Ashes & Diamonds

With its zig-zag roof, portholes, floor-to-ceiling windows and carport type veranda, Ashes & Diamonds looks to have come straight out of an episode of Thunderbirds.

The 1960s homage (backed up further with vintage furniture and decoration in the tasting room) is proof of a producer that has a strong personality and a definite desire to do things its own way. That doesn’t mean that the winery is making 1960s-style wines, but it’s perhaps true that this era is the meeting point between the modern winery and a traditional grape-growing ethos.

Ashes & Diamonds works with fruit from across the Napa Valley. From the southern end of the valley, where it backs onto the chilly fog and brisk maritime breezes of San Pablo Bay (useful for whites and rosés); through the Cabernet-centric, classic AVAs in the heart of Napa, like Rutherford and Oakville; and up into higher-altitude sites on Mount Veeder and in the Vaca and Santa Cruz Mountains. Most of these vineyards are organic/biodynamic and farmed with little or no irrigation, harking back to a time pre agro-science.

As winemaker Diana Snowden Seysses (wife of Domaine Dujac’s Jeremey Seysses) neatly puts it, ‘The most memorable wines carry an echo of nature’s heartbeat. They are the result of vineyard work without chemicals on a thriving soil ecosystem.’