DVO is a collaboration between Napa Valley's Dalla Valle Vineyards and Tuscany's Ornellaia, and it began with a student and her mentor. Maya Dalla Valle met Ornellaia's Axel Heinz during a harvest internship in 2013, after her master's at Cornell; when she enrolled at Bordeaux Sciences Agro he tutored her thesis. Back in California, a dinner between Maya, her mother Naoko, and Ornellaia CEO Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja turned into a plan — one with a natural logic given that Naoko's late husband Gustav Dalla Valle was himself Italian. The two estates quietly made four vintages together starting in 2017 before releasing the 2018 in October 2021. The wine is Cabernet Sauvignon with a portion of Cabernet Franc, drawn from Oakville, Mount Veeder and Coombsville, and Heinz has been explicit that the aim was never an atypical Napa wine but a Napa wine with an Old World sense of proportion. Production sits near 500 cases.