A Beautiful Place
In 1900, when Georges de Latour's wife, Fernande, first laid eyes on the Napa Valley land that would become our original Rutherford vineyard, she said, "Quelle beau lieu!" meaning "What a beautiful place!”
Rutherford Dust
After tasting the 1936 vintage of the de Latour family’s private wine, Tchelistcheff noted that one of the most intriguing things about the wine was a whiff of clean dirt with a high-toned note, something like pencil shavings. He recognized it as the expression of this distinctive terroir in Napa Valley – the very fragrance of Rutherford. To describe it, he would later coin the famous expression as “Rutherford dust.”
Napa’s First Cult Cabernet
When André Tchelistcheff tasted the de Latour family’s private wine from the 1936 vintage, he found the Cabernet Sauvignon-based wine to be so distinctive and special that he insisted it be bottled and sold as the winery’s flagship offering.
