DEAR Napa Valley Travellers
Almost Sold Out - we have 1 single and one Double Occupancy room available
Trip to include:
- 3 nights in Yountville: Friday, Saturday & Sunday
- Group Transportation inside the Napa Valley - Maximum 10 Guests
- Top Winery Visits (approx 8 top winery experiences - Many not open to the public) (Such as): Greer, Winemaker Aaron Pott,; Cervantes, Winemaker Andy Erickson; Paloma, Winemaker Sheldon Richards; Annulus, Winemaker Nigel Kinsman; Bergman, Winemaker Nigel Kinsman; TOR, Winemaker Tor Kenward; Perliss, Winemaker Aaron Pott; Promontory and Mascot, Winemaker Cory Empting
- Winemaker Lunches (3) (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
- Sunday Night - Dinner at Mustards - All inclusive.
What will be additional and optional:
- Thursday (one winery, dinner and hotel package) (Dinner at Press)
- Dinners will be optional and additional: Friday and Saturday (Ad Hoc and Ciccio)
- Gratuities for service providers and tour operators.
- Air & transfer to the Napa Valley and from to the airport.
Estimated Costs:
Single Room (one person): $6,000
Double Room (two people): $11,400
AGENDA (as of October 10th, 2025) (Prices will increase as the trip is finalized - if space remains)
Optional Arrival Thursday Jan 29th - check in to the hotel at 3pm and depart for our first winery experience & dinner after (all will be optional). Press is a Michelin 1-Star.
Friday, Jan 30th - We depart for our first special winery at 9:30 am following breakfast… our first appointment starts at 10am with SID GREER - a wine by Aaron Pott … then off to CERVANTES for a special appointment with the family…. then a special stop on the way back into town. We will return to the hotel to rest and change before dinner - Ciccio for Dinner (optional)
Saturday Jan 31st - 10am departure to a special set of wineries with a very special guest winemaker - Annulus and Bergman with Lunch at Meadowood. Tor Kenward tasting at his private estate. Ad Hoc for dinner (optional)
Sunday, Feb 1st - 10am departure to a special winery for tour and tasting then to a special winery for a legendary lunch and tasting - Promontory and Mascot will be in focus… We return to Yountville to rest up for dinner at MUSTARDS (included)
Monday, Feb 2nd - check out at your leisure
Confirmed Experiences:
Lunch with Cervantes and Xavier
Cervantes: Our story begins in Mexico City, where our family, originally immersed in real estate ventures, dared to dream of something entirely different. In 2012, Xavier and Cecilia bought this piece of paradise, awith their three teenage children, left their familiar lives behind to embrace the unknown, embarking on a thrilling journey in Napa Valley’s last frontier—Pope Valley.
Nestled within the Vaca Range mountains in the northeastern part of Napa, our ranch embodies a rugged and untouched beauty rarely explored. With this land as our canvas, we crafted our first vintage in 2015 in collaboration with our dear friend and renowned winemaker, Andy Erickson. Specializing in Bordeaux varietals, we now proudly produce a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Bordeaux blend called Blacktail, and a Sauvignon Blanc named Palomino—each a testament to our land's unique character.
Our mission transcends winemaking; it’s about stewardship. We aim to leave our land better than we found it and build a multi-generational legacy of hospitality that celebrates the joy of sharing a table, forging connections, and crafting exceptional wines for the world.
Lunch: Celebrating the Wines of Nigel Kinsman at Meadowood
Nigel began his winemaking career in his native Australia, working in the Adelaide Hills, Victoria, and at Margaret River’s highly regarded Cullen Wines before venturing to Tuscany and, finally, the Napa Valley. The former winemaker at Araujo Estate (for the Cabernet portfolio), he is now winemaker at Accendo Cellars and Bella Oaks. With his wife Shae, Nigel also produces the highly regarded Kinsman Eades wines. Stylistically, Nigel seeks to create wines that are classically proportioned, balanced, and deliberate expressions of time and place.
Lunch with Mascot by Harlan Family at The Charter Oak Restaurant
Harlan is one of Napa’s wealthiest landowners. A slight, other-worldly figure, he favours old-fashioned blouses with ruffed shoulders, which together with his chinstrap beard and hawkish features give him the look of a 17th-century church elder. I asked estate director Don Weaver, who’s known Harlan for nearly 40 years, what he’s like. Weaver thought about it. ‘He has the most curiosity of any man I’ve ever known,’ he said. ‘He’ll be interviewing you, not the other way around.’ I certainly felt I was being appraised by the amiable, soft-spoken presence across the table.
A Tasting at Promontory
In the early 1980s while hiking along Oakville’s southwestern ridge, H. William Harlan discovered an isolated territory. The hidden expanse—ancient and untamed—moved him deeply, but remained elusive until the Harlan family finally captured it in 2008. As the second generation explored and worked with the land, they began to make discoveries of their own. At the core of this wild terrain they found a powerful geologic convergence, which had shaped its steep, rugged topography, and created the conditions for an altogether exotic winegrowing environment. Over time they found that the dramatic landscape—just beyond the edge of the known—would slowly change them, and ultimately inspire a new endeavor: Promontory.
A Tasting with Tor Kenward
I have been a Napa Valley vintner for nearly 50 years. The first 27 years were with Beringer Vineyards helping build a wine company known to collectors for its reserve and single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays. I retired in 2001, and with my wife, Susan, started our dream: TOR Kenward Family Wines. Our plan was simple. Our wines would come from only the best blocks in great vineyard sites I knew and revered. All our wines are hand-made in every sense and in very small quantities.
