NineteenNinety-One

1991

Napa Valley

Some things take time.

Small-production Cabernet Sauvignon from the mountain appellations of Napa Valley — Howell Mountain, Mount Veeder and beyond — made by two people who have spent the better part of two decades building Napa Valley's most prestigious wine brands — and thirty-five years waiting to build one of their own.

Enter the Cellar
A crescent moon and a red star within a sunburst
The house

Fifteen years spent building other people's legends.

For more than fifteen years, we have built luxury wine brands for some of Napa Valley's most prestigious wineries — the positioning, the identities, the labels, the release strategies and, on the best days, the wines themselves.

We have learned what a great Napa Valley wine owes its buyer: a vineyard worth naming, a winemaker worth trusting, a bottle that is exactly as serious as its contents, and a price that is never apologized for.

1991 is the first time we have applied all of that to a name of our own. We met in Madison, Wisconsin in the year the label is named for, discovered a shared weakness for wine, and possessed none of the qualifications required to act on it.

Fortunately, we waited.

  1. 1991Madison
  2. 1997Stag's Leap Wine Cellars
  3. 2016Brand & design
  4. 20261991 releases its first wines
The philosophy

Serious wine.
Questionable restraint.

"We take the wine considerably more seriously than ourselves."

1991 exists to make extraordinary Napa Valley wines without pretending that making wine requires us to become extraordinarily serious people.

We work with a single standard: the vineyard must be exceptional, the winemaking uncompromising, and the wine capable of standing beside the finest bottles on the mountain without explanation. Everything else — the tone, the label, the company — is allowed to enjoy itself.

We source from remarkable sites throughout Napa Valley — the kind of places that cause otherwise rational adults to start discussing slope, exposure, volcanic soils and drainage with alarming enthusiasm.

We understand. We've become those people too.

The vineyards

Howell Mountain

Napa Valley's first mountain appellation. Its most uncompromising. Where 1991 begins.

Appellation
Est. 1983The first sub-appellation within Napa Valley
Elevation
1,400–2,200 ftEntirely above the valley fog line
Soils
VolcanicTufa, ash and iron-red clay over fractured rock
Range
VacaThe eastern wall of Napa Valley, above St. Helena

The mountain

Howell Mountain rises from the eastern edge of the valley to a broad, high plateau in the Vaca Range, where the vineyards begin at fourteen hundred feet and the fog rarely arrives at all. Vines were planted here in the 1870s and 1880s, long before Napa Valley had a reputation to protect, and by 1889 wine from these ridges had been medaled in Paris. In 1983 it became the first appellation carved out of Napa Valley itself — the original argument that where a Cabernet grows matters more than the valley it happens to overlook.

The soil

The mountain is volcanic to its core: compressed ash, tufa and a deep, rust-red clay laid over fractured rock, thin in the places that matter and fast-draining everywhere. It gives the vine almost nothing. The berries stay small, the skins grow thick, and the wine arrives with a density and mineral tension that the valley floor, for all its advantages, has never quite managed to imitate.

The light

Above the fog, the vines wake to sunlight the valley below will not see for hours, then ripen slowly through cooler, thinner afternoon air. The result is a longer season and a later harvest: fruit of unusual concentration held together by acidity and mountain tannin. Howell Mountain Cabernet is not made for the first year. It is made for the one that proves you were right to wait.

The other side of the valley

Mount Veeder

Where the Mayacamas meet the bay. The coolest, steepest and least obliging of Napa's mountains.

Appellation
Est. 1990The southern reach of the Mayacamas Range
Elevation
500–2,600 ftSteep, forested slopes with few level acres
Soils
SedimentaryAncient seabed: shale, sandstone and uplifted marine clay
Climate
CoolOpen to San Pablo Bay; harvest among the valley's latest

The mountain

Mount Veeder rises on the western wall of Napa Valley, in the Mayacamas Range above the city of Napa, where the slopes tilt toward San Pablo Bay and the marine air arrives every afternoon without invitation. Vines have grown here since the 1860s, planted by people who chose the mountain for its stubbornness. It is the coolest of Napa's mountain appellations and among the last to harvest, a place where Cabernet takes its time and is not to be hurried.

The soil

Where Howell Mountain is volcanic, Mount Veeder is the floor of an ancient sea, lifted and tilted: thin, fractured shale and sandstone over marine clay, with almost nothing to give. Yields here are famously small, often less than two tons to the acre, and the wines are shaped accordingly — compact, savory, and built on a fine-grained tannin that carries blue fruit, cedar and wild herb for decades. It is the mountain that made the valley's most patient collectors patient.

Mount Veeder
Vines on the Howell Mountain plateau

Ridiculous places make remarkable wine.

We source from exceptional vineyard sites throughout Napa Valley, with an unapologetic attraction to mountains, elevation, difficult terrain and places where Cabernet has to work a little harder than everyone else.

No sprawling estate story. No château built in 1887. No horse that supposedly inspired the label.

Just access to extraordinary vineyards, the relationships it takes to farm them properly, and the freedom to chase the wines we want to make.

Views better than most people's houses.

Volcanic soil, Howell Mountain
The wines

Time. Place. Forever.

The 1991 Estate Collection is three Cabernets named for three Latin words: tempus, locus and semper. Time, place and forever. Each is made in quantities that will not survive their allocation, and released only when it is ready to be judged.

1991 Tempus, 2024 Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon bottle
Estate Collection No. I

1991 Tempus

Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Time. 2024 Napa Valley

Tempus is Howell Mountain at its most articulate: black fruit of real density carried without weight, iron and crushed stone beneath it, mountain tannin with somewhere to go, and a finish long enough to end a conversation. Built to reward the patient. We would know.

Elevation
1,400–2,000 ft
Composition
100% Cabernet Sauvignon
Alcohol
14.5% alc./vol.
Production
128 cases
Release
Fall 2026
Winemaker
Robert Smith
Consulting Winemaker
Julien Fayard
$185750 ml · per bottle
Now available · Allocated release
Acquire
1991 Locus, 2023 Mt. Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon bottle
Estate Collection No. II

1991 Locus

Mt. Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon Place. 2023 Napa Valley

Locus comes from the other side of the valley and says so. Mount Veeder's cool, sea-bed slopes give a Cabernet of blue and black fruit, cedar, crushed sage and graphite, with the fine-grained, insistent tannin the mountain is known for. Less thunder than Howell Mountain; more precision. The two were never meant to agree.

Elevation
1,200–2,000 ft
Composition
100% Cabernet Sauvignon
Alcohol
14.5% alc./vol.
Production
123 cases
Release
Fall 2026
Winemaker
Robert Smith
Consulting Winemaker
Julien Fayard
$175750 ml · per bottle
Now available · Allocated release
Acquire
1991 Semper, non-vintage Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon bottle
Estate Collection No. III

1991 Semper

Non-Vintage Cabernet Sauvignon Forever. Napa Valley

Semper is Latin for always: the 1991 Estate Collection’s non-vintage Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and the one that stands for forever. Tasting notes to come.

Composition
100% Cabernet Sauvignon
Alcohol
14.5% alc./vol.
Production
121 cases
Release
Fall 2026
Winemaker
Robert Smith
Consulting Winemaker
Julien Fayard
$145750 ml · per bottle
Allocated release
Acquire

Small production. High elevation. Low tolerance for mediocre Cabernet.

The people

"Between us, we've spent an unreasonable amount of our adult lives thinking about wine."

David came to wine through the business itself — wineries, vineyards, production, sourcing and the commercial realities of Napa Valley, from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in 1997 through fifteen years of building and steering luxury brands for some of the valley's most prestigious names.

Tre came to it through design — the labels, identities and digital experiences that determine how a wine introduces itself before the cork ever leaves the bottle, for wineries whose bottles are rarely introduced twice.

1991 is where those two worlds finally collided.

It only took 35 years.

David Zurowski

Founder

Nearly three decades in Napa Valley wine, from the cellar at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars to the strategy behind some of the valley's most sought-after luxury brands. Knows precisely what a $185 bottle owes its buyer, and insists on paying it.

Tre Stange

Founder + Creative Director

A decade designing the labels, packaging and identities of Napa Valley's most prestigious wineries. Responsible for a label that is, by some margin, better than it needed to be.

Robert Smith

Winemaker

The reason the wine is serious. Makes the decisions in the cellar that the founders are wise enough not to second-guess, at least out loud.

Julien Fayard

Consulting Winemaker

Brings a Bordeaux-trained eye and a Napa mountain résumé to the blending table. Consulted, listened to, and overruled by no one.

Two friends. One wine brand. Several decades of unnecessary preparation. Fifteen years building Napa Valley's finest brands. One built for ourselves. Made from vineyards with views better than most people's houses. We waited 35 years to launch this. Expectations are now inconveniently high. We source from some of Napa Valley's most ridiculous pieces of dirt. We mean that as the highest compliment. Two friends. One wine brand. Several decades of unnecessary preparation. Made from vineyards with views better than most people's houses. We waited 35 years to launch this. Expectations are now inconveniently high. We source from some of Napa Valley's most ridiculous pieces of dirt. We mean that as the highest compliment.

Why 1991?

Because that was the year we met.

And because "Zurowski & Stange" sounded slightly too much like a personal injury law firm.

1991 it is.

Acquire

Acquire the collection.

The 1991 Estate Collection is released in strictly limited quantities and offered first to the allocation list, in order of arrival: Tempus, the 2024 Howell Mountain; Locus, the 2023 Mount Veeder; and Semper, the non-vintage Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Tempus and Locus are available now. Leave your details and you will hear from us before anyone else does.

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