W. Andrew “Andy” Beckstoffer

Few people have played a more pivotal, pioneering role in Napa Valley’s evolution into a world-class wine region than Andy Beckstoffer. Andy is the owner of Beckstoffer Vineyards which has roughly 4,000 acres of vineyards owned in Napa, Mendocino, and Lake Counties, including some of Napa’s most historic vineyard properties. These six exceptional “Heritage Vineyards” are To Kalon, Dr. Crane, Las Piedras, Missouri Hopper, Vineyard Georges III and Bourn, which all consistently produce wines that score 95+ points and above.

Andy, born in Richmond, Virginia, earned a B.S. in Engineering at Virginia Tech in 1961 and an M.B.A. at Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth in 1966. Andy founded Beckstoffer Vineyards at just 30 years old in 1970. In 1975, Andy was a founding Director and the second President of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers Association, in 1976 a member of the Napa County Planning Commission, and in 1983 a Director of the Winegrowers of California. In 1994, he was a founder and the initial President of the Rutherford Dust Society.

For more than 50 years, Beckstoffer Vineyards has been a leader in shifting wine industry perspectives, in agricultural preservation and in developing and implementing new vineyard technologies in the California premium North Coast area. Perhaps most notably, Andy introduced a new grape pricing structure in 1976, which created a major and lasting shift in how the California wine industry views the importance of wine growers and grape quality. In the 1980s and 1990s, his insistence that vineyard-designated wines are the best expression of wine produced from a single vineyard source lead to a surge in vineyard-designated bottlings, which today, are often viewed as a winery’s flagship wines.

Andy also played a major role in Napa County’s Winery Definition Ordinance (WDO), which brought about key measures for preserving agriculture in Napa Valley, as well as requirements than Napa wineries must have a minimum of 75% grapes from Napa in their wines. His enthusiastic investment in the Red Hills of Lake County since the late 1990s has helped the region begin to establish itself as a producer of ultra-premium Cabernet Sauvignon that can rival the best California has to offer. In 2019, he launched a groundbreaking research project dedicated to preserving Cabernet Sauvignon as Napa Valley’s prized grape in the face of climate change.