Wine Chronicles: Living Well, Differently — Matt Reid on Benessere Vineyards’ Vision
By Tim Carl
Summary of Today’s Story: Winemaker Matt Reid is advancing the Benish family’s vision at Benessere Vineyards, deepening their focus on Italian varietals like aglianico, Montepulciano and sangiovese — an intentional shift from the region’s cabernet-centric norm. After an early career in environmental policy, Reid found purpose at the roughly 40-acre estate across from Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, known to many for the old red pickup at the corner of Highway 29 and Big Tree Road. The winery produces about 3,500 cases per year and is replanting with heat-tolerant grapes while using minimal oak to craft expressive, accessible wines. For Reid, these choices represent not a novelty but a viable, forward-looking path for Napa Valley.
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — At a small winery just south of Calistoga, across from Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, winemaker Matt Reid is betting that Napa’s future may look more like Campania than classic cabernet country.
On a recent morning the tasting patio sat quiet under low clouds near rows of vines running toward the foggy Mayacamas mountains. Inside the modest winery, Reid talked about aglianico, Montepulciano, sangiovese and pinot grigio the way some winemakers talk about single-vineyard cabernet. The bottles on the table were all Italian in name and spirit, grown in one of the warmest pockets of Napa Valley.
“These wines might be closer to where Napa is going,” Reid said. “And for a lot of people, they’re something they’ve never tasted before.”
Origins in a Small Splash of Wine
Reid did not grow up around vineyards. He grew up around textbooks and moving boxes.
His father was an economic historian whose career bounced the family from Chicago to Philadelphia, back to Chicago, then to Dallas, Blacksburg and finally northern Virginia. Wine entered the picture when Reid was 5 or 6 and his parents decided they wanted a more cosmopolitan household than the Midwestern one he remembered.
“We went from hard-shell taco kits to beef bourguignon,” Reid said. “It was pretty weird.”
Wine followed the food. Bottles from Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhône, Chianti and Rioja began appearing at the table. Reid got small pours cut with water.
“Even then I could tell the water was changing the wine,” he said. “It gave it this tangy, metallic taste that felt wrong. So I kept asking for the wine without water. I think I finally won that argument around age 9.”
By the time he left for Oberlin College in 1989, he was the one choosing bottles when his friends decided to splurge.
“I wasn’t drinking a lot of wine in college,” Reid said. “But when we did, I was the one saying, ‘Let’s get this one, not that one.’”
Saving The World, Then Leaving the Spreadsheet
At Oberlin he double-majored in environmental studies and economics.
“I wanted to save the world,” Reid said. “The economics was so I would have some idea what that might cost.”
He landed a job with the Environmental Protection Agency right out of school. On paper it matched his training. In reality it felt like a misprint.
“I was basically handed a report, typed numbers into a computer, printed out another report and handed it off,” he said. “I never thought or did anything. It was super boring.”
After a year he quit, traveled, then drifted west to San Francisco in the early 1990s. Life was still inexpensive enough that he could piece together temp work, an IT job at the health department and eventually a higher-paid position as a legal secretary while he tried to figure out “what to do when I grew up.”
Along the way he met his future wife, an Oberlin alum who had moved to San Francisco to study public health. They married in the city, moved up to Napa Valley when he began working in wineries and, in 2009, welcomed a daughter. By then they had settled in Calistoga, roughly halfway between his job in Geyserville at the time and her position at Napa Wine Co. in Oakville.
The answer to his career question arrived by way of a slim paperback called “Homemade Wine.” Written by an English author for readers who would never see a wine grape, it suggested recipes for parsnip wine, blackberry wine, strawberry wine and more.
“I never made the parsnip wine,” Reid said. “But I did make all kinds of fruit wines and grape wine whenever I could get grapes.”
The experiments taught him something basic but important. Wine grapes, he realized, come with roughly the right combinations of sugar, acid and tannin already built in. Everything else needed adjustment.
