As it happened 2016 marked our 16th ZAP Grand Tasting in San Francisco, an event we first participated in in 2000. {If you do the math and come up one short it’s because we skipped 2015.} That first year we were nervous freshmen at the prom, wondering if anyone would…

{ARCHIVE, 11/17/15} — As a child David never dreamed of being a vintner. However, he is a lifelong daredevil, majored in chemistry in college, and thereafter read physics for fun — three facts that inform the passion he has found in the science and art of winemaking. But where did it all begin…

{ARCHIVE, 09/19/15} — At Brown Estate our reputation has been built upon — and we continue to be known best for — one thing, and we don’t mean making wine. We mean making zinfandel. The history of our family’s serendipitous relationship with the unassuming zinfandel grape can be found here. In 1996, after…

{Summer 2014}

{Fall 2014}

{Winter 2013} — In the annals of winemaking, harvest is everything: an ending, a beginning, the Napa Valley’s grandest spectacle… a fabulous frenzy of fits and starts with Mother Nature as puppet master and future fortunes riding on this year’s yield. Over the past several years our friend Carolyn Corley Burgess quietly has…

{Winter 2013} — In winegrowing circles, the concept of “hang time” is fraught with a not surprising combination of romance and controversy.[1] Thankfully, those of us who grow and produce our wines based on the estate model are more or less free to indulge the romance and shirk the controversy.

{Fall 2013} — Like everything else in the wine business, there’s more to our label than meets the eye. In 2009 — exactly 150 years after it was built — we mounted the letters B-R-O-W-N onto the side of the 1859 stone and redwood barn that houses our tasting room. Prior to that…

{Spring 2013} — n. [rhymes with “puppy”] (1) Jamaican folklore superhero/“ghost buster.” The term was popularized by Bob Marley in his 1970 song of the same name. (2) Brown Estate cabernet sauvignon dessert wine, fortified with our custom-distilled estate zinfandel brandy.