Mountain Chronicles

Charlie’s Garden at Spring Mountain Vineyard

Spring Mountain Vineyard kicks off summer celebrations with their annual Summer Soirée, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris.

Spring Mountain Vineyard has been pushing the boundaries of this incredible hillside estate since our inception. Founded by visionaries and forged by relentless dedication, we have built a legacy of excellence that has extended over 140 years.

At a 2026 blind tasting commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris, Spring Mountain Vineyard Chardonnay finished third among nine California and French white wines.

A mountain vineyard cannot eliminate wildfire risk, but it can reduce fuel, improve emergency access, protect water resources and manage the surrounding landscape to slow a fire’s advance.

Replanting Spring Mountain Vineyard: Year Two Update

This past weekend, Spring Mountain Vineyard returned to Premiere Napa Valley, the annual trade event hosted by the Napa Valley Vintners that brings together the global wine community for two days of tasting, connection, and celebration.

One of four ranches in our estate vineyard, Chevalier has a rich and complex history that seems to emanate through the wine itself – beautiful, layered, and marked by undeniable intrigue.

An older Cabernet Sauvignon should be decanted carefully—and not always for the same reason as a young wine. With mature bottles, the principal purpose is usually to separate the clear wine from sediment while limiting unnecessary exposure to oxygen.

Travel Guide for 50th Anniversary of Judgment of Paris

With a beautiful vintage and ideal harvest conditions, 2025 Napa Valley wines promise balance, finesse, and age-worthiness.

Spring Mountain Vineyard teams up with one of St. Helena’s hottest new restaurants, Charlie’s, to provide locally sourced and curated produce.

Tiburcio Parrott was the 19th-century owner who developed Miravalle into one of Spring Mountain’s most ambitious early wine estates.

Spring Mountain Vineyard hosts premier event of the season, “A Stroll Through Time,” celebrating its newly restored botanical gardens.

Step into a lush paradise. Among the historic buildings and rows of vines on Spring Mountain is an oasis of green where swaying palms tower overhead and a tapestry of exotic plants cluster around well-marked paths. Embraced by the cool shade, you can meander through this verdant sanctuary in both body and mind, a combination of awe, inspiration and total tranquility.

Replanting a mountain vineyard is not simply a matter of removing old vines and replacing them. At Spring Mountain Vineyard, rebuilding approximately 225 acres requires studying soils and microclimates block by block, choosing varieties, clones and rootstocks, reconsidering row orientation and trellising, improving water and erosion management, and planning for wines that may not reach maturity for many years.

This week, San Francisco Chronicle profiled Spring Mountain Vineyard - our storied past, the challenges we’ve faced, and the exciting future ahead.

The Victorian mansion portrayed as Falcon Crest is Villa Miravalle at Spring Mountain Vineyard in Napa Valley. Built for Tiburcio Parrott in 1885, the house became the fictional Gioberti family mansion during the television series. Its history, however, began nearly a century before Falcon Crest

When the Glass Fire tore through Spring Mountain in 2020, it left destruction in its wake. Among the heartbreaking losses were some ancient groves of trees, including a significant number of second growth redwoods. While our estate has shown remarkable resilience, many of these majestic giants – some of which witnessed the very footsteps of our founders – were irrevocably damaged.

The first documented Cabernet Sauvignon planting in the Spring Mountain District was established at La Perla in the 1870s by Charles Lemme, one of the mountain’s earliest winegrowers.

This fall, Spring Mountain Vineyard completed a year-long restoration of its beautiful stained glass window in the historic Miravalle mansion. After a particularly windy storm last spring, several panes were blown out. To preserve this important piece of our history, we hired Nzalani Glass Conservation. True artisans, they carefully removed the window, restored the glass and its frame, and reinstalled it to its former glory. The whole process is captured on video, here.

Built by Tiburcio Parrott at the end of the nineteenth century, our historic Miravalle mansion has several iconic features, but one of the most notable is the beautiful stained glass over the staircase. Expertly crafted, it’s made up of 15 panels in the center with six more in an arched sash above. In the center sits a parrot on a branch, surrounded by detailed leaves and colorful “jewels.”

Restoring a historic olive grove after wildfire begins by determining which trees remain viable, removing damaged wood, encouraging healthy regrowth and rebuilding the conditions that allow the grove to survive for another generation.

A library wine is a bottle retained by a winery after its original release and stored under controlled conditions for future tasting or sale. Its value lies not only in age but in provenance: the winery knows where the bottle has been, how it was stored and when it was released.

Last week marked the end of our 2024 harvest. Exhilarating yet exhausting, the bustle of trucks, sorting machines, and crushers has been replaced by the rich smell of fermenting grapes and the much quieter buzz of winemaking. With all our grapes in, the cautious optimism that had started earlier this fall now feels real, and we can confidently say that we’re looking at one of the best vintages in a long time.

September in the vineyard is always filled with a sense of anticipation. It’s a culmination of a season of hard work. As a mountain winery, our harvest doesn’t usually begin until October, long after much of Napa Valley has picked their grapes. But plump clusters hang on the vines, and the promise of a new vintage is palpable.