Nunzio Alioto spent forty years deciding which bottles were worth pouring.
In 2024 he made one.
SEVEN ACRES NORTH OF ST. HELENA
ESTATE FRUIT ONLY
A FEW HUNDRED CASES
"I don't want to be like everybody else. We want to take our fruit and make it a little bit more of an elegant style. It's still going to be powerful, still going to have all of that beautiful complexity and richness, but with a little bit of fineness."
— Nunzio Alioto, Owner and Master SommelierThree of us taste every lot. Rich Frederick as the winemaker, Nunzio as the sommelier, and
Franklin as the person who has to want to open it on a Tuesday.
Our Wines
After years of dedication to cultivating exceptional grapes, Alioto-Tournahu is proud to introduce our premiere collection of single-vineyard wines. Our estate portfolio comprises two distinct bottlings: Alioto-Tournahu Estate Sauvignon Blanc and our flagship wine, Alioto-Tournahu Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. We produce limited quantities, harnessing the rich and unique character of our soils to create wines of worldly elegance. Our wines are offered solely through our mailing list, and we invite you to join us and be among the first to share in each release.
Estate Sauvignon Blanc
2025 | Tournahu Vineyard | Estate Grown
Picked at 22, and built toward Sancerre rather than toward the tropics. Riper fruit trades gooseberry and green apple for passionfruit and melon. We would rather keep the gooseberry.
Stainless steel and neutral French oak, and no new oak at all. White jasmine, Meyer lemon, green apple, gooseberry, and a quiet whisper of wet stone underneath. We stopped the malolactic at fifteen percent to keep the acid.
The highest-scoring Sauvignon Blancs in California are being built on 60% new oak. We do not think that is how you make a great Sauvignon Blanc. Oak is being rewarded, which is not the same as oak being right.
Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
2024 | Tournahu Vineyard | Estate Grown
Picked between 25 to 26 brix, a St. Helena Cabernet at 14.3 percent, raised in 60% new French oak and heading to 50. It is not a quiet wine and was never meant to be.
The tannins are soft and powdery. We did not extend maceration to get them there and we did not give up colour doing it. That is the vineyard rather than the cellar, and it is the whole reason we pick when we pick.
It is very good to drink right now. The tannin is why you can open it tonight. The acid is why you do not have to.
Our Vineyard
Our beginning is rooted in 1976 when George and Evelyn Tournahu purchased a small vineyard in the heart of St. Helena, Napa Valley.
They wanted a summer house with room for the grandchildren and a creek to collect berries along. The vineyard came with it, planted to Napa Gamay, and they sold the fruit to Charles Shaw.
In 1998, on their son-in-law's advice, they replanted the whole property to Cabernet Sauvignon. For the next twenty-six years the fruit went into other people's bottles. Thomas Brown began taking it in 2015 and made it a single-vineyard wine under his own label.
In 2024 we kept some.
The soil is gravel and river rock, left by the creek. It puts a stony, savory core in the wine that we have never been able to farm out of it and would not want to. The road out here is still dirt.
In 2016 we replanted half the vineyard with tighter spacing and American heritage vines, a decision Josh Clark and Nunzio made with the next thirty summers in mind rather than the next three.
