Buoncristiani Family Winery traces its roots to Orentano, Tuscany, where the Buoncristiani family made Sangiovese and Vin Santo in the 19th century before emigrating to San Francisco's North Beach in the 1930s. The tradition carried to Napa in 1977, when patriarch Roberto Buoncristiani began making wine in leased vineyards with his four sons — Matt, Jay, Nate, and Aaron — carting bottles door-to-door as neighborhood Christmas gifts each year. After promising 1997 and 1998 home vintages, the brothers founded the winery commercially in 1999 with a loan from their aunt, while still in their early twenties (youngest brother Nate wasn't yet legally old enough to drink the wine he was helping make). Each brother built serious industry credentials elsewhere before returning full-time — Matt at Rudd Estate and Caldwell, Jay as winemaker at Hess Collection (later named Wine Spectator's "Rising Star of Napa Cabernet"), and Nate across Caldwell, Rudd, and Black Stallion. Today the winery operates from a fully subterranean cave nine hundred feet above Stags Leap Wine Cellars in the Stags Leap District, producing roughly 4,000 cases a year — including a rare 100% Malbec and an unusually dry Dolcetto — with about 70% sold direct-to-consumer, largely by word of mouth.