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Hooked by the Wild Horse Valley experience, he moved to Napa Valley, and launched his wine industry career, eventually establishing Enfield Wine Co.

In 2006, John Lockwood came to help Mahaffey work the crush. Mahaffey’s wines, first bottled under the Heron Lake label, and later under the Olivia Brion brand, have gained a devoted following and are featured in many of the area’s best restaurants. Over the years, grapes grown in Wild Horse Valley have attracted attention from some of Napa Valley’s best wineries, such as Newton Vineyard, which made Heron Lake Vine- yard grapes a staple component of its splendid “unfiltered” Chardonnays. The brainchild of Kenzo Tsujimoto, the vineyard boasts two superstars – viticulturist David Abreu and winemaker Heidi Barrett. That includes a portion of the gorgeous Kenzo Estate vineyard, located in the AVA’s northern reaches. According to Newmeyer, only about ten percent of the land is suit- able for wine grapes, and just a fraction of that is planted. Wild Horse Valley remains sparsely planted, devoted mostly to wilderness protection, watershed preservation and cattle grazing. “Yields in the rocky soils are low, so the best option is to grow grapes with intensely concentrated fruit flavors from which high-value wine can be made,” Newmeyer added, “Burgundian varieties, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, were the right choices.”Ī few years later, recognizing the unique attributes of this growing region, Newmeyer and Mahaffey set about the painstaking task of applying for, and ultimately achieving, a separate AVA designation for Wild Horse Valley, which includes land in Napa and Solano counties. If you’re going to a dinner party and don’t know what’s on the menu, bring a Pinot.” “Pinot Noir checks off everything you could ask for in a great wine: layered complexity, a nuance that changes with every sip, and perfect food pairing capability. “If I were stranded on a desert island, and had just one bottle of wine to drink, it would be Pinot Noir,” said Mahaffey. Sizing up the opportunity, Mahaffey soon grafted over one- third of the vines into Pinot Noir. Soon afterward, he met a passionate young winemaker, David Mahaffey. “He shared my excitement about the potential of the place.” In 1980 John established Heron Lake Vineyard, planting 24 acres.

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“Rene di Rosa and I walked over a patch of land by Heron Lake,” Newmeyer recalled. In 1978 he and his friends purchased the thousand-acre Green Valley Ranch at the end of Green Valley Road. One pioneer was John Newmeyer, a San Francisco epidemiologist and wine enthusiast. By the 1970s, vineyard farming had resumed. Over the next few decades, homesteaders gradually returned, despite two serious wildfires in 19. By 1945, there were almost no inhabitants.

Then gasoline rationing during World War II made the area hard to reach.

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Malandrino earned notoriety when he illegally diverted Vallejo’s municipal water for his own use, and later, when torrential winter rains destroyed his poorly-constructed dam, leading to downstream flooding, blame, and lawsuits.Ī series of misfortunes befell the little valley– the economic depressions in 18, a phylloxera outbreak in the 1890s, and a devastating wildfire in 1913. But this success has been hard-won.Īccording to historical records, a dozen families had settled in the valley by 1873, and shortly there- after, grape growing pioneers Joseph Vorbe, Pierre Fournier, and Constance Malandrino were planting vineyards. Blessed by ample water, well-drained soils, and the rich minerality of the rocky landscape, the area has become known for producing prized Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other cooler-climate varietals. Today, Wild Horse Valley is one of the region’s tiniest sub- appellations – just 3,300 acres, home to several vineyards and one distinctive winery, Olivia Brion. Viticulturalists soon took notice of “Wild Horse Valley” and its unique micro-climate cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes that cross the Carneros lowlands before rising up the steep, oak-studded hillsides, and its largely frost-free Springs with delayed Autumn harvests.

When farmers first began planting grapes in the Napa Valley, wild horses roamed the upland valley east of Napa town.

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