REVENTINO - St. Helena
From Enotria to Napa Valley
Un solo vino. Una sola annata. One wine. One vintage. Nothing more
Our Story
Long before Tuscany, long before Bordeaux, Southern Italy was called Enotria — the land of wine — one of the oldest wine cultures in the Western world. Monte Reventino rises from that landscape, near the town of Soveria Mannelli, in the province of Catanzaro, Calabria.
In 1912, at seventeen years old, Emilio Cardamone left those hills alone and sailed for the new world.
Generations later, his granddaughter Ann made her way to Napa Valley. There she met Butch, who had acquired a rough hillside in rural St. Helena — a parcel covered in poison oak that neighbors questioned why anyone would want. He saw what it could become.
Their son planted the vines. On that hillside, a small herd of donkeys works the land — the same quiet, patient labor once practiced on the slopes of Calabria.
Some instincts carry across oceans — and generations.
"One ancient farming family, from one old world hill, finding a new one. This is what that hill grows." - Jarrett Fenlon, Founder
The Vineyard
The Vineyard
The Vineyard
Happy Ass Vineyard — our estate, planted at approximately 1,000 feet in the eastern hills of Napa Valley. 100% Cabernet Franc, farmed by hand on loamy, rocky soils that limit vigor and concentrate flavor.
At this elevation, warm days give way to genuinely cool nights — a diurnal swing that slows ripening and preserves the natural acidity
Happy Ass Vineyard — our estate, planted at approximately 1,000 feet in the eastern hills of Napa Valley. 100% Cabernet Franc, farmed by hand on loamy, rocky soils that limit vigor and concentrate flavor.
At this elevation, warm days give way to genuinely cool nights — a diurnal swing that slows ripening and preserves the natural acidity that gives this wine its lift. The vines struggle here, and that struggle is the point: shallow, rocky ground and limited water produce small, thick-skinned berries with a high skin-to-juice ratio, concentrating color, tannin, and flavor into less fruit rather than more of it.
It is exactly the kind of ground the old world would recognize — difficult, unglamorous, and quietly ideal.
Happy Ass Vineyard planted 2023
Farming
The Vineyard
The Vineyard
Every row is farmed by hand using organic and sustainable practices, with a focus on minimal intervention and maximum attention to the vine.
Working at this scale allows a level of care and selectivity at harvest simply not possible at larger operations — every cluster evaluated, every decision made by hand.
Irrigation is managed delibera
Every row is farmed by hand using organic and sustainable practices, with a focus on minimal intervention and maximum attention to the vine.
Working at this scale allows a level of care and selectivity at harvest simply not possible at larger operations — every cluster evaluated, every decision made by hand.
Irrigation is managed deliberately, not automatically: water is pulled back in the weeks before harvest to concentrate what's already there rather than dilute it, a small, patient decision repeated every year with real consequences in the glass.
At Happy Ass Vineyard, the donkeys share the work — clearing brush and maintaining the hillside the same way their ancestors did on the steep slopes of Monte Reventino. Some methods don't need improving.
Our Wine
The Vineyard
Our Wine
Reventino produces one wine — a single blend, every vintage, from our estate on a hillside in St. Helena.
Majority Cabernet Franc, with small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from a neighboring hillside estate blended in each year by taste, not formula. Aged 24 months before release, it is a restrained, mountain-grown expression o
Reventino produces one wine — a single blend, every vintage, from our estate on a hillside in St. Helena.
Majority Cabernet Franc, with small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from a neighboring hillside estate blended in each year by taste, not formula. Aged 24 months before release, it is a restrained, mountain-grown expression of a single hillside — structured, precise, and built to age.
Cabernet Franc is the parent variety of Cabernet Sauvignon — the grape that defined Napa Valley. Reventino grows the original, and lets a little of its own offspring find its way back home each year.
Production is strictly limited to a single annual release, offered exclusively through private allocation.
Un solo vino. Una sola annata. One wine. One vintage. Nothing more.
The Estate in Pictures
