As a family with almost 120 years of experience farming this patch of dirt, we know a thing or two about what it likes and doesn’t like.
We tend our vines with care and common sense — using our cows’ manure to fertilize the vineyard, and feeding the spent grapes after winemaking back to the cows as a special treat. It’s a full-circle operation.
We grow the grapes for Belted Vines at our Stewart Ranch Vineyard, just across Highway 29 from our cows and tasting room. At 6–12 feet above sea level, this is the lowest-elevation vineyard in Napa Valley. It gets pretty foggy, as you might expect, and the summers stay cool from the breezes off San Pablo Bay (to the south) and the Napa River (to the east). All of this makes it perfect for cooler-climate grapes that can’t handle the upvalley heat.
The vineyard was originally planted back in the 1990s.
The Albariño vines were put in here were the first in Napa Valley, and are some of the oldest in California today. With the cooler climate we have in the Carneros AVA, Merlot and Pinot Noir also do phenomenally well at Stewart Ranch Vineyard, so you’ll start seeing Belted Vines red wines starting in 2023.