The Bond wines sit side-by-side with Bill Harlan’s lofty ambition to create a Napa Valley first-growth at Harlan Estate. Bond is an exploration of the diversity of the very best of Napa terroir, as expressed through Cabernet Sauvignon. The name Bond evokes the long-term alliance between the owners, growers and winemakers who have combined to made it possible. Vecina comes from east-facing terraces that get the full morning sun and a bracing dose of San Pablo Bay wind. On the other side of the valley, St Eden is from iron-rich volcanic soils, and tends towards the more opulent and exotic.

Site selection, low yields, native yeasts, grapes grown from well-established vines on east-facing volcanic hillsides - Cristom gets everything right. From beginnings thirty years ago in a derelict barn in the Eola-Amity hills, this has become one of Oregon`s premier wineries, producing top-flight Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. It was the vision of Paul Gerrie, an engineer brave enough to throw over the day job to pursue a love of Pinot Noir.

Founded in 2001, Freeman Winery is the fruition of Ken and Akiko Freeman`s longstanding belief that California can produce Pinot Noir every bit as complex, age-worthy and eloquent as Burgundy`s best. Ken and Akiko visited 300 potential vineyard sites before settling on the redwood-ringed hillside estate they now occupy, just outside Sebastopol. They source fruit from some of the area’s best growers, from cool hillside sites in the Russian River Valley and remoter, rugged spots on Sonoma Coast.

It`s still early days for Bill Harlan’s lofty, 200-year vision of a Californian First Growth. But since its first vintages, Harlan Estate has established itself among the very acme of world wines. On an exceptionally diverse set of soils (part sedimentary, part volcanic, all with thin topsoil and entirely exposed) in the western hills of Oakville, Harlan’s vines have been forced to burrow deep into the bedrock to survive.

Ridge is one of the defining names in American wine. High in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Monte Bello Ridge was first terraced for winemaking in the nineteenth century. It was later abandoned, recovered in the 1940s by a group of amateurs, then famously developed from 1969 by Paul Draper. Draper unlocked the real potential of this extraordinary site, and under his tenure, Ridge Monte Bello was one of the wines on the winning team at the 1976 Judgement of Paris.

Larry Turley is a man with a mission. He started off in the 1970s as the co-founder of Frog`s Leap Winery, making Cabernets and Chardonnays. But over time he came to understand his interests lay elsewhere. By the early 1990s, when Cabernet was king in California, Larry had realised that one of the state`s great viticultural treasures was in danger of being lost; old vine Zinfandel plantings, often predating prohibiton, sometimes on original, ungrafted rootstock.