“Other fruits aren’t perfect for making wine,” he said. “You have to add sugar and drop acid. Once I saw that pattern, I thought maybe this is worth pursuing.”
A phone call to Tom Burgess, a longtime Napa vintner and college friend of his father, brought simple advice.
“He said, ‘Go to Davis,’” Reid said.
Reid enrolled in the UC Davis viticulture and enology master’s program in 2001 and graduated in 2003.
Today’s Word Puzzle:
Challenge your vocabulary with this week’s mystery word. Submit your answer in the poll, and check the bottom of the page for the correct answer.
Napa as Résumé Line
Reid’s plan after Davis was straightforward. He would do a couple of years in Napa to burnish the résumé, then move somewhere he imagined would be less status-driven.
“I thought Napa would be too snooty and elitist,” he said. “I wasn’t interested in making a $300 wine. I wanted wines that could be enjoyed and shared, not just poured for people with fat wallets.”
He worked briefly at large, corporate Clos du Bois in Geyserville in a quality-control role that felt uncomfortably close to his old EPA work. A better fit came at Seavey in Conn Valley, where he was often the only full-time winery employee.
“I was doing the work, not just writing or reading work orders,” he said.
Later he joined Failla Wines, running the custom-crush side while Ehren Jordan focused on the Failla label. Jordan encouraged him to launch his own project, and People’s Wine Revolution was born.
PWR was Reid’s response to a valley that priced him and his friends out of the wines they helped make.
“Even with an employee discount I could barely afford the wines I was making,” he said. “My friends couldn’t, either. That’s not why I got into winemaking.”
With his own label he could set prices as low as he could manage and choose the grapes he liked: grenache, tempranillo, petite sirah, marsanne, viognier. Many of those vineyard sources were small, and many were eventually ripped out and replanted to cabernet sauvignon as cabernet prices climbed.
“It meant there wasn’t a lot of consistency,” he said. “But it was fun wine for real people.”
What he could not do was sell enough of it.
“I wasn’t all that good at selling wine at the time,” he said. “That’s the short version.”
The Emergency Harvest
In August 2013, with PWR not yet finding its footing, Reid got a call from winemaker Nate Weis. Benessere Vineyards, a small family-owned estate just outside Calistoga, had suddenly lost its winemaker just weeks before harvest.
“They needed someone so they could get through the harvest,” Reid said. “I looked at my bank account and said yes, definitely.”
He expected three months of work and a return to his own label. Instead, he found a place that felt different from any winery job he had held.
For one thing, he lost his cellar hand on day one.
“The cellar worker told me I couldn’t cancel his September vacation,” Reid said. “This was harvest. He went anyway and never came back.”
Reid scrambled for help and spent the season learning the property’s unusual set of Italian varieties on the fly. Two open-top fermenters, one filled with aglianico and the other with sagrantino, became his classroom.
“Every morning I’d punch them down, then taste,” he said. “The aglianico said, ‘That was nice, see you tomorrow.’ The sagrantino said, ‘More, please, more, please.’ So I did five punch-downs a day on the sagrantino. I didn’t know that going in. I just paid attention.”
Somewhere between those tanks and the quiet patio, he changed his mind about moving on.
“For the first time I could say I genuinely fit with the owners I worked for,” he said. “We just clicked. The people were great, the place was great and instead of being the 487th cabernet-focused producer in Napa Valley, I get to work with all these Italian varieties. It’s never boring.”
He stayed. Today Reid is both winemaker and general manager.
Replanting For a Hotter Valley
The Benish family bought the roughly 40-acre former Charles Shaw property in 1994, replanted phylloxera-damaged vines and began a long shift toward Italian grapes. Under early consultant Dan Duckhorn about a third of the vineyard went to merlot for Duckhorn’s own program. Those vines are mostly gone now.
Benessere is halfway through a four-phase replant. Rows are being reoriented for better shade during the hottest times of the day, spacing tightened and rootstock swapped to more drought-tolerant 110R. The new plantings have a distinctly southern Italian tilt.
