Missimer Wine. Juggling four kids equates to a full time job for Sinead and Travis Bullard, and Travis also has a full time winemaking job. Yet, both found the time to launch their own brand in 2025, a realized dream of nearly 20 years, launched simply because it needed to be done. And their ambition to do so, came from a good place, rooted in heritage. In the 1970s, Sinead’s grandparents Dale and Mary Sue Missimer purchased the family property (44 acres) in what is now the northwesternmost corner of the Stags Leap District.
Inspired by the scenery while on a bicycle touring trip in the Loire Valley, France in 1976 the Missimers returned to their home in Marin County and began discussing purchasing property in ‘wine country’. They owned a home near Yosemite, sold that and began looking for land in Napa Valley including making a bid on what became Opus One owned property. They purchased their own property near Yountville in 1978. It was home to an aging walnut orchard and pastures used for cattle and a little boat landing on the Napa River. Dale, known for his fondness of good people and bad puns, referred to their property as the Stags Landing Vineyard.
The Missimers originally planned to use the property as a weekend getaway; they camped on site before they built their farmhouse. And they later built a water tower.
A year after the Missimers purchased this property they hired Alex Vyborny to plant and manage the vineyard. One of Napa Valley’s viticultural ‘OG’s”, Alex graduated from UC Davis with a degree in viticulture in 1969. Over the decades he has managed vineyards for a number of wineries in Napa Valley and Sonoma County including Ehret Family, Far Niente and Joseph Phelps. For reference, the Vyborny family property and vineyard in Yountville is located across from Rector Reservoir and just north of the Duckhorn Portfolio at Paraduxx; it is known as Vyborny Game Farm and is one of the rockiest vineyard sites we have ever walked in Napa Valley.
Today Alex and his son Benton (Ben) manage and farm with their team over 1,300 acres both in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. Remarkably Alex still manages the Missimer property, although it has since been replanted several times; the oldest vines date from 2013. The vineyard is 20 acres organized into six distinctive blocks, planted to clone 7 Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc. And like other vineyards the Vyborny’s manage, this vineyard is entirely cane pruned.
Sémillon used to grow here; perhaps it will again in the future. As a result of its north west location, this is one of the warmer sites within Stags Leap District. The entire property is within the Land Trust of Napa County. With the passing of decades, grapes were sold to producers such as Acre Wines, Clos du Val, Groth, Honig and their immediate neighbor Cliff Lede Winery.
Dale was an engineer who held several patents and was known for his work with refrigeration systems. He founded several companies throughout his career including Marin Tek Inc., and Polycold Systems. One of his inventions was an ultra-low temperature refrigeration chiller, used to replace liquid nitrogen for achieving low temperatures for industrial cooling needs. He died in 2010 and Mary Sue passed in 2025 at 97.
They nurtured a great love of the outdoors. The Missimers were long time members of the Land Trust of Napa County; in 1999 they generously gifted the Land Trust funds which were used to establish the 400 acre Missimer Snell Valley Wildflower Preserve in Pope Valley. These serpentine meadows support a thriving wildflower population, best seen in spring for their most colorful displays.
And in 2001 they placed a conservation easement on their Stags Leap property, ensuring no further urban development would take place. A seasonal creek and the Napa River run adjacent to their property; a vineyard used to be planted near here. It has since been removed and this part of the property has been restored to native riparian vegetation. If we ever make the effort to swim, wade and hike the Napa River from the city of Napa to Calistoga, this property would be one of our stops along the way.
Through their generous contributions, the Dale and Sue Missimer Redwood Grove is named in their honor, located in the Prairie Creek Redwood State Park in Humboldt County. And the Dale and Sue Missimer Engineering Scholarship is offered through the Davidson School of Engineering at San Jose State University.
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Travis and Sinead met in San Luis Obispo, while both were studying at Cal Poly State University. Travis was raised in Santa Cruz with no immediate family background in wine or agriculture; his father worked in technology and his mother was a nurse. Cal Poly requires students to declare a major for admission – his was agriculture business, but he wasn’t yet fully decided on a career path. The father of one of his roommates was a vineyard manager in Mendocino County; intrigued by this work, along with participation in a local wine club and the influence of the wine industries of the Etna Valley and Paso Robles, he was inspired to pursue winemaking. After graduating he worked at Summerwood Winery in Paso Robles and later for Korbel and Sonoma Cutrer.
