Marineau Mills was founded by Sébastien Marineau-Mes and Emily Mills Marineau, with their first vintage produced in 2019. They married in Calistoga in 2018 and began looking for a property to build a home. They found and purchased a property in 2018 but it was planted with vineyards; their vision pivoted as that year the grapes fell out of contract and they needed to either find another buyer, make home wine or start a wine brand. They elected to start a wine brand, named using Sébastien’s last name and Emily’s maiden name. Their 5.5 acre property is located along the Silverado Trail, a short drive south of Calistoga.
Less than an acre of hillside Cabernet Sauvignon is planted on the properties’ rocky volcanic soils; these vines were planted in the mid 1990s by the long time Calistoga Saviez family; this property was previously part of a much larger Saviez holding before parcels were sub divided. The wines were originally Zinfandel and around 2005 were budded over to Cabernet Sauvignon by Pina Vineyard Management. Pina continues to oversee the management of their vineyard. Prior to their purchase, the estate grapes were being sold to Venge Vineyards. Nearby winery neighbors include Davis Estate and Ladera.
The original vineyard on the property is planted to St. George rootstock. The property is extremely rocky with three different soil types. With the help of a soils consultant, they dug 5 different soil pits; the resulting data indicated that this site is remarkably complex in terms of its strata. After three years since applying for a permit to increase their vineyard footprint, in spring 2025 a less than an acre upper portion of their property was planted to Cabernet Sauvignon using several different rootstocks to take advantage of the different soil profiles.
The first vintage of Marineau Mills, an estate Cabernet Sauvignon was 98 cases in 2019. They currently produce two Cabernet Sauvignon based wines from their estate. And their first Chardonnay was produced in 2023 from Rutherford.
Sébastien is a mechanical engineer from Quebec; he began working on his PhD with a possible interest in building/designing airplanes for a career, but his interest waned when he realized that he would be part of a huge team and wouldn’t have a direct role in the design of the planes. So he pivoted and began working for a small software company, QNX Software Systems, followed by several years at Blackberry. Apple recruited him in 2014; today he is the Vice President of Software for Apple, overseeing a large team of software engineers.
His introduction to wine was in the late 1990s when he started drinking and collecting wines from Bordeaux. Initially he wasn’t exposed to many California wines, but during software conferences in the San Francisco Bay Area, he would take a day or two off and visit Napa Valley on the weekends before returning home. He remembers the first wineries he visited included Caymus and Silver Oak, before discovering some of the smaller producers.
And Sébastien tried to grow a vineyard in the front yard at his home in Ottawa; he was successful for the first two years but during the third year experienced a particularly extreme winter. As a result, the mice in the area became hungry and began to munch on both the bark and the cambium layers of the young vines. They girdled the vines and the plants died. Both Sébastien and Emily now grow a small section of Cabernet Franc at their home in Calistoga; there are no extreme winters and no hungry mice here.
Winemaker Mario Sculatti crafted the wines from 2019 through 2021; in 2021 they began purchasing non estate grapes for the first time. For the first three years they experimented with their production, including picking parts of their vineyard separately, fermenting individual lots and trying multiple barrel combinations including French oak from Taransaud and Demptos. Starting with the 2022 vintage Ashley Hepworth, former winemaker at Joseph Phelps, including overseeing the production of their flagship bottling Insignia, began making the Marineau Mills wines. She has a nuanced approach to winemaking, has a highly analytical mind in terms of the details of winemaking and especially excels with blending.
And also part of the small team is Erin Di Costanzo, co-founder of Di Costanzo Wines and a consultant for small wine brands in Napa Valley.
Select Wines
Chardonnay
The 2023 Marineau Mills Chardonnay is pale to medium gold in color; highly aromatic the bouquet is a pure expression of the variety. Its scents include tropical florals of honeysuckle, golden apples, chalk, walnut skin, Meyer lemon, pineapple and a layer of vanilla as the wine continues to evolve. Its texture is supple and feels like running one’s hand over velvet. Nimble across the palate, this balanced bottling offers bright acidity. Its texture is neither heavy nor viscous, a result of a judicious use of oak. We always enjoy a lighter texture in Chardonnay. This wine is simultaneously fresh but also well-flavored from being fully ripe, but not over ripe. On the palate there are flavors of nectarine, pineapple, apricot, golden delicious apples, comise pear, pineapple guava, not fully ripe pineapple, hazelnut and a lingering light herbal note, perhaps of lemon verbena. Emily calls this wine ‘dangerously drinkable’, a most appropriate description of its overall cadence and character. Only 116 cases were produced. 14.5% ABV.
This Chardonnay (clone 4) was harvested on October 3rd from a small vineyard in western Rutherford. The vines were planted in 1998. This sub appellation isn’t necessarily known for this variety; if the economics were justified perhaps there would be more of this variety planted in Rutherford. For reference, Mark & Teresa Aubert of Aubert Wines own Sugar Shack Vineyard, located a short distance to the west of where Marineau Mills sources their Chardonnay. And this location appealed to Sébastien as Aubert is one of his favorite Chardonnay producers. The wine was barrel fermented using indigenous yeast; bâtonnage occurred every two weeks for 6 months. It was then aged in 40% new French oak barrels for 11 months before being bottled in December 2024.
Cabernet Sauvignon
Marineau Mills Estate
The 2023 Marineau Mills Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is 100% varietal; for reference, we tried a barrel sample 2 months prior to bottling. The bouquet immediately offers bright red fruits; it is fresh, lively and energetic. Higher toned, its scents include red cherry, raspberry, currant and plums with a light note of red chili spice. This smells like the variety; we like that. These are not always the attributes of contemporary bottlings from this variety in Napa Valley where ripeness bleeds out character. Superbly balanced from entry through the finish, this wine already sings at this age. It offers flavors of red cherry, currant, cranberry and red plum. Finishes fresh. Its texture is already remarkably well integrated, featuring lightly gravelly but well-rounded tannins. And this vineyard expresses red fruits consistently regardless of vintage. This wine is 14.7% alcohol but does not smell or taste like this; in a blind tasting we might have guessed it was in the upper 13 or low 14s. The grapes were harvested on October 12th.
The 2021 Marineau Mills Cabernet Sauvignon (100% varietal) was sourced from both their estate vineyard and the nearby Iron Ring Vineyard. This wine was aged for 27 months in French oak barrels before being bottled. It is deep ruby and opaque with purplish tinges on the rim; dark fruited, the bouquet expresses aromas of blackberry pie, boysenberry, dark cherry and plum. Aromatically, unlike previous vintages, this wine is a bit more savory including dried herbs, tobacco, old cedar, dust, suede and pink peppercorn. The darker and savory characteristics on the bouquet are also present on the palate; its flavors include Satsuma plum, red cherry, currant, dried tobacco leaf, sage and chalk. The lively acidity maintains its freshness. The firmly gripping tannins fully coat the palate; however, they aren’t edgy per se, but more chalky in their textural profile. They fully outpace the fruit on the finish and continue to persist for quite some time. The addition of grapes from the Iron Ring Vineyard has created a more complex and complete wine. Of all their wines tried to date, including barrel samples, this one might just well go the furthest in terms of aging.
The 2020 Marineau Mills Cabernet Sauvignon (100% varietal) was barrel aged 34 months before being bottled. It is deep ruby and opaque; ripe, but not as ripe as the 2019 vintage, the bouquet is dark fruited with scents of blackberry, plum, boysenberry, Coral cherry and mulberry with layers of tobacco spice, dark chocolate, old cedar box, toast, pepper, dried herbs and smoked sage. As the wine evolves further it reveals a note of mocha. This is a full expression of the variety; the palate offers both an intensity of flavor, bright acidity and plenty of texture. Its flavors include dark cherry, blackberry, dark plum and boysenberry, finishing with a note of tobacco, cedar and gravelly and grainy tannins which outpace the fruit on the finish, lingering with a persistent dusty/chalky character. There is plenty of brightness at play here. And in case you are wondering, this wine is smoke free both on the bouquet and palate. This might just well be one of the more age worthy red wines from the 2020 vintage in Napa Valley we have tried.
The 2019 Marineau Mills Cabernet Sauvignon (100% varietal) is their inaugural release. This wine is deep ruby and opaque; very much an outgoing personality it aromatics are ripe and sweetly fruited. The bouquet is an expression of both fruit and dessert spices. Its scents include cherry liqueur, prune, boysenberry preserves, Fig Newton, baked plums and blackberry jelly, the same aromatic we remember from the jams and jellies at the Apple Farm Restaurant in San Luis Obispo, CA which we use to frequent during college when our parents were in town visiting. And there are additional layers of espresso, allspice with its nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Equally as ripe on the palate, its texture is plush, lush, dark fruited and warming. Its flavors include fully ripe blackberry, boysenberry, prune, dark cherry, dark plum, Pakistani mulberry, dark chocolate and a lingering note of dried tobacco leaf and a light but broadly coating dusty character. Six years post vintage, the tannins are small perfectly spherical shapes, smoothly integrated into the welcoming finish.
Iron Ring Vineyard
The 2023 Marineau Mills Iron Ring Vineyard is 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7.5% Merlot, 7% Malbec and 5.2 Petit Verdot and 3.3% Cabernet Franc (grapes from Larkmead Vineyard). We tasted this wine from a barrel sample, post blending but several months before bottling. It is deep ruby in color and nearly opaque; the bouquet offers plenty of fruit with the oak providing a gentle and complementary character. Its scents include red plum, red cherry, dark raspberry, a floral component including violets and dried herbs including sage and thyme and a light sanguine character. Fresh, lively and expressive, this wine brings plenty of energy from the entry through the palate. It flavors include cherry, raspberry, currant and cranberry. There is a minerally thread running through the length of the palate. Lingers red-fruited with a light tart presence. The tannins are highly approachable in their youth, persisting with a light gravelly and dusty/chalky character, accompanied by a subtle note of dried tobacco leaf. The fruit parallels the texture on the extended finish. 14.5% alcohol.
The name of this wine and vineyard has a strong personal significance. Emily met Sébastien in a conference room at Apple for the first time and noticed a ring on his finger. He soon explained its meaning; every engineer that graduates from an engineering school in Canada receives an iron ring that is worn on the pinky finger of one’s drafting hand. The rings are presented to graduates in a private ceremony known as the Kipling Ritual, first held in 1925.
This tradition is the result of the collapse of the Quebec Bridge in the early 1900s, a bridge which linked Winnipeg to Moncton on the National Trans-Continental Railway. Its collapse was because of an engineering error. Remarkably the bridge collapsed again in 1916 during efforts to rebuilt it. The ring reminds all engineers of their responsibilities and the importance of double checking calculations.
The inception for their Iron Ring red blend came from Emily. Her favorite wines are Bordeaux red blends. This wine is sourced from a small vineyard located slightly south along the same side of the Silverado Trail as their own property. Despite its close proximity, the Cabernet Sauvignon from Iron Ring Vineyard express a completely different flavor profile. The blend percentages of this wine change each year.
They harvested the grapes from their estate vineyard 5 days before the start of the Glass Fire in 2020. This wine did not show any signs of smoke taint so this vintage was bottled and released. The Glass Fire did burn onto their property around the edges of their vines but the vineyard survived. They milled the wood from burned trees for posts for a trellis and also for a dining table. However they did not bottle any wine from the 2022 vintage due to the extreme heat spike centered around Labor Day weekend that year. They released the 2019-2021 bottlings at the same time in the fall of 2024.
One can definitively see the evolution in their wines over the years; they have dialed in more of the nuances of their estate vineyard, the wines have become more focused, less ripe, brighter and more expressive of both the variety and their property.
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Their creative wine label was designed by Jenna Van Hout, a uber-talented product + visual designer who also dabbles in ceramics; Sébastien met her for the first time during Jenna’s wedding at Burning Man in Blackrock, Nevada. This was her first wine label design; part of the image represents their hilly vineyard. The look and feel partially reminds one of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting, an homage to both Sébastien’s middle name and the name of their son. The windmills represent Sébastien’s Dutch heritage (he has a windmill at his home in Canada) and the fact that both Sébastien and Emily used to jog by the Dutch Windmill in Golden Gate Park. The image of the structures represent the homes they built on the Marineu-Mills property. And if you look closely, the initials AM are presented among the hills – referring to the first two initials of both of their daughters’ name – Ada Mills and Arwen Margaret.
The wines are sold direct to consumer via a mailing list. A large vintage is usually under 300 cases. Locally they are available through ACME Wine Shop in St. Helena. For more information and to join this list, visit: www.marineaumills.com
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