Samantha Rudd has spent most of her life at Rudd Estate and has always felt a deep connection to the land here.With over 62 acres of planted vines in the premier Oakville and Mt. Veeder appellations, Samantha is embracing the entire Estate by reintroducing the Crossroads label to craft wines that reflect the unique geological properties and winemaking techniques available to her winegrowing team.
As stewards of exceptional land, Rudd Estate seeks to craft wines that reflect the ultimate expression of our world-class terroir – respecting traditions of the past, challenging the present, and imagining future possibilities. We dare to think differently. Our team members work together in the relentless and uncompromising pursuit of a shared singular goal: to achieve the absolute pinnacle of our land’s potential.
It is our intention that Rudd Estate embodies a sense of timelessness, passing down expertise and commitment to our vision through generations, with each generation earning the right to steward the land and accept the responsibility to do better than the preceding one.
At Rudd Estate, we farm our land organically and biodynamically with an in-house farming team for two primary reasons. First, to ensure the health of our land will be here for the next generation. Second, to obtain the best possible expression of our terroir. Our in-house farming team is dedicated to the year-round care of the vineyards from pruning through harvest – their meticulous attention to detail plays an essential role in realizing the potential of our land.
Samantha grew up on Rudd Estate where, at age nine, she decided she would do whatever it takes to care for the land and fulfill a generational promise that she made to her father—that upon taking the reins at Rudd, she would leave the Estate to the next generation better off than when she assumed leadership. At the time, she knew little of the hard work and decades-long journey that would lead her to where she is today.
Samantha remembers the lessons instilled by her father through two decades of working side-by-side on the Estate. The core beliefs of stewardship, earned success and an uncompromising dedication to excellence were distilled into that generational promise that guides her today.
Samantha spent several years working outside of the family business learning from some of the best in the world, including Château Margaux and Spottswoode, both female run and owned winery estates.
Samantha returned to Rudd in December 2015, a homecoming she had been anticipating for as long as she can remember. She immediately began implementing her long-term vision, ranging from championing the Estate’s organic farming practices to fostering unlikely collaborations that seek inspiration beyond the world of fine wine.
A native Californian who grew up in St. Helena, Natalie Bath came back to the Napa Valley after graduating college with the intention of applying to law school. However, she fell back in love with the beauty of the Napa Valley and gained a new appreciation for wine while working at Angèle restaurant, and set about to explore if winemaking was the right path for her.
Natalie completed her first harvest with an internship at Etude in 2010, embracing the long hours, manual labor, and comradery that comes with harvest. She then spent the first part of the 2011 vintage in the Southern Hemisphere at Villa Maria in New Zealand, and the second part of 2011 at Littorai in Sebastopol, getting her first experience with biodynamics working under Ted Lemon. Not knowing where to go next and determined to make winemaking her career, a conversation with longtime friend Samantha Rudd turned into an opportunity to work harvest at Rudd Estate in 2012, and she has worked her way up the ladder ever since.
“It was like finally coming home — I grew up playing in the vineyards and running around the estate as a kid with Samantha. Being here just felt right.” In 2014, Natalie joined the Winemaking team fulltime as a cellar hand and became the oenologist in 2016. An opportunity of a lifetime presented itself, allowing Natalie to travel overseas to work harvest at Château Pétrus in 2016. Coming back from her travels refreshed and rejuvenated, Natalie became the Assistant Winemaker in 2017 at Rudd Estate, and the following year the Lead Winemaker for Crossroads.
After nearly a decade influencing the wines both in the cellar and in the vineyards by innovating the white wine program, helping the vineyard team integrate biodynamics into our organic farming practices, refining our wine analysis program, launching our companion Crossroads label, blending 8 vintages of Rudd wines, and creating our first vintage of sparkling wine, Natalie became Winemaker of Rudd Estate in 2021, a plan that had been many years in the making.
