Notes from Hirondelle

A host's guide to holiday wine: how much to buy, when a magnum makes sense, and which Napa Valley Bordeaux-style wines to pour, course by course.  

What wine to bring to Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, your boss's house or meeting the parents, plus the etiquette every holiday guest wonders about.

We farm our Stags Leap District estate to leave it healthier each year. What sustainable and regenerative farming looks like at Clos du Val, a Napa Green Certified winery.

An afternoon in Napa with nothing booked can still be a good one. Where to find walk-in tastings, ours included, and what else is worth wandering into.

A planner's guide to wine tasting in Napa: when to book, how to pace the day, where to stop for lunch, and what to expect at Clos du Val.

Bernard Portet learned wine from his father at Château Lafite. What that Bordeaux upbringing taught him, and what he brought to Stags Leap District in 1972.  

The best wines to buy for a wine cellar are chosen for structure and provenance, not the score. How to judge them, and the Stags Leap District wines we lay down.

Three figures appear somewhere on every bottle we make, from the everyday Table Wine red blend to the Yettalil. Here's where they came from and why they still matter.  

"Bordeaux-style" isn't a place or a rule, it's a family of grapes and a restrained, balanced way of making wine. Here's what the term means and how we apply it to our wine.

The Silverado Trail isn't its own appellation. It's a road through five of them. Here's the geology behind the wineries that line it, and the ground Clos du Val has farmed since 1972.