We alternately refer to it as "the fire story" or "the story of our lost 1998 vintage." If we've told it once we've told it a hundred times, and if you've been around us for a while you've probably heard or read about it. Yet it continues to take on new dimensions.

In June of 2000, not long after we bottled our 1998 Napa Valley Zinfandel – our third vintage, and the only wine we were making at that time – a fire broke out at the warehouse where we stored our case goods. We were among dozens of producers who lost precious inventory in that event, and for us the impact was particularly devastating not only because we had no other wine to release in its place, but because our fledgling brand had just begun gaining momentum.

Our post-fire inspection revealed that amidst the pallets of charred boxes, crushed bottles, and spilled wine, a number of interior cases of our 1998 zin remained physically intact. However, since there was no way to determine the condition of the wine inside every bottle without opening each one up, there was no point in attempting to salvage them. The entire vintage was written off as a loss, the insurance company agreed to have the intact bottles destroyed, eventually we received a settlement, and we went on to release our 1999 Napa zin ahead of schedule to bridge the revenue gap – thus triggering an accelerated release schedule for every subsequent vintage of our flagship wine.

Then a funny thing started happening. We began hearing from people claiming they'd had our 1998 zin. No you didn't, we would tell them. You're mistaken. But the urban legend persisted – despite the lack of concrete evidence on our end.

That all changed this summer when yet another report came our way, this time from one of our wine club members. "Had a bottle of your '98 zin..." he wrote in an email. "No you didn't," we wrote back. "Yes I did," he wrote back, with this photo attached:

Nobody move! Immediately we conducted an email investigation, and several months later, in early September, a miraculous bounty of six bottles of our 1998 Napa Valley Zinfandel – "gray market" survivors, complete with water damaged labels from the fire – was delivered to us at the winery.

The timing of this meaningful homecoming could not have been more serendipitous, for just three weeks later we would release to our Library members our 2008 Recluse Zinfandel, a wine we created as an homage to our lost 1998 vintage.

Ten vintages descended from our '98 zin, this wine represents the inaugural release from a quiet side project we have been developing over the last several years: a "reserve" line of zinfandels that receive extended cellaring under the watchful eye of resident zinmaster Dave Brown. Comprised of a special blend from small lots that were hand selected by the winegrower and held back from our 2008 Napa Valley zin, this sleeping giant introduces a new dimension to the Brown zin lineup. Taking its name from our 2007 Brown Recluse reserve cab sauv – itself a sleeper hit in our tasting room, where it is sold exclusively – offerings from our Recluse line may or may not appear from vintage to vintage, depending upon what Mother Nature affords us. But one thing we can promise: When these wines do show up, they will be extraordinary.

[11/07/11 – Update: We produced just 390 cases of this wine, and based on the response it has received from our Library members and in our tasting room, we don't anticipate it lasting through its originally slated Spring 2012 release date. It is now available online.]

Dates: May 28 | June 18 | August 6 – 2pm to 4pm



As previously mentioned just about everywhere we mention things, this year marks the first time in our 15-year history that we are releasing five Brown zins from the same vintage. Our 2009 Zinapalooza Horizontal Tasting series offers the rarest of opportunities to taste through all five of these wines – our Napa, Mickey’s, Rosemary’s, Chiles, and Westside zins – in a focused, educational setting with winegrower Dave Brown and wine educator Coral Brown as your guides. Tickets are $50 per person for members and $75 per person for non-members (includes individual pairings with each wine). Attendees will be able to purchase and take early possession of our 2009 Westside Zinfandel, scheduled for Fall release. We hope to see you this summer for one of these glorious, eye-opening afternoon tastings at our family estate.

Read more here. To request tickets, please complete this form.

We take our zinfandel very seriously, and we think it worth noting for you diehard Brown zin fans out there that 2011 marks the first time in our fifteen-year history that five BE zins from the same vintage will be released in one calendar year. This historic Brown Zinapalooza is made possible by the arrival of our 2009 Mickey’s Block and 2009 Rosemary’s Block zins, both brand new this year to the Brown zin lineup.

With the addition of these two new single vineyard bottlings, winegrower Dave Brown has completed a nifty deconstruction of our original hallmark Napa Valley zin, which is blended from our Mickey’s, Rosemary’s, Chiles Valley, and Westside vineyard blocks. The latter two names will strike a chord with the Brown zin faithful among you; they are the first and second single vineyard zins, respectively, that Brown Estate has bottled over the years – the Chiles commencing in 2002, the Westside in 2006.



It’s a fascinating exercise not only for the nose and palate, but for the imagination, to taste through five Brown zins from a single vintage. While the Napa zin blend embodies components from all four vineyards, the individual bottlings from our Mickey’s, Rosemary’s, Chiles Valley, and Westside blocks, in concert with the Napa zin, give proof to the oft-abused notion of terroir. As strikingly different as each of these zins is – from the fullness of the Napa to the jamminess of the Mickey’s to the elegance of the Rosemary’s to the brooding fruit of the Chiles to the mellow structure of the Westside – there is an unmistakable imprint, primarily in the noses, signaling that these five very distinct zins can only have come from one place. Intriguing evidence of what we call the Brown Estate pedigree is present in each of these gorgeous and complex wines, even as each is a singular expression of our estate property.

Production on our single vineyard zins is just a few hundred cases each. We hope you will stock your cellar with these wines so you can indulge in a series of in-the-round Brown zin tastings from the 2009 vintage. By partaking of this unique opportunity you will experience both the extraordinary versatility and the unparalleled virtue of our estate grown zinfandels.

