Led by winemaker Françoise Peschon and vineyard manager Mike Wolf, VHR is crafted from seven distinctive blocks within the 70-acre vineyard on Bruce and Heather Phillips’ western Oakville estate. The Phillips family has farmed Vine Hill Ranch since 1959, when Bruce’s father, Bob Phillips, first began growing grapes here. VHR sits at the base of the Mayacamas Range—one of Napa Valley’s most prized zones for Cabernet. This area provides the perfect balance of hillside structure and valley-floor elegance, producing wines with depth, purity, and tension.

This 2022 comes from a ripe, sun-kissed vintage. Despite the warmth of the growing season, the western bench’s natural cooling influences allowed for a wine of profound concentration while maintaining the freshness and energy that are hallmarks of Françoise’s winemaking. It opens with an evocative bouquet of dark plum skin, violets, and graphite, leading into a palate defined by its power and seamless, silky tannins that glide toward a never-ending finish.

Today, most of the fruit is still sold to long-standing winery partners and a select group of newer producers fortunate enough to work with this premier site. Since 2008, the family has set aside a portion of the fruit to produce their own estate Cabernet Sauvignon—VHR—a wine that highlights the vineyard’s variations in soil, elevation, and exposure through a bottling of depth, complexity, and unmistakable site expression.