"Opus One wines are some of the world's most coveted. This singular mission shapes every vintage, today and for generations to come." - Opus One Together, our founders set out to create a single wine dedicated to the pursuit of uncompromising quality. and Constellation Brands."One wine of absolute quality. Opus One is the realized dream of two men: Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux and Napa Valley vintner Robert Mondavi. Today, Opus One is jointly and equally owned by Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A. In 2004, Mondavi sold his eponymous label - which included his 50 percent share in Opus One - to Constellation Brands for $1.36 billion. Constellation Brands now owns 50 percent of Opus One. The winery limits each buyer to just six individual bottles or four six-bottle cases. While it might be an “affordable” Napa wine, that doesn’t mean you can stock your cellar full of Opus One. In fact, Opus One doesn’t even register in the top 25 most-expensive Napa wines. Harlan Estate’s Bordeaux Blend, meanwhile, is listed at $1,059. On, Screaming Eagle’s Cabernet Sauvignon has an average price listing of $3,619. Yet, compared to other “cult” Napa wines, this price is a relative bargain. The current Opus One vintage (2015) retails on its website for $350. There is such a thing as a $350 bargain.Īll that technology comes with a hefty price tag. Tastings take place in a high-tech lab by chief winemaker Michael Silacci before the final blend is decided upon. Rather than being sorted by hand, harvested grapes are processed by a custom-made optical sorter, which uses cameras to analyze the size, shape, and color of every grape.įinally, Opus One uses 14 different cooperages to provide over 1,000 new oak barrels annually. Grapes are hand-harvested in individual lots - nothing too extreme about that - but, from there, each lot is sorted and fermented separately, requiring over three dozen giant steel fermentation tanks. Opus One takes technology and precision to a whole new level.Īt Opus One’s state-of-the-art facility, the winemaking team goes to painstaking lengths to maintain quality.
It ranks seventh, meanwhile, among the most-searched-for wines worldwide. Opus One is extremely popular.Īccording to Wine-Searcher data, Opus One is the most-searched-for American-made wine in its database. In 1981, Mondavi sold part of his share of the vineyard to the newly launched Opus One venture, providing high-quality grapes that serve as the backbone of the blend. It is generally regarded as the best winemaking land Napa has to offer. The To Kalon vineyard is jointly owned by a number of famed Napa producers. Part of the blend comes from Napa’s legendary To Kalon vineyard. Its name is another musical reference, meaning an orchestral piece at the beginning of a composition. Opus One’s second and only other wine, Overture, is made with the fruit that doesn’t quite make the Opus One grade. The flagship Opus One red wine is a Cabernet-dominant Bordeaux blend, which also contains smaller quantities of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Merlot. While that pales in comparison to modern-day auction prices, it was unheard of at the time, especially for a California-made wine. Opus One set early Napa Valley auction records.Īt the inaugural Napa Valley Wine Auction in 1981, a 12-bottle case of Opus One sold for $24,000. It wasn’t until the 1982 vintage that the brand adopted the name Opus One.
The very first vintages of Opus One were labeled Napamédoc, a nod to the wines’ Franco-American heritage. It may have always have been a masterpiece, but it was originally called something else.
The Opus One project then officially debuted in 1980. The venture was first suggested by the Baron during a 1970 meeting between the pair in Hawaii, and its fate was sealed when Mondavi visited Rothschild in Bordeaux in 1978.Ĭhâteau Mouton Rothschild’s winemaker, Lucien Sionneau, and Robert Mondavi’s son Timothy made the first joint vintage at the Robert Mondavi Winery in 1979. Opus One started as a New World-Old World partnership between Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild (Bordeaux), and Robert Mondavi, famed for his eponymous Napa winery.
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