“Since we replanted we’ve added vermentino and falanghina on the white side,” Reid said. “On the red side we’ve added Montepulciano, primitivo, nero d’Avola and teroldego.”
Aglianico and sagrantino anchor the original Italian block along with sangiovese.
“It’s warm here,” he said. “These varieties soak up the heat. With aglianico, sagrantino and Montepulciano, I don’t know if we’d ripen them without it.”
Although the team has no intention of switching focus, Reid does see potential for other Napa growers to experiment with grapes from climates such as Greece’s.
“If they can survive in Greece, they can probably survive as temperatures here increase,” he said, mentioning varieties such as assyrtiko, mavrodaphne and xinomavro as examples he would consider if he owned vineyard land elsewhere in the valley.
The plan was to move into phase three this year, but the team decided to pause.
“We have so many wines just coming into production,” Reid said. “We need to see if the world is ready for all these unfamiliar wines, or if it’s too ready for it and we don’t have enough.”
Listening to the Wines
In the cellar Reid keeps his winemaking relatively simple and resists the temptation to dress the wines in oak.
“That first year I asked for my barrel budget and thought, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do with this?’” he said. “And it turns out I’ve never asked for a budget increase. The wines don’t need to be masked with oak.”
Sangiovese typically sees about 10% new wood. Aglianico, sagrantino, Montepulciano and the Bordeaux varieties are closer to 25%.
“I want these to be true expressions of the varieties,” he said. “Our blends like speranza and tenaci are fun and popular. They’re not going away, but it’s the varietal wines that also get me excited.”
Aglianico, native to Campania, is the boldest of the set. It ripens late but accumulates sugar slowly, landing around 14.5–14.8% alcohol with naturally high acidity.
“People call it the Barolo of the South, which is not my favorite name,” Reid said. “It’s high tannin and high acid like Barolo, yes, but it’s much more generous with its fruit. It really benefits from time in the cellar.”
Montepulciano, best known from Abruzzo, brings color, tannin and acid without feeling severe.
“I poured it at Davis recently after describing all that,” he said. “Somebody was almost afraid to take a sip. Then they said, ‘Oh, this isn’t frightening.’ That’s the point. These are new experiences for many.”
Sangiovese, long the “heart and soul” of the estate, now comes from six clones, including two from the Brunello region and a newer clone 12 that has become a rising star. Starting with the 2024 vintage, clone 12 will define the Sangiovese Riserva.
“I want someone who tastes sangiovese here to come away feeling like they actually know the grape,” he said. “There are other expressions, but this is a real one.”
Even pinot grigio, grown on estate in a surprisingly warm spot, gets special attention.
“There’s no reason a pinot grigio can’t be as complex as a pinot noir,” Reid said. “I don’t want to scare the person who just wants a porch wine, but I want to reward the person who pays attention to the glass. We pick it early to keep all the aromatics and let it sit on the lees a bit, too.”
Living The Good Life
The name Benessere means “to be well.” At the winery, according to Reid, it is translated more loosely as “living the good life,” a phrase that seems to fit both the family and the place.
On weekends the patio fills with locals and visitors sharing cheese boards, sangiovese salami from Panevino in St. Helena and sangiovese truffles from Anette’s in Napa. A bubbles-and-pastry tasting ($30) brings Model Bakery or Bella Bakery goods to the table with sparkling pinot grigio. The annual harvest party features a grape stomp that draws teams of young competitors who may be encountering aglianico or sagrantino for the first time.
“I think younger people might be less self-conscious about trying something they can’t pronounce,” Reid said. “They’ll say ‘ag-lee-anaco’ and we’ll say, ‘It’s al-yanico,’ and they’ll say, ‘Cool.’”
Ticket prices for the harvest party are not trivial — about $150 and held in October — but he notes that many of the new faces who have joined the club are in their 20s and 30s. The events includes a grape-stomping competition that had about 100 participants this year.
