Brand

Perched high on Pritchard Hill, BRAND Napa has leveraged expertise from some of the Valley’s greatest winemaking, farming, and business minds to produce a selection of lush, layered Cabernets and fresh Italian-inspired white wines.

In 2019, Christine O’Sullivan and Jim Bean made a big leap: They left executive positions at Apple, purchased the BRAND estate, and showed their intense ambition and management prowess by immediately bringing on a talented team of experts.

To begin, they retained the services of Philippe Melka, who had been involved with BRAND since its inception in 2009. It was Melka who originally selected just twelve of the property’s 110 acres for planting, plus picked the perfect clones and rootstocks for each one. He now works alongside boots-on-the-ground winemaker and Dana Estate alum Matt Johnson, who scours local vineyards for Italian varieties, gives each one a custom cellar treatment, and blends every wine barrel by barrel to achieve a perfect balance and tension in the glass.

To cultivate their vineyards, the team treats the estate to a minimal-intervention regimen of organic and sustainable farming practices, including planting insectaries and using sheep to “mow” the cover crops—efforts that have yielded a Napa Green certification.

In running BRAND, Christine and Jim follow a pearl of wisdom from Steve Jobs: focusing means “saying ‘no’” to good ideas that aren’t ideal for your business so that you can zero in on the right ones. By focusing on the right ideas, they’ve developed an approach that channels Pritchard Hill’s distinctive balance of wildness and sophistication.