New Clairvaux Vineyards

New Clairvaux's land, history, and people make it an ideal site for 21st Century winemaking. Its Vina location is noted for its deep loam soils and mild climate, which enabled the site to blossom under the ownership of Peter Lassen during California's colonial days, and later as Leland Stanford's Great Vina Ranch, the world's largest vineyard, winery and distillery by 1890. In 2000, we took the first steps toward creating our wines—selecting and planting our vineyards. We chose St. James and its sister Poor Souls as our inaugural vineyards thanks to their particular soil types. Each vineyard demonstrates unique qualities—with St. James featuring deep Vina Loam soil, and Poor Souls consisting of Sandy Vina Loam with large pockets of river rocks. In addition to this wonderful soil diversity, the vineyard-variety combinations were chosen based on their ability to produce notably high quality wines in a climate like Vina.