Palazzo is a small-batch producer of Merlot-based red blends intended to pay homage to the great Right Bank Bordeaux of St. Émilion. The Napa Valley estate is relatively new, offering its first release in 2005. But its roots go back more than 30 years, when Scott Palazzo was a young American traveling the world with a guitar on his back. A couple of years of living in France and picking grapes left Palazzo with a serious love of Right Bank Bordeaux, but he spent the next decades in the music business back in the U.S. By the early 2000s he was ready to launch into the wine business, and with the help of veteran winemaker Peter Franus Palazzo focused on wine sourced from Carneros fruit. The rolling hills of Carneros and south Napa Valley remind him of St. Émilion, and the results have been impressive. He makes three cuveés. The Right Bank Proprietary Red is his flagship Merlot-based blend. He also makes 100% Cabernet Franc and a white Semillon-based wine. In only a few years his wines have earned high marks from reviewers. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written that Palazzo’s wines are “all well-known among wine insiders, but probably (are) not getting the notice among consumers that they merit.”