The Napa, Mickey’s, and Rosemary’s are available currently online (the Napa also is in distribution), and we will release the 2009 Chiles Valley in May, and the 2009 Westside in the fall. Collect all five and join us on our zintastic voyage!

Update 04/26/11: Our 2009 Chiles Valley zin is now available online. To commemorate our first ever five-zin vintage, beginning May 28th we will be hosting a series of 2009 "Zinapalooza" horizontal tastings at the winery – a rare opportunity to experience all five 2009 Brown zins with winegrower Dave Brown and wine educator Coral Brown as your guides. See page 8 of the Summer 2011 BE Paper or click here to request tickets.

Hard to believe it's been that long since our last post - yet not so when we consider all that's happened since. If you've been following our recent adventures on Facebook and/or Twitter, you may recall that during the lead-up to ZAP in December and January, the San Francisco Chronicle gave us three very nice mentions. First, they ranked our 2008 Napa Valley Zinfandel among their Top 100 Wines of 2010. Next, they gave our then newly released 2009 Napa zin a terrific leg up with "Napa Valley Zinfandel: The Chronicle recommends." Then came a second nod to our 09 Napa zin in "From the Notebook" at the tail end of Jon Bonné's insightful article entitled "It's time to heal the great Zinfandel divide."



By the time we attended our 12th annual ZAP Grand Tasting on Saturday January 29th, we were pretty well blown away by the Chronicle's rapid-fire love, having grown accustomed to flying below the radar. We found it interesting that our colleagues in the wine industry seemed to take more notice of our recent press than did consumers themselves, and that was fine by us. The winemaking arm of our little family enterprise - namely our winegrower and brother, David - tends to be on the quiet side (in a "speak softly and produce a stunningly pure and well-balanced zin" sort of way), so we were happy when Dave's beautiful, elegant zins were called exactly that by a panel of judges whose integrity we admire.



Following ZAP - a glorious affair as always - we hit the ground running, propelled by so much momentum. On February 12th we unveiled the second (Spring 2011) issue of our quarterly BE Paper, as well as our newly remodeled tasting room, to Estate members and their guests at our Spring allocation pickup event at the winery. Our entire family (including Mom & Dad!) were present for what felt like a wonderful reunion with old and new friends alike.

Later that week, on February 18th, we poured our 2009 Petite Sirah at "P.S. I Love You." The following Weds. the 23rd Coral and Mom traveled to L.A. for a trade tasting with our distributor there, and last Friday the 25th we did a menu tasting with our friend and BE member, Melissa Teaff, who will be catering our fourth annual Derby Day event in May.

Through it all, we've found that our eulogy for distribution (see previous post here) may have been a tad premature, as most of our out-of-state markets have shown promising signs of reviving.

That brings us current with the updates, and we won't wait another two months to post again... especially as we're preparing to release several exciting new wines and gearing up for our annual online March Madness event! Lots to show and tell.

Thanks as always for reading, and we hope 2011 is off to a brilliant start for you.

As much as we love to wax lyrical about the many romantic aspects of the wine industry/lifestyle, underneath it all this little endeavor of ours is a commercial enterprise with a very real bottom line.

We've used the word "milestone" a lot this year because we celebrated a pair of significant anniversaries in 2010. But what really made this year historic for us had less to do with those backward glances than with the forward movement we achieved as a small business.



The wine industry, like most others, has undergone a tremendous amount of change over the last few years. Three phenomena in particular have impacted us in profound ways during this period: (1) the rapid evolution of social media and related technologies; (2) a volatile but ultimately survivalist economy; and (3) the increasingly convoluted machinations of the distribution sales channel. These compounded elements have demanded unprecedented bobbing and weaving from a business management standpoint.

As we've navigated this changing landscape, technology has worked in our favor (see: Twitter & Facebook), and the economy has kept us on our toes (see our hallmark Napa Valley zinfandel, now in its seventh straight vintage with no price increase). But the demise of distribution as a meaningful sales channel for small producers has been a curve ball that's changed the game.*

Given these circumstances, our micro size and private family-held structure have been virtues, allowing us to remain nimble enough to keep pace with the ever changing demands of our industry. From the vine to the press to the tank to the barrel to the bottle to your glass - not until that cycle is complete have we begun to scratch the surface of meeting our goals.

And that is why you are the very heart of the matter, dear lover of our wines. None of what we do - the farming, the winemaking, the hospitality, the outreach - none of it means anything without your continued discovery, enjoyment, and desire to share in the Brown Estate experience.

In order to better nurture this precious ecosystem in which we thrive with your support, during the course of 2010 we made a number of upgrades to both our systems and our manpower, not only changing e-commerce and fulfillment providers, but hiring three new employees on the business side of things. "Three new employees," you may say to yourself, "how cute!" But remember that there were only four of us running the business in the first place!

These internal changes and the extensive recalibrating they have entailed represent what for us has been the most significant growth spurt in Brown Estate's 15-year history. And so it is that we toast 2010 not merely as a year that witnessed major milestones for us, but as a year that embodied them.

Thank you for continuing to be a part of this adventure with us, and we wish all of you a healthy, prosperous, and exuberant 2011!
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*Interested in the gruesome details re: distribution's downfall? Write in below and we will be happy to fill you in! [Update: Details posted in comment string below (in two parts).]