DANA Estates

H. W. Helms, a German immigrant, planted vines here around 1880 and built a stone winery in 1883. Prohibition closed it, and it became one of Napa’s ghost wineries, the pre-Prohibition stone cellars that stood empty for decades. John and Diane Livingston bought the site in 1976 and made wine as Livingston, later Livingston-Moffett, with winemakers such as Randy Dunn and John Kongsgaard. By the time Hi Sang Lee arrived, only parts of four walls were standing.

Lee is a Seoul businessman who founded the importer Nara Cellar in 1997; Tom Shelton of Joseph Phelps first brought him to the valley. Of the seven architecture firms he interviewed, six wanted to clear the ruins and start again. Howard Backen proposed keeping the old stone and building around it, and Lee chose him. The winery that resulted has no stainless-steel fermenters at all, and runs on solar panels on the hill behind it.

Dana is Sanskrit for generosity and was Lee’s childhood nickname. He is a Buddhist, and the estate puts its precision down to that: every detail is thought to have a lasting effect. The twelve lotuses on the label stand for the months of the vine’s year.

Once you step on his property, though, you can see his vision and precision.

James Laube, Wine Spectator, 2009

Helms is eight acres on the western side of Rutherford at the foot of the Mayacamas: deep soils of riverbed gravel with the broken-down remains of an ancient seabed, and lower blocks on heavier Maxwell clay. It gives the most classical wine of the four, perfumed and plummy, with the soft, dusty tannins people mean when they say Rutherford.

Hershey is the big one, about thirty-five acres at 1,800 feet on Howell Mountain, and the most varied: fractured bedrock, gravel, compressed ash boulders, clay and white volcanic dust, in pockets that ripen as much as four weeks apart. It makes the most linear, savoury, mineral wine, and it is the core of Vaso. Lotus is five steep acres just below Howell Mountain in the Crystal Springs district, on slopes up to 45 degrees with virtually no topsoil, so the roots go straight into iron-rich fractured rock. It is DANA’s most powerful Cabernet. Part of it burned in the 2020 Glass Fire and has been replanted.

Montagna is the newest, 3.7 acres of steep, rocky red soil on Pritchard Hill above Lake Hennessey, facing southwest. DANA does not own the vineyard, and the 2023 is only its second harvest from it. Onda brings the four together, with Crystal Springs at its centre.

The cellar is built around the vineyards. Helms ferments in upright Taransaud oak tanks, which bring out its floral side and firm up its frame. Hershey ferments in single barrels, block by block, because its blocks have so little in common. Lotus goes into concrete, which rounds off its powerful tannins. Montagna uses concrete and single barrels together. Everything is picked by hand, sorted by cluster and then by berry, fed by gravity, fermented on native yeasts, and only the free-run wine is drained to barrel for its malolactic.

Maura Johnson came to DANA as assistant winemaker in 2018 and has been Director of Winemaking since 2025. Philippe Melka, who also consults for some of Napa’s most famous names, has worked with the estate since its first vintage. The hillside vineyards usually crop under two tons an acre, and each wine is made in a few hundred cases: 273 cases of Lotus 2023, 386 of Helms, 472 of Hershey.

Vintages are allowed to show. In 2023, a long, cool year, Helms was picked two weeks later than usual, Hershey began a month later than in the three years before, and Lotus had the latest start in its history. Each wine was then given what it needed: twenty-one months in new oak for Helms and Hershey, twenty-six for Lotus and Montagna.

Vaso began in 2006 and for its first years was sold only in Korea; it is named for the Korean moon jar. It is the generous one, Hershey at the core with Atlas Peak, Calistoga and St. Helena fruit. Onda is a step up and all Cabernet.

James Laube visited in 2009 when the wines were three years old and called the development of the three vineyards a fascinating horse race. Robert Parker’s hundred points for the 2007 Lotus followed, then another hundred from The Wine Advocate for the 2010 Lotus and 99+ for the 2010 Hershey. For the 2023 vintage James Suckling scored the Montagna 100 and the Hershey 99; Decanter gave the Hershey 99 and the Lotus and Helms 98 each.

The estate also makes a little Sauvignon Blanc from a block of just over an acre and a half at Hershey, planted to an unidentified old clone. It ferments in cigar-shaped barrels, a technique borrowed from Sancerre, and most of it never leaves the winery.

Scores at that height tend to flatten wines into one expensive style. What sets DANA apart is that the four still taste of four places. Helms reads like Rutherford, Hershey like a mountain, Lotus like rock. Open two side by side and you learn more about Napa than any map can show you. Vaso is the bottle to open first, and Helms the one for people who love old-fashioned Cabernet.