Gemstone Vineyard

Gemstone Vineyard is a small, family-owned producer of estate wines. Our focus is on crafting richly textured red wines from Bordeaux varietals grown on our 16-acre hillside property in the Yountville appellation of Napa Valley. Esteemed winemaker Philippe Melka handcrafts our Estate Cabernet Sauvignon and an Estate Red Wine. 

Our wines are quite limited and are sold to members of our allocation list, while the rest can be found on the wine lists of great restaurantsthrough the country.

Vintage 2005 was the first Gemstone to be totally controlled from vineyard to bottle by celebrated winemaker Philippe Melka, who came to California following a distinguished career in Bordeaux France. Philippe and his able assistants Marie-Laure Ammons, Julien Fayard, John Paul (JP) Formento are truly responsible for the "gems" in Gemstone wine."

Technology, Innovation, and a Bit of Courage... Extraordinary wine is a product of extraordinary effort in the vineyard...

We were certain that our stony slope would be hospitable to Bordeaux's most noble varietals, but we were committed to some controversial new ideas in our attempt to grow the best possible fruit. We divided our small vineyard into micro-blocks of five distinguished clones of Cabernet Sauvignon, two clones of Merlot, two clones of Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot. We painstakingly laboratory tested our budwood, bypassing customary heat treatment. We knew that it would be worth the risk if the result were a truly distinctive wine. 
A no-compromise strategy was agreed upon, resulting in a dense planting of the vines on a variety of rootstocks carefully matched to the soil. Labor intensive cane pruning, meticulous canopy management and nutritional monitoring were employed. New levels of quality control were introduced with the installation of a radio telemetry weather station that downloads data to our computerized vineyard management program, along with neutron probes to monitor soil moisture. 
When we harvested our first crop of richly flavored berries, we knew it was worth the effort.