A Family Vineyard with Heart
Wherever Family | by Elyse Glickman | Jan 16, 2019 | Original ARTICLE
Napa is a celebrated romantic destination for Valentine’s Day (or President’s Day weekend and wedding anniversaries, for that matter). And what’s there not to love? The best-known wine production in America has going for it fantastic, spring-like weather, first-class dining, and a refined and sophisticated mix of familiar and emerging wineries. In fact, Napa Valley in some years has had more tourists populate its fields than Disneyland. For couples planning quality downtime, those crowds can deflate the romance factor.
A simple solution to the crowd issue is to take the road less traveled, and, for wine lovers, that means seeking out wineries a bit more hidden. That philosophy worked for Julio and Amalia Palmaz, regular vistors to Napa who loved the idea of winemaking so much they decided to relocate and purchase a winery in the 1990s. They happened upon a late 19th-century home in Coombsville (in Napa’s southern reaches) surrounded by 600 acres of land draped over Mount George. While 60 of those acres were ideal for the cultivation of grapes (particularly Cabernet Sauvignon), the couple discovered they uncovered a long lost piece of Napa’s winery history.