2021 Futo Seta

Futo is an 11-acre boutique winery on the Oakville Grade, in Oakville, one of Napa Valley’s premier areas. The winery was started in 2004 when the husband and wife team of Tom and Kyle Futo bought the property. The couple is originally from Wichita, Kansas, where Tom Futo built a career in financial investment. Like many Napa Valley boutique wineries aspiring to cult status, Futo produces Cabernet Sauvignon which in its earliest vintages earned high marks from reviewers, including Robert M. Parker Jr., who notes that “Tom and Kyle Futo are intent on producing something of world-class quality…” Grapes come from Futo’s Oakville and Stag’s Leap District vineyards. Futo hired some of Napa Valley’s biggest names in winemaking to help them achieve that goal. David Abreu is vineyard manager, Mark Aubert is winemaker “emeritus,” and Jason Exposto is winemaker.

Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay,