Long acknowledged as one of California’s premier sites for Cabernet Sauvignon, the Bosché family’s eponymous vineyard in Rutherford has a history like no other.

Freemark Abbey’s bottling of Cabernet Bosché has been an established Napa Valley wine for many vintages. It was, in fact, one of the valley’s first vineyard-designated wines.

Tucked away behind a row of creek-fed trees west of Highway 29, Bosché Vineyard has, as of 2020, been connected to Freemark Abbey for 50 years. The first Cabernet Bosché came out of the 1970 harvest. Since then, it’s been what in France would be called a monopole, or a vineyard entirely under the control of a single winery.

San Francisco attorney John Bosché planted the Rutherford vineyard in the mid-1960s. By the time Ted Edwards arrived in St. Helena in 1980, the vineyard’s unique Cabernet and Merlot fruit had already been harvested ten times for Freemark Abbey. Almost four decades later, Bosché Vineyard is going stronger than ever, both as a signature new release each year and as a coveted part of the Freemark Abbey wine library.