Opus One

Napa has scarcer cult bottles and far cheaper tasting rooms. What this estate has is the crossing point: the owner of a Bordeaux first growth and California's loudest evangelist built one property together, and a seat in it is still bookable. Two of its four parcels, 100 acres in total, sit inside To Kalon at Oakville — the vineyard H.W. Crabb planted in 1868.

Three experiences were listed on the estate's reservations platform in July 2026. The Opus One Estate Tasting is $150 per person for roughly 60 minutes: shared seating in the courtyard room, two vintages of Opus One alongside Overture, no winery tour, finishing on the rooftop terrace. The Opus One Experience in the Partners' Room is $250 for 90 minutes and does include a tour.

Visits run by appointment every day, 10am to 3:30pm. The winery is closed on New Year's Day, 5–9 January, Easter Sunday, 20–24 April, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Each vintage is released on 1 October, so the wine poured in the tasting room changes over in autumn. The 2022 harvest ran from 24 August to 26 September.

Book through reservations.opusonewinery.com. Online booking is capped at four guests; larger parties go through (707) 944-9442. Payment is taken in full at booking and becomes nonrefundable 48 hours ahead, or 14 days ahead for Art of the Table. Nobody under 21 is admitted anywhere on the grounds, including infants and children. No pets except service animals, and no outside food or drink. The estate publishes nothing about step-free access — ring the winery about access needs.

The address is 7900 Saint Helena Highway, Oakville, California 94562 — on Highway 29 between Yountville and Rutherford, a short drive from Robert Mondavi Winery. The approach changed in 2026: the main driveway reopened to visitors after the north and south berms and the arrival courtyard were rebuilt with the landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand.

Opus One is a single-wine estate on Highway 29 at Oakville, in the middle of Napa Valley, founded in 1979 by Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild. It makes one Bordeaux-style red each year, plus a second wine called Overture. The winery receives guests by appointment only, every day between 10am and 3:30pm.

Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild met for the first time in 1970, at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Big Island of Hawaii. The wine they eventually made was called Napamedoc until it was renamed Opus One in 1982. The first vintage, 1979, was held back and released in 1984 at the same time as the 1980.

The estate is four parcels in the western part of the Oakville AVA. Two of them, 100 acres together, lie inside To Kalon; the Ballestra and River parcels add 70 acres wrapped around the winery building. Plantings run 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, with 6% each of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot, and 2% Malbec.

Two things the estate states on its own pages that rarely travel. Overture is grown on the same estate from the same five varieties and aged the same 18 months in new French oak, and the 2022 sells at $210 against $490 for the 2022 Opus One. And reservations are released only two months ahead, on the first day of each month — arriving in August hoping for an August table generally does not work.