The Vineyard 29 winery is one the most technologically advanced wineries in the Napa Valley, thanks to the bleeding edge tech mentality of owner Chuck McMinn, a Silicon Valley high-tech industry veteran. The ultimate goal in the use of technology, however, is to augment and precisely control the techniques and ideals used in old-world winemaking to produce wines of the highest quality through the gentlest of methods.

Applying the Old World theory of "elevage," or raising each vintage as one would raise a child, means giving the vines and the wine whatever attention they require to create a final product that is the highest representation of the vineyard and the climate in that year. Every piece of advanced machinery at Vineyard 29 enables us to treat our grapes with tremendous care, thus adhering to old world winemaking ideals through use of the most advanced modern technologies.

Vineyard 29 employs the most careful, patient (albeit time-consuming and labor intensive) techniques to create wines that fully express the potential of their vineyard heritage. Every cluster is hand sorted. Further a 2nd sorting table is employed to allow for 16 people to hand-sort each individual grape from our harvest once it is destemmed. Whole grapes are deposited into a small transfer tank, which is then lifted by forklift so the grapes may slide gently into our computer-monitored fermentation tanks by gravity.

Use of gravity, nature’s own gentle crushing method, is central to the process of winemaking at Vineyard 29. Making this possible are advances such as a specially designed freight elevator to fill, lift and empty, tanks an alternative to the common oxygen-driven pumping of wines around a facility. At Vineyard 29 free-run juice is transferred around the tank room and to barrel by gravity. Must is also pressed using a computer-controlled JLB hydraulic press and transferred by gravity to barrel. In our caves, barrel racking is also done without a pump, this time using inert gas to pressurize the barrel and move wine gently out to the next waiting barrel. These and other technological advancements provide the backbone for the labor-intensive winemaking process at Vineyard 29, and they exemplify the combination of Old-World techniques with the most advanced methods available, a design intended to further us in our pursuit of "perfection" in our wines.

Vineyard 29 is strongly committed to giving our environment the same gentle treatment that we give to our wine. We utilize special Capstone microturbines to generate all our own electricity on site, and in the process derive all the hot and cold water we use in the facility as a byproduct, while producing one tenth of the emissions of typical utility power. Overall the winery is over 250% more efficient in our use of our natural resources than a typical grid power winery. Additionally, Vineyard 29 has its own underground wells and septic system so that all the water we use is sourced, used and treated on site, minimizing our impact on our precious Napa Valley environment.