Spottswoode Estate

The Free Bacchus Story

Jack Novak died of a heart attack in 1977, four years after he and Mary bought the property. He was forty-four. Mary was left with five young children and a vineyard she had never planned to run, so she ran it — selling the fruit to other wineries until she made the first Spottswoode Cabernet in 1982.

The early vintages, 1982 to 1989, were made by Tony Soter, and the wine has been built along deliberately restrained lines ever since. The Estate Cabernet comes off the original walled vineyard in St. Helena. Corison, a few miles away and also listed here, is its closest stylistic relative — both are arguments that Napa Cabernet can be made for twenty years rather than for the first five minutes of a tasting.

The farming went organic in 1985 and CCOF certification followed in 1992, a decade or more ahead of the Napa estates that converted once organic began to sell.

Anyone can convert in a good year. Holding certification continuously across three decades of market cycles, including the years when nobody was paying extra for it, is the difficult part and the number that actually means something.

Demeter biodynamic certification and B Corp status both came in 2020, the first B Corp winery in Napa. Mary Novak’s daughters Beth and Lindy run the estate, which has never left the family.