As one of Napa Valley's few remaining family wine estates, Trefethen Vineyards has never purchased a single grape from outside the valley. Located in the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley, the estate vineyard is nestled in a verdant landscape of vines at the cooler, southern end of Napa Valley.
During the 1980s, owners John and Janet Trefethena recall how the root louse known as phylloxera, which had devastated Northern California vineyards a century earlier, re-emerged and began a rapid decimation of the world-renowned vineyards of Napa and Sonoma counties.
As a result, over 10,000 new vines were planted, utilizing the experience gained over the previous 20 years and implementing many of the successful vineyard experiments that had been conducted during that time. In truth, phylloxera provided an opportunity to re-assess the vines originally planted, where they were located and to implement a new design.
Aided by winemakers David Whitehouse Jr. and Peter Luthi, carefully researched which varietals, rootstocks and clones to plant in the different sections of our revitalized vineyard, initiating a costly ten-year project that by the first years of the 21st century had both literally and figuratively borne new Napa Valley fruit.
