Brown Estate
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Brown Estate Vineyards is a vineyard and wine brand located in the
St. Helena Saint Helena (, ) is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km ...
area of
Napa Valley Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in Napa County, California. The area was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on February 27, 1981, after a 1978 petition submitted by the Napa Valley Vin ...
, California, United States. Brown Estate produces a variety of wines, including
Zinfandel Zinfandel (also known as Primitivo) is a variety of black-skinned wine grape. The variety is grown in over 10 percent of California vineyards. DNA analysis has revealed that it is genetically equivalent to the Croatian grapes Crljenak Kašt ...
,
Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Sauvignon () is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Australia and British Columbia, Canada to Lebano ...
,
Chardonnay Chardonnay (, ; ) is a green-skinned grape variety used in the production of white wine. The variety originated in the Burgundy wine region of eastern France, but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from England to New Zealand. For new a ...
, and
Petite Sirah Durif is a variety of red wine grape mainly grown in Australia, California, France, and Israel. Since the end of the 20th century, wineries located in Washington (state), Washington's Yakima River Valley, Maryland, Arizona, Texas, West Virgini ...
. Founded in 1995 by siblings Deneen, David, and Coral Brown, Brown Estate Vineyard released its first Napa Valley Zinfandel in 1996. It is recognized as the first and only Black-owned estate winery in Napa Valley. Brown family members began their involvement in the wine industry by farming grapes and selling them to established
winemakers A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes: *Cooperating with viticulturists *Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to de ...
before launching their own label.


Early history

In 1980, Jamaican-born Bassett Brown and Panamanian-born Marcela Abrahams Brown acquired in the
Chiles Valley AVA Chiles Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) located in Napa County, California and a sub-region within Napa Valley AVA. It was established as California's 81st AVA by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on April 19, 19 ...
of Napa Valley. Abandoned ten years prior, the land and its two structures—an 1859 stone and redwood barn and an 1885 Queen Anne Victorian home—were derelict. The senior Browns cut roads and installed plumbing and electricity, a restoration for which they received an award from the Napa County Historical Society. In 1985, they planted their first vineyard, approximately of
zinfandel Zinfandel (also known as Primitivo) is a variety of black-skinned wine grape. The variety is grown in over 10 percent of California vineyards. DNA analysis has revealed that it is genetically equivalent to the Croatian grapes Crljenak Kašt ...
. The Chiles Valley microclimate, characterized by extreme temperature shifts throughout each day, suited the cultivation of Zinfandel grapes. The Brown family's fruit soon gained popularity among zinfandel producers such as Green & Red and T-Vine Cellars, who purchased Brown Estate fruit for many years. The Browns also sold
Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Sauvignon () is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Australia and British Columbia, Canada to Lebano ...
to the famed
Mike Grgich Miljenko "Mike" Grgich (April 1, 1923 – December 13, 2023) was a Croatian-American winemaker in California. He was the winemaker behind the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay that bested several white Burgundy wines in the wine tasting event t ...
. It was through a series of apprenticeships with winemakers who were working with his fruit that David Brown, who by then had been farming his family's vineyards for five years, began learning the art and science of
winemaking Winemaking, wine-making, or vinification is the production of wine, starting with the selection of the fruit, its Ethanol fermentation, fermentation into alcohol, and the bottling of the finished liquid. The history of wine-making stretches over ...
. In the mid-1990s, due to rising demand for their fruit, Deneen and David, who were both residing on the vineyard property, decided to produce wine under their label. Because they had no winery facility on site, they secured a custom crush contract with Rombauer Vineyards in Saint Helena, and for six years, they produced their wines at the Rombauer facility. On January 29, 2000, Brown Estate debuted their first two vintages of Napa Valley Zinfandel, 1996 and 1997, at the annual Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) tasting at
Fort Mason Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California is a former United States Army post located in the northern Marina District, alongside San Francisco Bay. Fort Mason served as an Army post for more than 100 years, initially as a coastal defense site a ...
in
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
. ZAP is the largest single-varietal wine-tasting event in the world, and the Brown offerings were well received by the trade and public alike. Simultaneously, in the January 31, 2000, issue of the ''
Wine Spectator ''Wine Spectator'' is an American lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine, wine culture and wine ratings. It is the flagship publication of M. Shanken Communications, which also publishes ''Cigar Aficionado'', ''Whisky Advocate'', ''Market Watch' ...
,'' the 1997 Brown Estate Zinfandel received a score of 91 points.


Fire

In June 2000, a fire broke out at the warehouse facility where Brown's wine library and a recently bottled 1998 vintage were stored. With the exception of sixteen bottles - two that went to wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr., for review, two that went to
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...
for auction, and twelve that the Browns had stored at home - all of their 1998 zinfandel was destroyed, as were the remaining cases of their first two vintages. The lost 1998 vintage left the Browns out of the zinfandel market for a year, a setback that was mitigated by the help of restaurant and retail accounts that held space on their wine lists and shelves for the next vintage of Brown Zin. In response to the fire, the Browns accelerated the release of their 1999 Napa Valley zinfandel, which they showed at ZAP in 2001. The previous month, in December 2000, Parker gave the Brown 1998 zinfandel a score of 90, noting that his review was "of academic interest only" since all of the wine had perished in the fire. The loss of the 1998 vintage has kept Brown Estate's Napa Valley zinfandel bottlings on a perennially early release schedule.


Winery and cave construction

As production grew, Brown expanded beyond the Rombauer facility. Winery construction began in the summer of 2002, and by September of that year, a derelict barn was repurposed as an on-site wine production facility. Beginning in April 2004, Brown Estate added a
wine cave Underground Wine cellars are subterranean structures for the storage (wine), storage and the aging of wine. They are an essential part of the global wine industry. The construction of wine caves involves specialized underground building techni ...
by blasting through a
granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
hillside with dynamite.


Milestones

In November 2010, the Browns released the world's first
hashtagged A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enables c ...
wine, their 2009 Napa Valley Zinfandel. Subsequent vintages of this wine bore the #brownzin hashtag. In April 2017, Brown Downtown Napa opened on downtown Napa's First Street corridor.


References


External links

*{{Official website, http://www.brownestate.com Wineries in Napa Valley St. Helena, California 1995 establishments in California