Avenue 8 Wine was founded by proprietor Dan Lynch with his inaugural vintage in 2018. The focus is on a single wine each year, a Napa Valley Chardonnay. Dan grew up in Lafayette, CA. His former wife Karen was a stay at home mom taking care of their children; as the kids started to leave for college, she posed a simple question to Dan. “What are we going to do now?” He responded with something like, “lets look for some real estate.”
She and her good friend Leslie, a designer in Layfette, would go on a women’s trip each year. Their trips turned into searches for property including looking between Ashland, OR and Santa Barbara CA. Eventually a real estate broker was located in Napa, Dick Lopez who began to search for real estate on their behalf in 2011. He told them about The Inn on Randolph in downtown Napa; the property was run down and in need of significant repairs.
They closed on both the inn and another home on nearby Franklin Steet in 2011. They renovated the structure from foundation to roof – with the entire process taking about 10 months. They opened Memorial Day in 2012, featuring 10 distinctive cottages. At that time, Trip Advisor was the primary source for customer reviews. Dan recalls somewhere in the range of about 80 B&B’s in Napa Valley at the time; within a few months they were in the top 20s on Trip Advisor and then after several more months, they reached the coveted number one ranking.
Karen was working full time at the inn while Dan was still living in Lafayette. Karen’s attention to details and customer service were integral to the inn’s early success. With the Inn on Randolph positioned so well, Dan made the decision to leave his career at Chevron where he was involved in business intelligence and date management and moved up to Napa to assist Karen with the inn’s operations. This was in 2014.
A year later, Karen received an unsolicited offer to sell the property; she initially said no to the offer but Dan encouraged them to follow up with more details. The offer was too good to pass up – they sold the property at the end of 2015. Karen is still in the hospitality business; she owns and operates The Atlas, a 5-bedroom B&B in Calistoga.
Following the sale of The Inn on Randolph, Karen purchased a three-acre hillside property off of Estee Avenue in Napa with a house and an empty field. The property sits in the Napa Valley appellation, close to several sub-AVAs including Coombsville, Oak Knoll and Atlas Peak. While not planted at the time of her purchase, the property was surrounded by vineyards.
Dan started thinking about planting the empty field to grapes. He reached out to a winemaker friend for ideas and was suggested he talk to viticulturist, Kendall Smith. She helped him get the vineyard permitted. And she introduced him to viticulturist, soils scientist and former owner of Integrated Winegrowing, Dr. Paul Anamosa, who examined the soils including digging soil pits. Dan describes him as looking like Indiana Jones, complete with a satchel and hat. Dr. Anamosa climbed out of one of the soil pits and quickly told Dan, “You could grow a medium quality Cabernet Sauvignon, or perhaps a good Petite Sirah here”. But then he hesitated, and said one more thing, “I think you could grow an exalted Chardonnay”.
Karen liked the sound of that, being primarily a white wine drinker. Dan prefers red wines; admittedly at a restaurant with a wine list in front of him, more often than not, he will order red blends. But the site spoke loud and clearly. The group decision was to plant old Wente clone Chardonnay on 3309C rootstock, with clone, FPS 072. The rootstock was planted in 2015 and in 2016 they grafted the budwood on for the Chardonnay. This organically farmed vineyard is 1.25 acres, with approximately 2,000 vines planted. The first harvest was in 2018 – 3 tons. In terms of yields, 5.2 tons was the high water mark in 2025. Today, the vineyard is managed by Calistoga based Rubio Vineyard Management.
And with Estee referring to a French variant linked to the name Estelle and the Hebrew/Persian name Esther, both of which translate to star, they named their vineyard Hidden Star Vineyard. The name itself also has connotations to luxury living based on the company Estée Lauder. A biblical figure, queen Esther originally bore the name Hadassah before hiding her identity with her new title upon becoming queen of Persia. Incorporating the three-letter Hebrew root s-t-r like a secret code, Ester means “hide” or “conceal.”
During the initial vineyard layout, Karen asked Dan to carve out space for a table among the vines. Dan chose what was going to be called Row 8 for this space; he and his daughter built a redwood table and placed it here. The resulting space with a missing vine row is the size of an avenue. So instead of Row 8 Dan decided to name the brand, Avenue 8 – providing a distinctive sense of place in this small vineyard. The vineyard is planted to 39 rows from top to bottom, running north south with rows spaced 7 feet apart.
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In terms of production, Dan prefers to make about 3 tons each year. One day a winemaker called Dan and invited him to lunch; he asked Dan if he could purchase some of the grapes from Karen’s vineyard. The problem of too many grapes for his size production was quickly solved. Starting in 2023, Dan holds back three tons and a winemaker friend purchases the rest. As a result, his case production is typically around 150 cases a year.
