NETJETS US VOLUME 12 2020

TASTING NOTES
Valley framework can integrate with Napa Valley’s traditions.
BRAND is situated at the top of Pritchard Hill, where cabernet
sauvignon grapes have long reigned supreme. Planting white
grapes—and ones that are not even chardonnay or sauvignon
blanc—seems cheeky, if not flat-out sacrilegious. That is
precisely what Bean and O’Sullivan were going for. Their Napa
Valley White Wine, a blend of Italian grapes ribolla gialla,
fiano, coda di volpe, and arneis, takes inspiration from a
lesson they learned while at Apple: do what others aren’t and
do it well. With only 150 cases produced, the wine channels
the versatility of sauvignon blanc and the texture and structure
of chardonnay without actually using either of those familiar
grapes. “Why should we have to choose between those two?”
Bean says. “It’s what we love about our white. It’s something
new that people really didn’t have. We continue to refine that.”
The typical style of wine in BRAND’s Napa neighborhood is
Bordeaux-style blends, which involve a combination of five grapes
from that world-renowned French region: cabernet sauvignon,
merlot, cabernet franc, malbec, and petit verdot. BRAND bucks
this trend as well with its red offerings: the Proprietary Blend
comprises only cabernet franc (65%) and cabernet sauvignon
(35%). Cabernet franc does fit within the Napa tradition, but
by highlighting it, the Proprietary Blend stands out from its
peers with a nod to emerging global trends toward a lighter,
less fruit-forward style—something exceedingly rare in the
Valley. The estate also produces their flagship 100% Cabernet
Sauvignon, which is a pure expression of Pritchard Hill terroir.
Something that is very apparent in their work is the personal
relationship that O’Sullivan and Bean have with the land and its
other residents. Investing in vineyard property in Napa wasn’t a
spur-of-the-moment decision: The couple started visiting Napa
in 1998 to regroup and re-energize from time at Apple. Then in
2001 they married at the Culinary Institute of America’s historic
winery facility in St Helena, and it was seven more years of
renting homes before, in 2008, they bought a weekend home
and made a “family label” vintage. They finally purchased
vineyards on the Valley floor in 2013, a full 15 years after first
making their way to the area. It took another six years of making
friends and inquiries—until 2019—before Ed and Deb Fitts
chose to sell their Pritchard Hill property to Bean and O’Sullivan.
This personal connection extends to the customers—something
that has become extra-relevant in recent months. Plenty of Napa
OPENING UP
Christine O’Sullivan and Jim Bean,
top left, owners of BRAND Napa Valley,
where private tours and tastings are
once again available.
wineries have pivoted into new operational and marketing territory
as a result of COVID-19 and the wildfires that devastated the region
this autumn. O’Sullivan and her team, thanks to their approach,
were able to simply pick up the phones and speak directly with
BRAND’s customers, starting with a simple “How are you?”
What they learned is that the BRAND community wanted
to give back in a meaningful way to first responders and
front-line personnel. So O’Sullivan created a program called
#FromBRANDwithLOVE: Participants purchase a $150 bottle
of BRAND’s BRIO red wine and a second of the same bottle
was gifted to a first responder of the participant’s choice,
along with a personalized message. So far that innovative
program has reached more than 20 states and 70 ZIP
codes around the country, reflecting the evolving definition
of “first responder” to now include grocery store workers
and moms who homeschool their kids during the pandemic.
With such strong personal relationships with so many of their
customers, Bean and O’Sullivan again zag by eschewing one
of the most prestigious hallmarks of a premium Napa winery:
its wine club mailing list, where a limited number of customers
are given first dibs to the winery’s exclusive offerings once
or twice a year. “We believe we need to earn your business
and your belief that BRAND continues to be what you want to
invest in,” O’Sullivan explains. “There’s a lot of integrity tied
to that, because we want to make sure that we are curating an
offering to people who wanted what they are receiving from us.”
Underlying this decision is a firm belief in the quality
of their wine and a focus on their product. “We learned
at Apple that nothing comes before having an amazing
product,” Bean said. “We hold ourselves very accountable
to making sure we’re making the best wine we can make.”
Bean and O’Sullivan see a common set of values between
BRAND and NetJets, in that neither business is trying to
be the biggest or make the most of their product. At NetJets,
Bean says, they’re trying to be an amazing experience for
people who appreciate traveling in the best and most flexible
way. “We want to attract that type of person to BRAND,” he
said. “They’re going to have a personalized, curated experience
when they get here, and we want them to really enjoy the
beauty of the place and the quality of the product.” And there
is absolutely nothing clichéd about that. brandnapavalley.com
“We learned at Apple that nothing comes
before having an amazing product. We
hold ourselves very accountable.”
68 NetJets