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Kongsgaard Napa Valley Chardonnay is grown primarily on the shy-bearing Kongsgaard family vineyard described above. This vineyard gives the wine its dense, minerally core and extravagant honeyed aroma. Small amounts of wine made from two distinguished Carneros vineyards, Hudson and Hyde, are included in the blend, bringing stone fruit and citrus high-notes to the wine. Like The Judge, the Napa Valley Chardonnay is allowed to ferment in new French barrels without any human intervention other that the weekly stirring by hand - no yeast, no bacteria, no fining, no filtration. The Kongsgaard barrel fermentation cellar could probably be mistaken for one in Burgundy in the nineteenth century.

Kongsgaard Napa Valley Chardonnay The Judge is grown on the Kongsgaard family vineyard in the rocky hills immediately east of the town of Napa. Each year the perfect vines, which bear only a tiny amount of golden fruit, are selected for this blend. The crop does not exceed ½ bottle of wine per vine. Robert Parker called this super-concentrated wine "the essence of Chardonnay - one of the most profound Chardonnays made in California." The wine is fermented in all new, Burgundian oak barrels with the indigenous yeast and bacteria requiring six to twelve months to finish the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations. Resting on the primary lees for fifteen months before the first racking, gravity clarifies the wine. This allows bottling without filtration or fining after nearly two years of barrel age. The wine is named after John's late father who was The Judge in Napa County from 1959 to 1985.

Kongsgaard Napa Valley Syrah is the result of a very gratifying viticultural relationship with the exceptional Carneros grower, Lee Hudson. Hudson has three acres of volcanic soil (unusual in the Carneros) committed to Syrah, which bear fruit of unique intensity when thinned to one cluster per shoot. Harvested with mature, silky tannins, the wine macerates six weeks with the skins in the fermentation tank for full extraction of the white pepper, violets, and dark chocolate character typical of the noble Syrah. After evolving for two years in French oak barrels (fifty percent new), and only two rackings, the Kongsgaard Syrah is bottled without filtration or fining. The wine is expected to evolve in the bottle for decades and warrants aerative decanting if served young.

Kongsgaard Napa Valley Viognier/Roussanne comes from 1500 vines grown on the Kongsgaard family vineyard with the extremely low yields typical of our property. The blend is made in the field, and the two varieties are pressed together and barrel fermented in old French oak barrels without the addition of cultured yeast. Unlike the Chardonnays, the "VioRous" is bottled after just 10 months in barrel to capture the fresh fruit aromas. The high-toned perfume typical of Viognier is brought down to earth by the rustic Roussanne to create an exotic, hedonistic wine. The blend varies from year to year to achieve the ideal integration of the nearly opposite qualities of these two varieties.