In 2017 Dan asked Kendall if White Rock Vineyards winemaker, Christopher Vandendriessche would be interested in assisting with his small brand. Dan drove up to White Rock Vineyards and recalls the first question Christopher asked him was, “What style of Chardonnay are you interested in making?” Dan already knew the answer. He said, “You know Christopher, are you by chance familiar with Hudson Napa Valley Chardonnay?” Christopher grinned, walked back into the cave and returned with two glasses and a wine thief. He instructed Dan to follow him. Walking into the cave, both men stopped. Christopher said, “Look, we make Hudson Vineyard’s wines here”, and pointed to one of their barrels.
Dan was floored. With more than 500 physical wineries in Napa Valley, this was where his favorite Chardonnay was being made. And his timing was great. Because Hudson Vineyards was moving their production to their own property with the buildout of their winery and cave, this opened up space for the production of the Avenue 8 Chardonnay. And furthermore, Christopher had worked with several winemakers who create some of Napa Valley’s most exciting Chardonnay including John Kongsgaard. The Kongsaard patience in the cellar, winemaking philosophy and style is a big part of how Christopher crafts the Avenue 8 wines.
The wines are fermented and aged in barrel using indigenous yeast. Fermentation has always kicked off reliably each year, with malolactic fermentation allowed to continue until completion. Minimal sulfur is used, with weekly bâtonnage in barrel and élevage lasting 18–19 months. With this style of winemaking, there is a phase when the wines enter what Dan calls the “awkward teenage phase,” or what Kongsgaard refers to as “death and resurrection.” But when the wine emerges from this period, it comes out the other side with great texture and only minimally buttery characteristics. Typically, 70% new French oak is used for both fermentation and aging, primarily Burgundy-based Tonnellerie François Frères barrels, often with a barrel from Tonnellerie Orion and sometimes a used barrel or two from prior vintages.
One can describe the élevage of the Avenue 8 wines as primarily new oak with full malolactic fermentation; this is completely true, but while fully ripe, the resulting wine is not a typical California expression expressing overt oaky or buttery characteristics. Still these wines pull out the full expression of the variety when harvested on the riper side of the spectrum. Based on the wine’s character, Dan has noticed that big red wine drinkers who normally shun chardonnay, are pleasantly surprised when they sample one of his wines.
Select Wines
The 2022 Avenue 8 Chardonnay is medium to deep gold in color; the aromatics are not shy, fully expressing what this variety is capable of with the right farming and winemaking. Richly endowed, the nose smells notes of honeycomb, creme Brule, honeysuckle, caramel, butterscotch, baked pineapple, baked apples and ginger. This wine is perhaps more toasty on the bouquet then the 2021 vintage, including toasted oak, toasted vanilla and toasted brioche. A rich expression of the variety with a persistence of flavor, this wine tastes like golden apples, baked pear, fresh croissant right out of the oven with butter (but not overtly buttery), fresh honey, toasted marshmallow, vanilla and butterscotch. This wine is lighter in terms of its fruit intensity as compared to the 2021 bottling. The mouth feel is pleasant with a rounded and lightly creamy feel. Soft acidity. At this age, 4 years post vintage the oak is showing more on the bouquet than the palate.
The 2021 Avenue 8 Chardonnay is deep gold in color, tasted 5 years post vintage. The sweetly fruited aromatics are up front, generous, ripe and immediately appealing. Its scents include honeysuckle, warm honey, golden delicious apples, creme Brule, caramel, butterscotch, orange peel zest and a union of stone and tropical fruits including papaya, baked pineapple, peaches in light syrup, apricot jam and nectarines. And a finishing note of toasted hazelnut. The non fruited notes expressed here will probably become more pronounced as this wine bottle ages. The palate features a light tension or viscosity, a gentle creamy tug between mouthfeel and flavor. This wine tastes like pineapple upside down cake, yellow peach, golden apples, yellow nectarine, papaya and Alphonse mango with finishing notes of vanilla, honeysuckle, toasted almond and hazelnut. The acidity takes a backseat, letting the flavor and the texture do most of the conversing. This wine is showing in a sweet spot at this age.
And Dan has noticed that the wines are even more layered after several years of bottle age.
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In terms of sales, this is about as intimate a relationship between producer and customer as one will find in Napa Valley. Some of his early sales were from guests who used to stay at the Inn on Randolph. His business is built on referrals and friendships. As he told us, “If you know Dan, I am happy to sell you wine”. For more information, to purchase wine or to join their mailing list, visit: www.avenue8wine.com
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