MACONDRAY WINES - Premium Private Label Winemaker
MACONDRAY WINES
ABOUT
CONTINUING A TRADITION
Born out of the Napa Valley
​We are a private label winemaking business based in Northern California. We specialize in producing exceptional Napa and California wines for our customers with our team of experienced winemakers who are passionate about crafting wines that truly represent the unique character of the region, with a focus on quality, sustainability, and authenticity.
We partner with top companies who have or want to develop their own labels, creating one-of-a-kind blends that you would be excited to share with your community and put your label on. Our goal is to deliver the highest value wine, premium quality at the lowest prices.
Learn more about how we are the ideal partner to bring the visions for your own label to life.
OUR HISTORY
The Meaning of Macondray
Frederick William Macondray, our company’s namesake, was a true international business pioneer, generations ahead of his time. A ship captain by the age of 21, after spending parts of his early life in Chile, China, and Macau, he settled in California in 1849, founding one of San Francisco’s first mercantile firms. Macondray reestablished trade relations with China, his company becoming America’s largest importer of Chinese teas.
Cultivating grapes from vines shipped from New England (under glass, around Cape Horn, one of the most treacherous passages in the world), Macondray helped to introduce the Zinfandel varietal into California in the early 1850s. His continued grape cultivation won him almost every award in California for the cultivation of grapes from other regions. Macondray then went on to become the founding president of the California Agricultural Society.
Macondray Lane, a hidden gem in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, was a refuge for one of our founder’s fathers who lived on adjacent Union Street, and Macondray’s Brookside estate, in the Peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area, referred to as a “duplicate garden of Eden,” eventually became the neighborhood where one of the founding team went to school growing up.
It is because of Macondray’s role as a pioneer of global trade, contribution to California’s wine industry, and personal connection that we honor his legacy through our company.
It is in this spirit that we bring the best-valued premium wines to our clients.
Our Chief Winemaker
40+ years of experience
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Don Baker brings a wide range of experience to his role as senior winemaker for Macondray Wines. Over the past four-plus decades Don has done it all – cellar work, winemaking, winery design and construction oversight, marketing and international business relations. His portfolio includes positions with Joseph Phelps, William Hill, Merryvale, and Kendall-Jackson’s Vina Calina venture in Chile.
Don believes that the winemaker’s role is to bring what nature created in the vineyard into the bottle and onto the table with as little interference as possible. He sums up his philosophy in these words, “Let the fruit show the way.”
Don’s expertise goes beyond the science of fermentation and related advances, such as micro-oxygenation. Don is a master working with oak in all its forms, from barrels to in-tank staves. He has worked with oak grown in the many forests of France such as Allier, Never and Vosges; Eastern Europe and the many forests of the United States.
Don is a graduate of the University of California, Davis. Don and his wife Lynne, a registered nurse, reside in Napa. Their five adult children are happily engaged in their own careers.