Brown Estate Vineyards is a winery in Napa Valley, California, United States. It produces zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, and petite sirah varieties. Founded in 1995 by siblings Deneen, David and Coral Brown, Brown Estate produced its first Napa Valley zinfandel in 1996 after the family had been farming grapes and selling them to established winemakers. It is the first and only Black-owned estate in Napa Valley. Early history In 1980, parents Bassett Brown, originally from Jamaica, and Marcela Abrahams Brown, originally from Panama, acquired in the Chiles Valley AVA of the Napa Valley. Abandoned for ten years prior, the land and its two structures—an 1859 stone and redwood barn and an 1885 Queen Anne Victorian home—were derelict. The senior Browns cut roads and installed plumbing and electricity, for which they received an award from the Napa County Historical Society for their restoration of the residence structure. In 1985, they planted their first vineyard, approximately of zinfandel. The Chiles Valley microclimate, characterized by extreme temperature shifts throughout the course of each day, proved perfectly suited to cultivating zinfandel grapes, and the Brown family's fruit soon gained tremendous popularity among zinfandel producers such as Green & Red and T-Vine Cellars, both of whom purchased Brown Estate fruit for many years. As well, the Browns sold cabernet sauvignon to the famed Mike Grgich. It was through a series of apprenticeships with winemakers who were working with his fruit that David Brown, who by then had been farming his family's vineyards for five years, began learning the art and science of winemaking. In the mid-1990s, as a result of rising demand for their fruit, Deneen and David, then both residing on the vineyard property, made the decision to produce wine under their own label. Because they had no winery facility on site, they secured a custom crush contract with Rombauer Vineyards in Saint Helena, and for six years they produced their wines at the Rombauer facility. On January 29, 2000, Brown Estate debuted their first two vintages of Napa Valley zinfandel, 1996 and 1997, at the annual Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) tasting at Fort Mason in San Francisco. ZAP is the largest single varietal wine tasting event in the world, and the Brown offerings were very well received by the trade and public alike, thereby establishing Brown Estate as a winery to watch in the arena of Napa Valley zinfandel. Simultaneously, in the