Founding

  • Guiding Philosophy

    Honor the land.  Allow our wines to reveal the unique character of our hillside estate.  Embrace the experience artfully crafted by our winegrowing stewards.  Lancaster Estate wines speak clearly, telling their own story with each vintage.

  • Our Homeplace

    Here in the southernmost tip of Alexander Valley, where Knights Valley and Chalk Hill are nearby companions, growing conditions excel as a result of cooler marine influences slipping through the Valley, extending the growing season and allowing traditional Bordeaux varieties to develop elegant structure, age-worthy tannins and vibrant, rich flavors with both balance and power.

    In 1995, Lancaster Estate debuted following the acquisition of Maacama Creek Winery and its estate vineyards.  Over the next two decades, with great dedication and an unswerving commitment dedicated to limited release Bordeaux styled wines that are grown, produced and bottled from our 53 estate acres, micro-farmed in small vineyard blocks, each with its own expression.

  • The Winery

    Architect Eugene Silva was asked, in 2001, to bring ideas into action, combining the artisan needs of our winemakers with a respect for our environment, developing a state of the art winery that seamlessly flows into the Alexander Valley landscape, using natural building materials with a color palate that highlights, rather than competes, with nature.

    As a duty, not a virtue, great care was taken with every detail to assure the highest standards of energy efficiency and minimal production impacts, including a 100kW solar array that makes Lancaster Estate a full partner with the Sun, powering our entire estate.  While Silva achieved the charge to leave a minimal footprint, he also balanced practicality with beauty, a fitting tribute to the overarching vision.

  • Hillside Caves

    On their journey to greatness, Lancaster Estate Wines must rest and reflect.  Carved deep into the heart of No Name Hill, a labyrinth of 9,000 square feet of natural cooling caves dug into volcanic ash soils offer quiet respite for wines that age for up to three years before release. 

    Using the wisdom of nature, the caves offer an ideal combination of temperature and humidity for the wines in repose. The experience is shared with members of our Lancaster Estate Wine Guild who may enjoy our tasting library deep inside the wine caves. A place of honor...for the wines and our Guild members.