Somerston Estate

Reading the hill before the tank

Craig Becker reads Somerston Estate as winemaker in St. Helena from the vineyard out, letting the hillside tell him what the cellar should not force. At Craig Becker's bench, the material is not a purchased idea of Napa Valley but an estate high in the Vaca Mountains, with blocks climbing from 800 to 1,615 feet. He has worked at Somerston Estate since 2004 as general manager and winemaker, and since 2021 as director of making, a title that fits the breadth of the station. The job gathers viticulture, cellar judgment, and daily stewardship into one discipline. Becker also became founding winemaker at Priest Ranch from 2007, work that asked him to set a winery's early voice while keeping the estate legible in the glass. At Somerston, that long view remains central. His own language is direct: “For me, sustainability is not a marketing tool or gimmick; it is a way of life.” Here, that is less a claim than a working method, repeated in vineyard decisions, cellar restraint, and the patience required by mountain fruit.

Single blocks on a large estate

The estate covers 1,615 acres, with 242 acres of sustainably farmed vineyard planted across hillside ground in the eastern Vaca Mountains. The scale matters because the Somerston label moves in the opposite direction: limited production, approximately 1,000 cases annually, with single-block Bordeaux wines as the central expression. Priest Ranch works at another register, around 12,000 cases, which gives Becker two related but distinct forms of discipline. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, Petit Verdot, Petite Sirah, Grenache, and Viognier all sit within the estate's working vocabulary, but the place is most clearly framed through Napa Valley AVA still reds and still whites. The method described here is minimal intervention and terroir-led, not as ornament, but as a constraint. Becker's signature wines include XCVI and Priest Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, 2014; read together, they show a maker holding estate identity and varietal line in the same hands.

The quiet of the Vaca Mountains

The tasting room and vineyard paths sit away from the busier floor of Napa Valley, in a quiet register shaped by elevation, gardens, picnic grounds, and the long roll of mountain vineyard. The room does not need much theater. The work is already outside the windows: hillside rows, blocks cut into the estate, fruit moving from steep ground toward the cellar. Somerston's atmosphere is contemplative because the estate asks for that pace. A visitor meets the wines through a sit-down tasting, a private tasting, or a vineyard tour with tasting, but the real structure is the land itself. Becker's station reaches beyond the cellar door, into how the property is farmed, how the fruit is read, and how much pressure the winemaker chooses not to apply. The close attention belongs to specific ground: the 242 vineyard acres of Somerston Estate.