Across the driveway, trails in Bothe-Napa Valley State Park climb into the redwoods. With the Vine Trail now tying Calistoga to St Helena, visitors can arrive or depart on bikes.
“If I were planning a day,” Reid said, “I’d rent an e-bike in Calistoga, ride down to the park for a hike, then come across the street for a tasting and a snack. After that you can keep going down the trail for gelato in St. Helena and ride back before dark.”
A Different Future for Napa
Reid is under no illusion that the broader wine industry is booming.
“The industry’s not healthy at the moment,” he said. “Friends of mine who lost jobs in the last few years have had a really hard time finding new ones.”
His view of the high-end market is blunt.
“Nobody needs another bottle of $300 cabernet,” he said. “Most of the people who were buying those wines still have the money. The fact that they’re not buying suggests they found another bright, shiny thing. They didn’t have to leave, and they did. So why would they come back?”
For Benessere the answer is not to chase that world of shiny things but to offer something else: heat-loving Italian grapes grown in Napa soil, priced below trophy levels, poured on a patio where the loudest sound is often birds in the trees above the creek.
Asked how he’d describe the winery to someone who has never heard of it, Reid thought for a moment.
“Beautiful wines made with love,” he said. “Wines that represent a future of Napa Valley and something you’ve probably never tasted before.”
Then he smiled and added one more line.
“And we’re a lot more affordable than most of your other options.”
—
Tim Carl is a Napa Valley-based photojournalist.
Wine Discovery:
The winery produces nearly 20 different wines under the Benessere label — about 3,500 cases annually, including cabernet sauvignon and sparkling wines. The four I tasted most recently include:
2022 Aglianico, Napa Valley ($70, 150–300 cases) — Indigenous to Campania, aglianico is a late-ripening red known for deep color, firm tannins and bright acid. At Benessere it shows dark fruit, spice and a savory edge, built to age but generous enough to drink now with hearty food. 14.5–14.8% alcohol.
2023 Montepulciano, Napa Valley ($55, 200 cases) — A mainstay of Abruzzo, Montepulciano is often used as a blending grape for its color and structure. Here it stands alone, offering plummy fruit, firm but approachable tannins and enough natural acidity to stay lively at the table. 14% alcohol.
2021 Sangiovese, Napa Valley ($53, 400 cases) — Best-known from Chianti and Brunello, sangiovese is a thin-skinned grape that reflects site and clone. Benessere farms six clones, including Brunello selections and the newer clone 12, yielding red-cherry fruit, herbal notes and a savory, food-friendly finish. About 14.5% alcohol.
2024 Pinot Grigio, Napa Valley ($35, 400 cases) — Often treated as a simple quaffer, pinot grigio is a pink-skinned variant of pinot noir capable of nuance. Grown in a warm northern Napa site and picked early, Benessere’s version shows citrus and stone-fruit aromas with a bit of lees texture for depth, at home on the porch or on the holiday dinner table. 13% alcohol.
Today’s Polls:
This Week's Word Challenge Reveal:
The correct answer is C: A plant adapted to dry conditions.
Xerophytes are plants that survive with little water by evolving special features — waxy leaves, reduced surface area or deep roots that pull moisture from far below. These traits matter in Napa, where long-term shifts in rainfall and temperature have led some growers to replant with drought-resistant varieties. Grapes that behave like xerophytes, or rootstocks that do, are helping vineyards stay productive under growing water stress.
The word “xerophyte” comes from the Greek “xēros,” meaning dry, and “phyton,” meaning plant. It entered scientific use in the late 19th century, when botanists began categorizing species that flourished in desert-like climates. Today, as drought and heat reshape wine regions, the idea of xerophytism offers practical tools for adapting to environmental change — both in the vineyard and beyond.
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Great story and an answer to the question - how I got into growing grapes and making wine.
Life is never a straight path for any of us. Nice going Matt.
Thanks for writing this article about Matt. I met him in connection with a wine he made. Good guy, and he serves on his local school board.