Napa Valley vintner Arrow&Branch buys 10-acre Oak Knoll vineyard, plans to build winery

The proprietors of Napa Valley’s Arrow&Branch Estate Vineyard have purchased the 10-acre Williamson Family Vineyard in the Oak Knoll District and plan to build a small winery there.

Steve and Seanne Contursi, who currently own vines in the Coombsville appellation east of Napa, purchased the Oak Knoll appellation vineyard for about $4 million from Bob and Joni Williamson of L'attitude Vineyards LLC, producing wine under the Ideology Cellars brand, according to the announcement Wednesday.

The property is located along Highway 29, bordering Dry Creek at the base of the Mayacamas Mountains separating Napa and Sonoma counties.

“The property already has a winery permit, and we now are planning to build a winery on the property. Our goal is to crush our first grapes there in 2022,” said Steve Contursi.

The county permit allows production of 30,000 gallons of wine annually, or nearly 13,000 9-liter cases. About 1,500 cases of the Arrow&Branch brand currently are produced a year, made at Brasswood Cellars, 3111 St. Helena Highway, St. Helena. The wines are released at a bottle price of $110–$225.

The new owners of the Oak Knoll property plan to increase production of Arrow&Branch to 3,000–4,000 cases a year after the winery is built, Contursi told the Business Journal.

“This is the southern-most alluvial fan in Napa Valley with excellent grape-growing soil and sediment from the nearby foothills. Seven of the 10 acres are premium, 25-year old vines of cabernet sauvignon, so we will be able to expand our production of Napa’s most sought-after varietal,” he said in the annoucement.

The Contursis got into the wine business in 2007 starting with the purchase of a 3.5-acre vineyard from renowned winemaker Tony Soter in the Coombsville area. They added another 1.5 contiguous acres in 2011 and also have been buying grapes from five notable Napa Valley vineyards.

The brand has a single-vineyard cabernet sauvignons from Beckstoffer Dr. Crane and Vine Hill Ranch, a Bordeaux blend made from their estate cabernet franc and other wines under their label including a cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and sauvignon blanc.

The Arrow&Branch name comes from Steve Contursi’s work as a numismatist, specifically the coinage symbol of an American eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch. He has been a professional rare coin dealer since 1975 and specializes in historically significant U.S. coins, such as the 1787-dated Brasher Doubloon he sold for $7.4 million to a Wall Street investment firm in 2011.

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