The Next Chapter

In fact, though, it was just sheer confidence. A confidence, however, that was not born of arrogance: it comes from an almost mystic belief that everything that is happening and will happen has been preordained. Jayson’s confidence in his skills and his unbridled passion already confer on him a kind of superpower, but it is this allied to his rock-solid certainty that what he is doing is already written in the cards that has enabled him to exceed the expectations of everyone who has ever encountered him.

With more than forty 100-point scores under his belt (more than any winery in history) and a quarter century or so of winemaking and farming at the highest and most intense level, you might think Jayson would be resting on his laurels (or vine leaves perhaps) and planning a well-deserved retirement, but it turns out that his restless desire to create remains unstoppable.

Enter our newest project, Fortunate Son. In terms of philosophy, these wines share the same approach that has made Jayson’s vintages so extraordinary: make the very best wines from the most special vineyards sites or make nothing at all.

I have heard Jayson say that, for Hundred Acre, he looked at thousands of vineyards, and the three he finally chose called to him like a siren song. And so, as he began to pursue his latest project, the quest for sacred sites began anew. With an ear to the ground for the sirens’ call, Jayson and his farming partner, Jim Barbour, looked at hundreds more vineyards throughout the Napa Valley, searching for places that hadn’t benefited from the love and attention that Jayson and Jim give to our estate sites. They settled on a select group of vineyards mostly consisting of the earliest selections of heritage family-owned vineyards that shaped the very bedrock of what became Napa Valley.