La Jota Vineyard Co.

La Jota is one of the oldest names in Napa Valley. In 1898 the Swiss immigrant Frederick Hess, who had earlier founded a German-language newspaper in San Francisco, built a stone cellar on Howell Mountain from volcanic rock quarried on the property itself. Even the first fermentation vats came from the estate's own woodland, made of nearby coastal redwood. Shortly after it was built, Hess won a bronze medal at the Paris World's Fair. After Prohibition, La Jota fell silent for decades and became a "ghost winery", until a former oil magnate breathed new life into the estate. It later passed to Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke, and Chris Carpenter has made small lots of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc there ever since. Worth knowing: La Jota recently celebrated its 125th anniversary, making it one of the few Napa houses whose nineteenth-century roots still stand, quite literally, in the cellar.