The Team
At Stone The Crows, we have one of the best teams in Napa Valley spearheading the growth and production of our wine:
Jason Ray , Vineyard Manager
Jason grew up in the small farming community of Orcutt, California, located in the Santa Barbara County Central Coast Region. Jason graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1998 with a Crop Science and Ag Business degree. His first job was working for the late, legendary Jess Jackson as a viticulturist for Jackson Family Farms. He learned from some of the best viticulture talents in the industry while working for the Jackson Family.
In January 2005, Jason started his own business, called Napa Select Vineyard Services. From humble beginnings, with one client of 45 acres of vines to manage, he has grown into a well-oiled operation, farming more than 900 acres with over 150 employees. Napa Select manages some of the finest vineyards in Napa and Sonoma valleys ranging from hillside to valley floor sites. He works with vineyard owners and winemakers to deliver fruit that is expressive of its appellation and picked at optimal ripeness.
Thomas Rivers Brown , Winemaker
Our winemaker is the immensely talented Thomas Rivers Brown, who has been hailed as the “most successful winemaker in California” by Town & Country magazine’s Jay McInerney and has been the subject of a Wine Spectator cover feature that described his winemaking style as having “The Midas Touch.”
Brown honed his winemaking craft the hard way: on the job, making wine for an exclusive list of clients that includes some of the most coveted names in California wine from Schrader and Outpost to Caterwaul, Maybach, Mending Wall, Round Pond, and his own Rivers-Marie label, to name just a few.
When Talmadge first met Brown to discuss making wine together, it was over a beer at a Parisian sidewalk café on the Champs-Élysées. A handshake agreement sealed the deal. And since the beginning, we’ve had a front-row seat to Brown’s drive, passion, and talent for crafting world-class wine. Since our first release with the 2010 vintage, Brown has demonstrated that Cabernet Sauvignon grown in our Three Twins Vineyard with careful intention, and made with minimal intervention in the cellar, results in the purest expression of our site.
Richard Talmadge , Proprietor
Rick’s passion for Napa Valley and its wines grew into an obsession in the late 1990s, and he began looking for a property that might one day produce world-class wine from California. He found the perfect spot in the hills above St. Helena, with unimaginably beautiful views of Lake Hennessey. Quickly seeing past the grazing cattle and recognizing the land’s potential to create some of the greatest wine in Napa Valley, he was convinced it was the right spot. But what sealed the deal was the reaction of his children. On the day he first visited the site, he'd brought along his very young triplets—Travis, Taryn, and Courtney—and their enthusiasm for the ranch put Rick over the top. “We’ll take it!” he remembers them shouting in unison as soon as they saw the view. Once the vineyard was planted, in honor of the triplets' excitement, he named it Three Twins Vineyard.