I’ve been reading here for almost two years, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted. I’m usually happy just reading and learning from everyone here. But this one is worth putting in front of the group.
I’ve known the Alioto/Tournahu family for more than 40 years, and I’ve been tasting wine with Nunzio Alioto since I was old enough to drink. Most of what I know about wine I learned sitting at Nunzio’s table.
Nunzio was one of the first Americans to pass the Master Sommelier examination in 1987. Over the decades, he’s tasted an extraordinary amount of great wine — Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo and Barbaresco, and especially the classic Napa Cabernets of the '80s and '90s. Those wines are the benchmarks he measures others against.
So when someone with that perspective finally decides to make his own Napa Cabernet, I pay attention.
And after tasting the inaugural 2024 Estate Cabernet, I think this is a project worth putting on the radar.
Alioto-Tournahu is a tiny, seven-acre estate just north of St. Helena. The wines are essentially Nunzio’s vision of what Napa Cabernet can be: powerful and complex, but with more fineness, balance and savoriness than you often find in Napa today.
In a recent Napa Valley Register article about the project, Nunzio put it this way:
“I don’t want to be like everybody else. We want to take our fruit and make it a little bit more of an elegant style. It’s still going to be powerful, still going to have all of that beautiful complexity and richness, but with a little bit of fineness.”
That sentence probably tells you more about this project than anything else I could write.
The vineyard itself has a pretty remarkable history. George and Evelyn Tournahu bought the property in 1976 as a family retreat. In 1998, Nunzio convinced them to replant the vineyard to Cabernet Sauvignon. For years the fruit went into other people’s bottles.
Then in 2015, Thomas Brown of Mending Wall began sourcing Tournahu fruit for a single-vineyard Clone 7 Cabernet. That put the vineyard on the radar of people who pay attention to where great Napa fruit is produced.
When the family decided to make their own wine, Thomas Brown was also instrumental in bringing them to Rich Frederick.
Rich is an especially interesting choice. He spent 11 years at Revana, first working under Heidi Barrett and then Thomas Brown — three years with Barrett and eight with Brown — before becoming winemaker at Vine Cliff in Oakville and eventually going independent.
You don’t often see one winemaker come up under both Heidi Barrett and Thomas Brown.
Nunzio’s son Franklin is also involved in the project and has taken on much of the family side of the operation, including helping arrange the vineyard tours and visits. That was part of what made my own visit feel different from a typical winery stop.
I first tasted the 2024 Cabernet out of barrel during a vineyard tour in May. I came back in June for a winemaker dinner and tasted both wines with food, with Rich there to answer questions.
The Cabernet is the wine that really grabbed me.
The 2024 Estate Cabernet comes from Blocks 1 and 3, and at 14.3% alcohol it has none of the obvious heat that can sometimes show up in Napa Cab. The nose is floral and dark-fruited, with blackberry, cassis, spice and a little cocoa. On the palate there’s plenty of St. Helena concentration, but the wine never feels heavy.
The tannins are already remarkably soft without giving up structure, and the finish just keeps going.
Balance is the word I keep coming back to.
There’s also a savory, stony quality underneath the fruit. The vineyard sits on gravel, clay and river rock, with Mill Creek running behind the property, and that character comes through in both wines.
I opened the Cabernet next to a 2019 Spottswoode, mostly because I wanted to see how it would stack up against a wine I know well.
The Alioto-Tournahu was the bottle I kept reaching for.
For me, it was the better wine.
That’s a pretty big statement for a first release, but I don’t think this is a wine that’s going to need years in the cellar to become interesting. It’s already drinking beautifully, while still having the structure and balance to make me think 15–20 years should be very reasonable.
The Sauvignon Blanc is equally as intriguing.
The 2025 comes from only about a third of an acre. Instead of ordering a nursery clone, they took cuttings from Panek Vineyard, just a few hundred feet up the road. Nunzio was aiming for something closer to Sancerre, and that’s what I taste.
Jasmine, Meyer lemon, green apple and gooseberry, followed by a really clean line of acidity and a stony, mineral finish. There’s some texture in the middle that keeps it from being just another high-acid Napa Sauvignon Blanc.
At $42, I thought it was a pretty easy yes.
And that’s really the point of this post.
This is deliberately tiny. The wines are being offered through an allocation list rather than trying to turn this into a big commercial project. They haven’t shared the allocation number yet, but production was about two hundred cases, plus some large formats.
I’ve also had the chance to see how they’re approaching the hospitality side of this. We had about 22 people on the vineyard tour and roughly 45 at the dinner. It feels intimate and very much like a family project that happens to have some serious wine behind it.
If you’re going to be in Napa, I’d definitely try to arrange a visit.
But mostly I’m posting this because I want to see this succeed.
I’ve spent all these years sitting at Nunzio’s table listening to him talk about what he loves in wine. I’ve tasted countless bottles with him and heard him explain why one wine works and another doesn’t.
Now he’s got his own vineyard, his own winemaker, and his own bottle.
Rich Frederick is making the wine. Nunzio is judging it. And what they’re making is, in a lot of ways, Nunzio Alioto’s vision of what Napa Cabernet can be.
The inaugural 2024 Estate Cabernet is a fantastic wine.
I’d get on the list.
Napa Valley Register article:
Alioto-Tournahu Wines / Allocation List:
