Sam Kaplan

The Climb

Today, Sam is winemaker of Memento Mori, winemaker of Vida Valiente, winemaker of Arkenstone Estate, winemaker of Vangone Estate, and winemaker of MAXEM Wines (since 2015). The list is extensive, but the throughline is clear. In a valley where names can carry more weight than process, Kaplan’s role stays fixed on the work that matters most: shaping what ends up in the glass. Across these estates and wines, the title remains the same, but the settings do not, demanding a sensibility that can hold several expressions at once without losing a single point of view.

Today

At Memento Mori, his title stays plain: winemaker. That plainness is useful. It puts the work ahead of the rhetoric. In a house like Memento Mori, that directness signals a confidence built over time, one that lets the wine lead while the résumé stays in the background. Kaplan’s role there sits inside a larger practice in which vineyard knowledge and winemaking are not separate tracks, but parts of the same work.

Signature

Sam's signature wines include 2023 Memento Mori Vine Hill Ranch Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, 2023 Vida Valiente The Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2023 Arkenstone Estate Red Blend. Each name points to a defined place or estate, and each wine sits inside the kind of specificity Napa Valley asks for at the top end. Taken together, they show a winemaker working across different sites and labels without breaking the line of his own palate. The set suggests a close read on detail, and on how fruit, site, and season can be brought into alignment.

In Their Words “It smelled like home, and reminded me of my early childhood.”

Recognition

The most direct note attached to Kaplan’s voice is sensory rather than decorative: “It smelled like home, and reminded me of my early childhood.” The line places aroma at the center of how he registers wine, with memory and early life close behind. What is notable is not prestige or performance, but scent as a working tool—something capable of collapsing distance and bringing the present into contact with older experience. Read that way, the recognition here is internal rather than external: a way of understanding wine through what it recalls as much as what it contains.