As told to Carey Jones
Text by Olaf Beckman, Jordan Curet, Emily Mae, and Boris Zharkov
“It’s hard to see just how special this is when you’re growing up,” says Will Harlan, 34, of his family’s world-class wineries in Oakville, California. And “special,” here, is an understatement. Harlan Estate, which his father Bill Harlan founded in 1984, produces one of Napa Valley’s true cult cabernets—retailing for an average of $1,500 per bottle, with a two-year wait to get on the allocation list; winning accolades too numerous to name; and earning praise from the likes of wine critic Robert Parker, who once called Harlan Estate “the single most profound red wine made not just in California, but in the world.”
Taking up the mantle of this esteemed family of wines—which includes the labels BOND, Promontory, and The Mascot, in addition to Harlan Estate—is a daunting proposition. But Will Harlan, recently named managing director, and his 32-year-old sister, Amanda Harlan, are up for the task. While Bill remains active within the business (and “still works 18-hour days,” Amanda confirms), it’s his children who will usher the wineries into their next phase alongside winemaker Cory Empting, who assumed the role of managing director of winegrowing in January 2021 from his longtime mentor Bob Levy.
Bill Harlan often speaks of his “200-year plan” for Harlan Estate, aiming to build wineries like the great estates of Europe that will endure over the centuries. Now, 40 years in, a new generation is stepping up to shape the decades ahead.
Will Harlan returned to Northern California after college to work in the tech world in Silicon Valley, but the proximity of nearby Napa kept drawing him back to his family’s vineyards, which led to him dabbling in winemaking—a project that evolved into The Mascot, an experimental cabernet made from the younger vines of the family’s estates. Concurrently, the family was working on its next venture: acquiring a 900-acre piece of land that would become home to Promontory winery, located just a few hundred yards away from Harlan Estate.
The family had been interested in the Promontory parcel for decades. “It’s hidden, it’s rugged, it’s wild—we felt intuitively that this place would have a lot of potential,” Will says Will, who worked his way up at Promontory and was appointed its managing director in 2015. “But we purchased the property without a clear idea of what we were going to do with it.”
That gave them the freedom to approach the land and its winemaking potential with an open mind, Will says. “Promontory was an opportunity to chart a new course—to create a foundation for something that could, one day, become one of the great wines.” Having watched his father build Harlan Estate and BOND from nothing, he savored the opportunity to be part of bringing a vision to fruition himself.
With the aid of Stanford geologists, the Harlan family discovered that Promontory was inherently poised to assume an identity all its own. “Napa Valley is a geologically dynamic place,” Will explains. “Broadly speaking, it’s divided into volcanic and sedimentary soils. But we found a small fault that runs through the property that pushed up an island of metamorphic rock. It’s the only representation of this metamorphic material in the region.”
That soil ties directly to the identity of the wine; the same grape, grown just hundreds of yards away, takes on a completely different character. “The tannins are so fine, it feels almost weightless,” Will says. “For a cabernet to achieve that? It’s almost otherworldly.”
Unlike Harlan’s other brands, Promontory hosts private, intimate tastings and visits at a facility designed by renowned Napa Valley architect Howard Backen. “If we create an environment where people can really understand what’s going into the wine and see for themselves what it’s about, then the wine itself becomes less daunting.”
On Cory Empting’s first day as a 20-year-old summer intern at Harlan Estate, his truck was unable to climb the unpaved driveway, spurring him to get out and walk. He’s felt a profound connection to the land ever since. “It’s truly grounding; there’s a Zen quality to it,” says Empting, who has been with Harlan Estate for more than two decades. “This property hooked me in and became like home.”
There’s a sense of poetry in how Empting describes the land and the wines produced from its singular terroir. Describing Harlan Estate’s intaglio-printed label, which depicts a female figure harvesting grapes, he says, “There’s a certain confidence in her presence, one foot firmly planted on the ground. But when you look at the garments, there’s a real softness, with intricate detail. That balance is really the identity of Harlan Estate.”
Promontory, on the other hand, he compares to a cathedral. “There’s so much stone, so much mass. It’s very structural,” Empting says. “But your focus isn’t on the weight of the structure—it’s the space, the coolness of the stone, the light that’s coming through.” The structure itself, in other words, allows something ethereal to emerge.
According to Will Harlan, the essence of his father’s “200-year plan” is continuity. Empting’s role is thus one of stewardship more than innovation, though he’s come to realize that there’s always room to explore and evolve. In his earlier years with the company, Empting thought “we were 95 percent of the way there, and then we’d spend generations refining that last 5 percent. But now, I think I had that reversed.”
Moments from a Harlan Estate wine dinner hosted by Amanda Harlan at The Little Nell’s ASPENX Mountain Club in February 2022.
Amanda Harlan didn’t necessarily intend to work in the family business, but, she said, “It always had a gravitational pull.” Today, she formally serves as the director of communications for Meadowood Napa Valley, which the family co-owns, and private club The Napa Valley Reserve. But more broadly, she sees her role as sharing her family’s wines with the world.
“We’ve built four wineries and many different projects under my father’s incredible vision,” she says. “And now we have an opportunity to continue with our patrons—and welcome in new patrons—to be on a lifelong journey with us.”
As part of that effort, Amanda hosted an intimate dinner at the recently renovated ASPENX Mountain Club at the top of Aspen Mountain, where she served six vintages of Harlan Estate wine pulled from the family’s own library. “It was a serious, almost spiritual moment to see how our stable of vintages are evolving,” Amanda recalls.
Seizing another opportunity to share a taste of Napa Valley outside the region, Amanda also hosted a dinner at Element 47—a wine lovers’ destination at The Little Nell—in celebration of the tenth anniversary of The Mascot. At $150 a bottle, The Mascot is the most accessible of the Harlan family’s wines, Amanda says, attracting both “young folks who are just beginning their journey, and more established wine drinkers trying something approachable and exciting within our domain umbrella.”
The Mascot is a version of the house wine that the Harlans drank around the dinner table, Amanda reveals. “It’s something we’ve shared informally since the beginning,” she says. “Before it even had a label, we’d just write a note in gold Sharpie right on the bottle for our friends.”
Amanda loves how The Mascot speaks to the Harlans’ family of wines overall. “Since it comes from the younger vines, you can see the potential of what will happen with those vines down the road,” she says. “It’s like a glimpse behind the curtain.”