Jessup Cellars

Jessup Cellars, owned and run by Mark and Pam Jessup, produces wines from vineyards in and around Napa Valley that meet the company’s standards for premium wines and distributes them to consumers. Mark Jessup, the winemaker, scrutinizes numerous vineyards before he selects the exceptional vintages for which Jessup Cellars is famous. Mark Jessup carefully chooses among the various Napa Valley red wine and Chardonnay varieties to offer the best representatives of the valley. Jessup Cellars also recently opened a wine tasting room in Yountville, from which wines can be purchased or ordered.

In the mid-1990s, Mark Jessup founded the Jessup winery east of Napa on top of Mount Veeder. After having chosen the spot for its scenic beauty and solitude, Mark Jessup realized that his locale was not conducive to publicity or foot traffic, so he opened the retail and tasting room in the center of Napa Valley. After having partnered with new investors and making the winery more public, Mark Jessup now has a better plan to make Jessup Cellars more visible and more profitable.

Jessup Cellars believes in the old world methods of making wine and only sells wines that have been made according to their standards. Without using any filtration systems or pumps to achieve their final product, Jessup Cellars gravity racks their wines, allowing them to transfer the wine from tanks to barrels without causing the wine to lose any of its flavor or aromatics. Their grapes are also handpicked, and the winery refuses to produce wine that has been exposed to pesticides. Despite these methods bringing lower volumes of wine, the quality is far superior to that of mass-produced wines. Jessup prides itself on being a small producer that uses higher quality grapes to create red wines and Chardonnays that are intensely flavor-filled.

Mark Jessup is a dedicated winemaker who believes in a hands-on management style, which gives him that ability to monitor the winemaking process and the quality of wines that are being produced from vineyards in and around Napa Valley. Mark Jessup chooses the winery’s award-winning reds from the warmer wine country climates in the eastern parts of Napa and its Chardonnay from the cooler district of Carneros. Mark Jessup searches for fruit that has the best possible ripened flavors in its natural state and has been farmed for quality, having been picked at the perfect stage of ripeness. The fruit is then carefully harvested, pressed, and fermented into a wine any wine connoisseur would appreciate.

Amici Cellars: A Celebration of Wine and Friendship

Amici Cellars believes that wine needs to be paired with friends, and that is how the winery was born. Amici was created out of intense friendship and a common enjoyment of wine. Over a decade ago, a group of friends crushed several tons of Napa Valley grapes to make wine for their personal use. The wine received such wonderful reactions that one of the members, Jeff Hansen, decided to start producing wine for the public in 1992. Since the company’s conception, their several red wines have grown in stature to become some of America’s favorites.

Their first wine was a Cabernet Sauvignon, and the positive reactions the group received from their fellow wine connoisseurs made them realize that wine had become more than a hobby; it had the potential to become a business with a mission: to create world class red wines at affordable rates. Since Amici’s first year, Jeff Hansen and his partners have expanded from a small production company that catered to friends to having a loyal customer base across the country. Since going public, the winery has never failed to sell out of their vintages.

Amici is not concerned with producing a great quantity of wine, so their quality is much greater, and the winery’s passion and commitment can be tasted in their 16 excellent vintages. As any artist needs inspiration, Amici’s comes from the grapes themselves, and the company is truly passionate about creating fascinating and distinct wines. One sip and you can taste the quality, the passion of Amici. The aromatic flavors and vivid, deep reds inspire poetry. The winery is devoted to producing spectacular red wines, and all you have to do is sit back and relax with a glass and a few of your closest friends to realize Amici has achieved its goal.

Jeff Hansen is the self-taught wine expert of Amici Cellars. Before he became the head winemaker at Amici, he was a professional photographer in Los Angeles. When he moved to Napa Valley, his dream of working with wine and food was realized. Hansen worked with some of the most prominent wineries in Napa, learning all he could from them about winemaking and viticulture before he started his own company. Hansen is truly proud of his unorthodox route to winemaking and his winery’s success, and he is more excited than ever about the future of Amici Cellars. Jeff Hansen’s winemaking style reflects his 10 year experience with other wineries, and the success of Amici’s is directly reflective of his passion and commitment to creating exceptional wines and his knowledge of soils and climate.

Trefethen's Peter Luthi

One of the premier wineries in Napa Valley is Trefethen. Their exceptional Head Winemaker is Swiss-born Peter Luthi. He arrived at Trefethen 24 years ago and quickly became one of the leading men in the business of wine. Since Luthi became Trefethen’s Head Winemaker in 1985, he has perfected the sophisticated style and exceptional flavors of the Trefethen wines. His award-winning Cabernet has won mouths and hearts of wine tasters everywhere.

For the past 18 years, Luthi has been devoted to making the best possible Cabernet Sauvignon in California from Trefethen’s grapes, and wine enthusiasts have rewarded his efforts with several mentions of his wine in their magazine columns. One reviewer declared the wine one of the “Top 100 Wines,” and Wine and Spirits named Luthi’s 1997 HaLo Cabernet Sauvignon one of the “Top 10 Cabernets of the Year.” His HaLo Cabernet Sauvignon is now Trefethen’s signature wine. The winery could not have chosen a better calling card, or a better Head Winemaker. Talented winemakers in Napa Valley do not usually stay at one winery for any length of time, but Peter Luthi has been at Trefethen for 22 years. He has become a fixture of Trefethen, and he is not likely to leave Trefethen, which is one of the largest private wineries in the California wine country under singular ownership. In his years at the winery, Luthi has grown comfortable with the rhythms of the seasons, the landscape, and the soil of Oak Knoll District. He knows the grapes fully, and the terroir has become a part of him.

Oak Knoll is one of the few places in Napa Valley that can grow Luthi’s distinct Cabernet, Trefethen’s flagship wine, because of the reliable heat. The warm weather of the sub-region of Napa is a perfect climate for growing Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and also Pinot Noir, but Oak Knoll is also not too warm for the world's most popular white wine and one of Napa’s best sellers: Chardonnay. The spring marine breezes creates a cool spring for the area, but soil variations in the Oak Knoll, which heat faster than other soil types, allow early ripening for Cabernet and Merlot and, consequently, a full maturity of the grapes before the season’s end. The area’s relative closeness to the ocean creates mild and high humidity springs, a combination that is essential to the preservation of aromatics.

Trefethen currently produces 70 thousand cases of wine a year under Luthi’s direction, and the winery owes their greatest successes to Peter Luthi and his master winemaking skills, which have brought the company to the attention of wine drinkers around the world.