The Vaca Ridge vineyard forms the bulk of the Eastern Rutherford hills and extends from there to the edge of Lake Hennessey and up to Pritchard Hill to the west.
Tor manages two distinct blocks within the vineyard: one Cabernet and one Cabernet Franc.
Releases October 2025 | Download fact sheet
What first attracted Tor to this small 3-acre hillside vineyard was the neighborhood, the vineyards that surrounded it on the Vaca Mountain ridges: Screaming Eagle, Dalle Valle, Phelps Backus, Peter Michael’s Les Pavots, etc. Then he walked the vineyard with the owner, Bill Harter, and realized why the very steep vineyard would produce exceptional wine. The soils were red mineral-based like its famous neighbors, and its terroir would not produce a large crop, but a very high-quality one. TOR started to work with the Harter family in 2021 and, in 2023, made its first vineyard-designated wine from this exceptional site.
This wine is made from just the pure free run barrels that were pulled out of the tank prior to pressing and were aged in exclusively Taransaud barrels, both the 113 and 112. Without the inclusion of the press juice in 2023, the resulting wine shows more of the suppleness and elegance of the Oakville hillsides. Bottled after 20 months, this was, as always, bottled unfined and unfiltered.
“The 2023 Vaca Ridge Cabernet offers up a decidedly different aromatic profile than the rest of the 2023 Cabernets. This clearly shows its origins in the eastern Oakville hillside and the red rock iron-rich soils that dominate that side of the valley. This wine shows wet earth, iodine, leather, and cedar. On the palate, this has a much more compressed tannin profile than the wines from the west side of Oakville, with blood orange, Cloves, and black fruits.”
—Jeff Ames
I quote my friend Karen MacNeil, wine historian, author of the Wine Bible, “2023 was as perfect as any Napa vintage in living memory. It was Napa’s 1961 Bordeaux.” I remember the 1961 Bordeaux wines well, first tasting most of the First Growths in the 1970s. They were very structured wines, wines that did take a little time to find their “perfect” stride, and when they did, they were wines you never forgot. Across the board, the TOR 2023 wines are instant classics.