Sinead was raised in neighboring Sonoma County and developed a strong connection to her grandparents’ property from an early age. She remembers weekend visits as a child centered around being outdoors (her grandparents did not own a television, a decision we can strongly relate to, having never owned a TV in our entire life), catching frogs, launching toy rockets, chasing their dog Andy around the property, and when Sundays came around, strongly not wanting to leave. Like Travis, she graduated from Cal Poly in Agricultural Business with a minor in viticulture.
Both Travis and Sinead moved to this property in 2010; Travis took an intern position at Cliff Lede, was promoted to assistant winemaker in 2013 and in 2021 became winemaker. Conveniently, this property directly neighbors the Cliff Lede vineyard and winery, where Travis produces the Missimer wines. Sinead worked at Fruition Sciences, a company that provides a diversity of online viticultural services and intel collected from soils, plants and vintage; eventually she became their Director of Operations.
Select Wines
The 2021 Missimer Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District, Napa Valley is 100% varietal clone 7. This is a throwback wine, if you will, both in terms of its visual presentation and what is in the bottle. This wine is deep ruby with an amaranthine rim and opaque; fresh, focused, savory and defining, the aromatics know exactly where they stand in contemporary Napa Valley. The bouquet is a union of both fruit and floral; these scents include African violets, lilacs, lavender, boysenberry, dark plum, blackberry, Persian mulberry, with finishing notes of smoked cedar, baker’s chocolate and dried herbs including sage and bay leaf. Both dark and red fruited, the palate tastes of sophistication and simultaneously feels texturally snug, while both flavor and texture are supported by a bright but balanced acidity. This wine tastes like dark raspberry, dark cherry, blackberry and boysenberry, finishing with a savory edge including roasted herbs, chalk, pink peppercorn and a ferrous/blood iron quality. The cocoa powder textured tannins are a hallmark of this site; they are perfectly rounded spheres, broadly coating and linger with a light chalky and drying character. This is a balanced wine in its youth and will remain balanced as it ages, and it will most definitely age well. Drink now if you want, or hold for several decades. Its listed ABV is accurate at 13.6%.
This is one of the most inspiring wines from Napa Valley we tasted in 2025.
Travis is a perfectionist and highly detail-oriented when it comes to winemaking—extremely valuable traits to possess in the cellar. Five tons of grapes for this wine were harvested at night; once at the winery, they were whole-cluster hand-sorted, then destemmed using a Pellenc optical sorter. Following this, the berries were hand-sorted again and gravity-fed into tank. The tanks were chilled, and the grapes underwent a cold soak for six to seven days before being warmed to allow fermentation to begin with indigenous yeast. Post-fermentation maceration lasted approximately 30 days, after which the tanks were drained, with only the free-run wine going to barrel. The wine was aged for 20 months in 95% new French oak barrels from Taransaud, Sylvain, and Berger. Barrels were regularly topped and sulfured, then racked once to tank just prior to bottling, which took place in July 2023.
And the 2021 and the 2022 vintages were labeled entirely by hand. After doing this work, Travis calculated he could hand label 6 cases an hour, a tangible reminder of just how personal every bottle of their wine is. Their beautiful label was designed by family friend, Jordan Abina; Travis and Sinead provided him with several photographs of the property. He used these to create the image of the oak trees growing next to the Napa River, an homage to both site and their grandparents love of the outdoors. The label was printed by MCC Printers in Napa Valley.
Production remains small; only 150 cases were produced in 2021 and no more than 225 cases in subsequent vintages. All vintages to date have been 100% varietal. And they want to keep production small and personalized, with the hopes of meeting every consumer who purchases a bottle of Missimer wine including hosting select events such as winemaker dinners. Friends have advised a measured approach to production and a strong, long-term commitment to the brand during the first ten years, advice with which we strongly concur.
The wines are currently sold only direct through their allocation list and are always released once a year, in the fall. For more information, or to signup for their limited release allocation list with access to purchase the current release bottling, visit: www.missimerwine.com
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