steve reynolds
Reynolds Family Winery
Owner, Winemaker, Dad
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REYNOLDS FAMILY WINERY
As you might have surmised by the name, we are a family business. We live here and work here and, over the years, have managed to fashion our dream into a wondrous life in Napa Valley.
Our wines are driven by superior vineyard location, fanatical vineyard management, minimalist winemaking, and a bias for learning from experience. We believe in harvesting at the peak of ripeness to create wines that are intensely flavored, luscious and approachable on release.
We’re not as big or as famous as some of the wineries down the road and that suits us just fine. We hope you’ll find your way here.
Reynolds Family Estate
Our 9-1/2 acre home vineyard sits in the shadow of Atlas Peak, just south of Stags Leap, where it enjoys cool breezes from San Pablo Bay to the south. The growing conditions here are ideal for producing big, rich, complex wines.
The vineyard was first planted it in 1996 using “bench grafted vines” which were quite new back then. With bench grafting, the plants are raised at the nursery for one to two years before planting. This cuts about a year off the vine’s development, allowing it to deliver usable fruit in its fourth leaf rather than its fifth.
The estate is planted entirely to Cabernet Sauvignon. We grow three clones – 337, 4 and Weimar – on two root stocks: 110R and 3309. The vines are trained in the double cordon method on a single fruiting wire and cordons trained to either side of the trunk. This configuration prevents excessive sunlight exposure so the sugars dont run up before the grapes get a chance to fully ripen. During the growing season we drop close to half of the fruit to select only the best clusters and keep the vines in balance.
We make but a single wine from this vineyard, our Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Production runs between 1,100 and 1,400 cases, depending on the year.