena’s Northern Corridor.
