| Our History | |
 Owners, Margo Culcasi-Slaby & David Slaby We struggled mightily to find someone to “rip” our vineyard and get it replanted. There was little interest in dealing with 1.37 acre vineyard. Tuck Beckstoffer came to our rescue and, in May, 1999, we replanted using 039-16 rootstock, with second year green growing 337 Bordeaux clone on the South and Davis 6 clone on the North. We believe this marriage of the best French cabernet clone and the magical Davis 6 would give us a robust, complex combination of cabernet characteristics and flavor profiles. We also planted 158 Cabernet Franc vines to be used for blending, if we believe that is desirable in any given year. Our first crop from the new vineyard was 2001 and there was barely enough for one barrel after we thinned and cropped the vines back to avoid over stressing the young vines. Our first substantial harvest was in October, 2002 and from this harvest we have produced our first commercial vintage. Throughout the intervening years (1999 & 2000) we continued to make our home wine with grapes from Mike Morisoli’s nearby vineyard and we continue to do so now from our own vineyard. By picking from the South, North and Cabernet Franc in proportions to the overall vineyard, our home wine can mimic our commercial vintage.  We chose to call our wine Slaughterhouse Cellars
because of the dilapidated slaughterhouse that was located between the two 130 year old olive trees on our property. The
slaughterhouse operated from 1884 until 1925 when the owners Salvatore and Rosi Curtoni ceased its operation, although Rosi
continued to make her famous sausage to go along with her even more famous ravioli. We rescued her ravioli table from the
basement and have restored it as our dining room table.The name was meant to be as well as our interlaced S & C logo. Salvatore Curtoni rebuilt the original 1884 farmhouse in 1921 and we have found his initials in the concrete on the property. His name combined with our last names -- Slaby & Culcasi-- compelled a label name and logo using those initials. (Even if the S & C coincidence was only noted after the fact.) Shortly after acquiring the property a young assistant winemaker at Mt. Veeder winery named Doug Wisor moved into our bunkhouse. This was fortuitous for two reasons. First, Doug taught us good winery techniques and winemaking basics. Second, he introduced us to Tuck Beckstoffer and Jason Fisher. Jason Fisher became our bunkhouse resident when Doug moved out. Doug was invaluable to our first vintage 1997. And Tuck Beckstoffer and Jason Fisher became important and invaluable members of our vineyard and winemaking team.  Jason Fisher was working as Heidi Barrett’s
winemaking assistant when he moved into our bunkhouse. He was learning his trade under Heidi’s guidance at Grace
Family and Paradigm, among other top tier Napa Valley wineries. Jason broke the umbilical cord with Heidi and moved to
Cosentino Winery as winemaker for Cosentino and CE2V wines as well overseeing all aspect of our wine at Cosentino’s
Yountville winery. This convenient arrangement combined with Jason’s great skills has
served us well.In order, to provide Jason with the highest quality grapes to mold into a great wine, we work with Josh Clark of Clark Vineyard Management. (Josh’s family makes the highly acclaimed Clark–Claudon wines. Josh and his skillful crew take care of those vineyard necessities like sulfuring, and the commercial harvest which we cannot. Otherwise, we oversee and personally undertake the day to day requirements such as shoot thinning, suckering, canopy management and crop thinning. These activities are untaken to reduce the yield and greatly increase the intensity of flavor and quality of the grapes to be harvested. We keep the yield to less than 4 tons per acre, much less than the vineyard would produce if left to its own natural yield. Our inaugural vintage was debuted with significant interest at the Rutherford Dust Society Press and Trade Tasting event at Neibaum Coppola on July 14, 2004. The next day our efforts to revitalize the property and produce our first vintage was the subject of a three page feature titled “A Crushing Experience” in the July 15, 2004 edition of the St. Helena Star. We plan to continue our efforts to fine tune our viniculture practices to produce the finest grapes and finest wine possible from our Rutherford Bench vineyard. You can see where we are located by going to theRutherford Dust Societyweb site and viewing the member map. |
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