Summer 2025
Suzanne Deal Booth's Vision
By Brian Freedman
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Bella Oaks, the legendary Rutherford vineyard known for some of the most sought-after Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley, is steeped in history. Since acquiring the estate in 2010, Suzanne Deal Booth has nurtured its land and legacy, honoring a history that reaches back to Napa Valley’s earliest inhabitants, while building on the culture of hospitality introduced by founders Barney and Belle Rhodes in the 1960s.
Booth recently discovered shards of an 19th-century bowl — likely made in China by German artisans, exported to the United States, and used by miners in the 1800s. She has also found Native American arrowheads on the property dating back centuries.
“Bella Oaks has layers of history,” she says. “I love these little evidences of past cultures that come into my existence.” Deal Booth has built a life, and a career, around curating, protecting, and preserving not just the past, but the communities, cultures, and arts that define our world today. It’s a passion that she brings to her work, in and outside of Napa Valley.
That passion drives her role as a Festival Napa Valley board member and underwriter of the Suzanne Deal Booth Visual Arts Program. The program blends visual arts and live performance, with this summer’s highlight: digital projections on an LED wall during Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto, performed by the Pacific Symphony and Tianxu An on July 12.
Deal Booth is a steadfast advocate for cultural preservation. Her influence spans the globe, from underwriting the Rome Prize for Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome, to the Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion at Rice University in Houston.
When I met her earlier this year, she was preparing for a trip to the Middle East with the Friends of Heritage Preservation, which she founded in 1998 to protect artistic and cultural heritage around the world. The organization has offices in Israel and Syria, and this trip was to explore a possible new outpost in the region.
On that unseasonably warm January day in Napa Valley, the conversation turned to art, specifically the striking installations, paintings, and sculptures that line her home and property by Yayoi Kusama, Joel Shapiro, Max Ernst, and others.
What ties it all together — the art, the preservation, the wine, the service to Festival Napa Valley and other cultural organizations — is her passion for stewardship. “Of heritage, and of taking care of things — protecting them,” she explains. “I feel that way about the land, too.”
That land is among Napa Valley’s most historically significant. Wine grapes were planted there as early as the mid-1800s. In 1976, Heitz Cellar released a Bella Oaks-designated Cabernet, the first of many acclaimed wines from the site. By the time Deal Booth purchased the 14-acre vineyard, it was firmly established as one of the top sites in the American wine firmament.
Deal Booth set out to make it even better. She gained organic certification in 2019, and continues to implement biodynamic practices, all of which have helped increase the land's health and biodiversity.
“When I first purchased the property, we were in a partnership with Staglin Family Vineyard,” she recalls. It was intended as a five-year partnership, during which time the Staglins, longtime friends and neighbors, would help farm the land and use some of the grapes. But four years in, during a trip to Italy, Deal Booth had a revelation: Bella Oaks had always been a designated vineyard but never its own brand. It deserved to be its own wine. She began looking for a permanent winemaking home for Bella Oaks.
Her search led her to Wheeler Farms in St. Helena, then owned by Bart and Daphne Araujo. She became a client in 2016, an investor in 2021, and the owner just last year. Under celebrated winemaker Nigel Kinsman, Wheeler Farms has emerged as one of the valley’s top winemaking facilities. It now also serves as a tasting room, a gathering place, and a home for some of Deal Booth’s art collection. “I want people to associate Bella Oaks with a place, and a feeling,” she explains. “And I'm now trying to create a little bit more of that feeling where the tasting takes place.”
Success has been quick. “Wheeler Farms has turned out to be a lovely brand with a great clientele, and we are very often at capacity on who we can serve and how many people can be in the room,” she says. “I’m hoping to add a couple more sitting areas for meals. We have a kitchen, a chef, and can offer those services. People love being able to taste not just one wine, but maybe a few wines with their meal. It's like being at home.”
A home, that is, where world-class art meets some of Napa Valley’s most expressive and exciting wines — shaped by Suzanne Deal Booth’s forward-looking vision and deep respect for those who came before.