Melka Estates

Napa Valley is full of winemakers who will tell you about passion. Philippe Melka will tell you about rocks. Before Melka ever touched a fermentation tank, he was a geology student at the University of Bordeaux, more interested in what was under the vines than what was hanging on them. A winemaking course in his final year hijacked the plan. He chased it with a master's in agronomy and enology, and then went out and got an education most winemakers would trade a kidney for: Château Haut-Brion out of school, then Petrus, Chianti, and Australia. In 1991, Philippe landed in Napa as an intern for Christian Moueix at Dominus, speaking no English. Of every terroir he'd studied on three continents, Napa was the one that got under his skin — not for the prestige, but for the soil. All those soils, all those microclimates, jammed into one valley. For a geologist, it was a rock candy store.