Lampyridae Vineyards is located just below the peak of Mt. Veeder, overlooking Sonoma Valley and the Northern Bay Area.  Our 35 acres of steeply sloping Napa County land is at 2500 ft elevation, making it one of the highest vineyards in the county.

The area of clearing for the vineyards was inundated with knob cone pine trees, which are dying [mostly] due to disease and beetles. Most of the native vegetation in the area is manzanita, ceanothus, madrone, bay laurel, oaks and a few scattered fir trees.  In the clearing, we removed mostly knob cone pine trees, leaving all of the firs and preserving a wide setback of native fauna along the stream.

We planted our first acre of head trained Zinfandel in 1998, (with a lot of help from our friends). The scion wood of the Zinfandel is field selections planted on St. George rootstock. Our first harvest came in 2001 and was sold to Schulz Cellars for their 2001 Lampyridae Vineyards Zinfandel.

In 2001, we planted 8 acres to Cabernet Sauvignon.  These grapes are contracted to Beringer Vineyards with our first crop due to come off in 2004.  There are numerous rootstock/scion combinations in the 11 blocks, which make up these 8 acres.  The rootstocks include  420A, 3309, 110R and 101-14 and  the budwood is a mix of the UC Davis clones 4,5,7 and the entav clones 337 and 191. The rootstocks are matched to the varying types of soil, soil depths and aspects that are found at this steep mountain site.