TOR: We focus on single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines, cuvées and Bordeaux varietals—each wine is handmade and bottled in a very small quantity. Our secret is to stay out of the way, not to manipulate—preserve a place in time, capture it in a bottle. The TOR winemaking team has been together since the beginning. Jeff Ames is winemaker, and we share a simple rule— the vineyard is what we showcase, not a heavy winemaker’s hand. Each wine is nurtured to bottle unfiltered and unfined.
A Tasting with Perliss by Aaron Pott
I have been a Napa Valley vintner for nearly 50 years. The first 27 years were with Beringer Vineyards helping build a wine company known to collectors for its reserve and single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays. I retired in 2001, and with my wife, Susan, started our dream: TOR Kenward Family Wines. Our plan was simple. Our wines would come from only the best blocks in great vineyard sites I knew and revered. All our wines are hand-made in every sense and in very small quantities.
Perliss: The essence of our Calistoga landscape is expressed in The Ravens Vineyard - a 2.6 acre volcanic knoll, surrounded by forest. The streaming coastal wind & fog, the radiant days and dark, chilly nights, the spectrum of volcanic soil, from tuff to obsidian, combine to yield fruit of complex nature and alluring balance.
The Ravens Vineyard, Calistoga AVA, is set on our family property at the northern-most end of Napa Valley, where the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges converge. Mount St. Helena looms behind the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, planted on a knoll surrounded by forest of oaks, manzanita and madrone. Red-tailed Hawks, Turkey Vultures, and Ravens circle in the warm air currents above the property.
Vineyard rows mount a slope comprised of volcanic, rocky and loamy soil with excellent drainage. Calistoga's temperature shifts are the most extreme in Napa: 24-hour temperatures can range over forty degrees, as cool nights and foggy mornings are followed by dry, sunny days. The vineyard's natural orientation allows for even fruit ripening throughout the growing season and shaded projection when the sun is at its most intense. Cooling breezes and fog from the Sonoma Coast stream into the property through the Chalk Hill Gap.
Low-vigor rootstock was planted in 2008 with the See clone grafted the following year. The closely-planted Cabernet Sauvignon vines are organically farmed and cane-pruned. Birds, bats, and ladybugs help keep the vineyard pest-free.
A Tasting with Greer & Friends
Greer Vineyard lies in the center of the acclaimed Rutherford Bench, sited adjacent to Inglenook Vineyards, which, together with Beaulieu Vineyards, produced Napa Valley’s (and America’s) first legendary wines. Today, the 3-acre Greer Vineyard’s illustrious next-vine and nearby neighbors include Scarecrow, Staglin, Phelps’ Insignia, and the historic Bella Oaks Vineyard.
A Tasting of Annulus at Wheeler Farms
Rooted in a radical approach to hospitality and bolstered by a world class winery, garden, kitchen and team, Wheeler Farms welcomes you into our world.
Annulus: We’ve been fortunate to call the Napa Valley home for more than two decades. Living in this beautiful place, we have forged cherished friendships and close partnerships with world-renowned vintners, growers, and winemakers and honed our love of fine wines. After years of dreaming and planning, together with our daughters Alexandra and Elena, we are delighted to present Annulus and our own interpretation of the wines and Napa Valley vineyards we love.
Our name, Annulus, derived from the Latin word for “ring,” is an homage to the cycles and circles found in nature and those forged in the process of making and sharing wine. It is inspired by our deep appreciation of Napa Valley’s agricultural cycle that extends from dormancy to bud break to veraison to harvest. It celebrates the spirit of gathering that radiates from the circle of family and friends around our table to yours.
Our Annulus motif is a visual representation of these circles and connections. It features an oak tree as a symbol of our family home in the Napa Valley.
A Visit to Bergman Estate
Bergman: Since its inception, the Bergman site has been noted for its unique combination of Aiken soil and temperate climate. The rocky, mineral-dense earth provides grapes with complex, full-bodied tannins; the 500-700 foot elevation ensures more moderate temperatures throughout the growing season. On warmer days, the vineyard remains up to 10 degrees cooler than the valley floor, and a gentle breeze cycles fresh air across the hillside each afternoon.
The 10-acre vineyard is planted with 8 acres of red wine varieties: 68% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot and 3% Merlot. A steep triangular hill plot of just 2 acres is planted to Chardonnay.
As with the site’s previous stewards, we were drawn in by its magnificence and compelled by its challenges. Only with patience does the full spectrum of the land reveal itself through the wine.
+ a few other surprises!
Hotels: We have secured a great venue in Yountville for our group. This is a highly reviewed property with great accommodations. The property is nice, quiet, clean, safe, comfortable, convenient, and has high thread count linens.... and walking distance to so many great things in Yountville. We check all those boxes, we are good!
Dinner Plans: We intend to max out in Yountville and Dinner meals are going to be optional. (Ad Hoc and Ciccio) Of course coffee at Bouchon Bakery is near and we love that! Sunday night - we were unsuccessful at landing the FRENCH LAUNDRY due to closure … they are in reconstruction until later in February so we will go to MUSTARDS for dinner instead. This impacts the price lower and we hope you will join us.
About
IAN BLACKBURN
Ian Blackburn, CSW, Event Producer
Ian discovered the wine industry while visiting the Napa Valley as a Culinary Student. Ian moved his focus to the front of the house, while working with Thomas Keller and Joachim Splichal in Los Angeles. Now in his 30th year hosting events; leading trips around the wine world; Ian has published a wine education book and is working on a new one; Ian has his own wine brand called Beekeeper Cellars and has sat for the difficult Master of Wine Exam! Today, Ian is considered one of the region’s best wine educators and works for his 120,000 followers (follow me), visiting vineyards and wine regions and produce over 100 wine classes and events per year for Learnaboutwine.com
