Beckstoffer Las Piedras

ST. HELENA ▪ NAPA VALLEY

Las Piedras — “the stones” — is the oldest vineyard site in what is now the St. Helena appellation, its history reaching back to the Mexican land-grant era, when Edward Bale received the property from General Vallejo and planted Mission grapes in the 1840s. The farm workers who followed named it for what they found underfoot: the gravelly alluvium of the Sulfur Creek fan, washed down from the metamorphic and sedimentary terraces above.

That porous, rocky soil drains freely and forces the vines to struggle, yielding Cabernet of unusual depth and mineral cut. Beckstoffer Vineyards acquired the site in 1983 and devoted it to Cabernet Sauvignon.

From these stones we craft four cuvées — the pure black-currant and graphite of ‘La BAM’, the dark, muscular ‘La Verdad’, ‘Los Compadres’ from clones 337 and 4 at the top of the site, and our newest offering, ‘La Bomba’.