Our Story

A Cabernet Sauvignon Estate

For over a half century Diamond Creek has produced Single-Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons from its stunning estate on Napa Valley’s Diamond Mountain. True to the mission of its founders, the winery has never veered from its path of creating wines that express the unique terroirs that coexist on this geologically diverse yet relatively small piece of earth. Today we carry on this tradition, committed to preserving Diamond Creek’s long celebration of site-driven, estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon while nurturing the property and its wines to even higher expressions of quality and singularity.

Visionaries

Diamond Creek Vineyards was founded in 1968 by Al and Boots Brounstein, pioneers of the modern Napa Valley wine industry. Risk-takers and visionaries, who early on, recognized the valley’s suitability for growing Cabernet Sauvignon, they also understood the powerful role that soils and microclimates play in determining the character of a wine.

Slowly, steadily, and with no compromises, Al and Boots developed their Diamond Mountain estate into a property like no other in Napa Valley, assiduously dissecting it into four parcels with distinct terroirs. From these microsites, Volcanic Hill, Gravelly Meadow, Red Rock Terrace and Lake, they created captivating, complex, long-lived wines and a brand beloved by legions.

“I love this spot. I’m going to buy it.”

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Coming to Napa

Al and Boots Brounstein came to Napa Valley with a love of fine wine sparked by a tasting seminar Al took on a whim at University of California, Los Angeles. That and an intermittent job at Ridge Vineyards where he learned all he could about winegrowing, were enough for him to want his own vineyard. Al was in the back of a realtor’s pickup truck, his arms bleeding from the overgrown manzanita branches, when he first saw the Diamond Creek property. He said “I love this spot. I’m going to buy it.”

The Team

The Rouzaud Family

In 2020, 52 years after its founding, Diamond Creek was acquired by the Rouzaud family of world-renowned Maison Louis Roederer, whose roots in wine date to the 1700s. The relationship between the Rouzaud and Brounstein families stretched back three decades, with an admiration and mutual respect for one another born of a common love for wine and its role in history, culture and life.

In Frédéric Rouzaud and his family, the Brounsteins found the ideal stewards for Diamond Creek: a family with a deep reverence for history and a generational vision for the future of the wine estates under its care.

Dinner with Thirty of the World's Top Wineries

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A Fateful Meeting

In 1997 Frédéric Rouzaud’s father, Jean-Claude, celebrated thirty years at the helm of Champagne Louis Roederer by inviting what he considered to be thirty of the world’s top wineries and featuring them at a tasting and dinner at the famed Paris restaurant Tour D’Argent. It was there that Al and Boots Brounstein of Diamond Creek met the Rouzaud family, as Diamond Creek wines were poured alongside Bordeaux First Growths, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Chateau d’Yquem, California’s Ridge Vineyards and others. Over the evening, a friendship blossomed, one that eventually led to a passing of the baton from one wine family to another.

The Team