Our History is Who We Are Today
The story of Murrieta's Well is as old as California itself, and it springs from the legend of the notorious Joaquin Murrieta. Known as the "Robin Hood of El Dorado," Murrieta was an infamous vaquero who roamed California during the Gold Rush era, rustling cattle and horses from wealthy ranchers and returning them to his compadres in Mexico. He was larger than life, and his reputation spread as far South as Chile. During his escapades, lore has it that he and his men often stopped to water their horses at this artesian well bubbling up from the floor of the Livermore Valley.

Perhaps it was the romantic tales of Murrieta that attracted Louis Mel to this site in the 1880s, but more likely it was this natural source of water and the unusually gravelly soil. A native of France, Mel bought the surrounding land and built a gravity-flow winery into the hillside adjacent to the Well, where the century old walls of river rock and cement still stand. The rough gravel and rock composition of the soil reminded Mel of home, and through his wife's childhood connections with the Marquis de Lur-Saluces, he imported cuttings of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon from the famous estate of Chateaux d'Yquem to plant in his vineyard. He also obtained red Bordeaux cuttings from the commune of Margaux. Upon his retirement, Mel sold the winery to his neighbor Ernest Wente in the early 1930s.

In 1990, Ernest's grandson Philip Wente teamed up with winemaker Sergio Traverso to bring this unique winery back to life. Philip grew up a stone's throw from the winery building in the Victorian era house built by the Mels. "It was a fixture of my childhood," he says. "Imposing, mysterious and yet accessible, I haunted every inch of it. My grandfather Ernest, who knew it well as an operating winery before prohibition, believed strongly in traditional winemaking methods, and he would take me around and show me the benefits of a traditional gravity flow winery. We took care in restoring the building to keep its nineteenth century, hand wrought character."

Sergio Traverso, the chief winemaker at neighboring Concannon Vineyard, knew the valley well and was also attracted by the lore of the site by a play written by fellow Chilean, and Nobel Prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda, about Joaquin Murrieta.

Philip and Sergio decided that they would remain true the heritage of the winery and create "old world" style field blends from the unique combination of original plantings that thrived in the gravelly soils of the estate. In the intervening years, they have planted a number of varieties which originated on the Iberian peninsula in Spain and Portugal.

"At Murrieta's Well, we focus on creating wines that are intrinsically unique in character," says Philip Wente. "We blend small lots of exceptional varietals grown on the site to produce wines that are truly distinctive."

Learn more:
Click here to read Murrieta's Well Historical Timeline
Click here to learn about Joaquin Murrieta
Click here to learn about Louis Mel