Trinchero Napa Valley

Trinchero Napa Valley is the premium estate arm of one of America's most successful wine families, the Trincheros, who built the Sutter Home brand into a household name by inventing White Zinfandel in 1975. While Sutter Home became synonymous with inexpensive, mass-market wine, the family quietly maintained their commitment to premium Napa Valley production, and Trinchero Napa Valley represents the full expression of that ambition. The estate wines, produced from prime St. Helena vineyards, are crafted at a level that has nothing in common with the grocery-store brand that shares the family name.

The estate includes 200 acres of vineyards centered on the Mario's Vineyard site in St. Helena, named after family patriarch Mario Trinchero, who purchased the original Sutter Home property in 1948. The Mario's Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, from old vines on benchland soils, produces a wine of genuine depth and character that regularly surprises tasters who associate the Trinchero name exclusively with White Zinfandel. Additional vineyard holdings across the valley provide fruit for the estate's Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot programs.

Winemaker Mario Monticelli produces the Trinchero Napa Valley wines with a focus on site expression and restrained winemaking. The Mario's Vineyard Cabernet is the flagship, a wine that shows what happens when one of Napa's most experienced wine families turns its full attention to a single vineyard. The Cloud's Nest Cabernet, from a higher-elevation site, offers a more powerful, mountain-influenced expression. The Sauvignon Blanc, crisp and aromatic, demonstrates the family's versatility beyond red wines.

The tasting room at the historic Sutter Home property on Highway 29 in St. Helena offers a combined experience: visitors can taste the premium Trinchero estate wines in a separate, more intimate setting from the main Sutter Home tasting room. The Victorian gardens and the historic building provide a beautiful backdrop, and the staff are skilled at explaining the distinction between the family's premium and commercial operations. The estate tasting, at $45, is reasonably priced for wines of this quality.

The Trinchero story is one of the most fascinating in American wine. The same family that democratized wine drinking with White Zinfandel simultaneously maintained the standards and the vineyards necessary to produce world-class estate wines. The premium Trinchero label is their way of saying that they are farmers first and that their best vines have always produced wine worthy of the valley's finest estates. Visitors who taste the Mario's Vineyard Cabernet alongside a bottle of Sutter Home are tasting the full spectrum of one family's remarkable American story.