Napa Wine Tasting Guide (2026) Insider Tips, Itineraries & Hidden Gems

This wine, to say the least, has been quite a journey for me. It started as an attempt to make a special wine for a Country Club in Los Angeles. The F & B director and 5 members of the wine committee came up to the winery to ‘blend’ their special wine. This is often a recipe for disaster, but in this case, I managed to give everyone a tour of the vineyards, a blending trial, and lunch, all in 3 hours. Unfortunately, we couldn’t agree on a price. They wanted a wine they could sell to their members for $90, and I disagreed; it was worth way more.

We parted ways, but I was enamored by the blend we had created. I made a few changes to it over the next week or so and ended up with a blend of equal parts Cabernet Franc, the Father (and actually, it is the genetic father of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot), Cabernet Sauvignon, the Son, and Merlot, the Holy Ghost. A return to my Catholic roots, perhaps, sure made me think about it. Oddly enough, when I was a young church-going lad, the Holy Ghost was always my favorite part of the Holy Trinity, and now, as a winemaker, my favorite varietal is Merlot.

In this equal blend of the three, the Cabernet Franc provides a wonderful lift in the nose and beautifully complex aromas of fruit with an herbaceous tinge and spice. Cabernet Sauvignon provides the baseline power and great varietal complexity, and then the Merlot laces of an almost magical richness through the blend, giving it an unmistakable sense of deliciousness.

I used the Holy Trinity for our PNV Auction wine in 2020, and it sold for over $250 a bottle. Keep in mind that this is a wholesale price; the retail price would likely be over $300, so I guess I was right about the value of this wine.

The Original. This single vineyard Merlot comes from the bottom of the Big K vineyard, where the original (we thought at the time one and only) 1997 Mailbox Merlot came from. This block abuts the mouth of the driveway where the “real” mailboxes are. That Merlot, as well as the entire 20-acre block, was pulled after the ’97 harvest (due to phylloxera) and replanted to 5 new clones of Cabernet Sauvignon. After ten years of feedback from the new Cabernet clones we decided to graft the See clone, which was planted where the original Mailbox Merlot was, back to Merlot in the spring of 2011. This grafted block shows me the same deliciousness that caught my attention in ’97 so we made 50 cases of it, called it the “Original” and kept it a secret! Each vintage we make is truly an original, spectacular in its own right.

Nod to History, is a reference to the Conradi Family that built our winery in 1904 and who primarily grew Zinfandel. The blend literally came to Michael in a dream and is my version of a bridge from our past to our present and future. This is our second bottling of a reserve Zinfandel. It is comprised of a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc with a splash of Carignane and Alicante Bouschet. The resulting win is a Zinfandel with a super structure, added weight to the palette, more layered aromatics and a very long finish while clearly retaining its identity as Zinfandel. Enjoy now or decades from now.