Robert (Bob) Craig, the founder of Robert Craig Winery, began his long and storied career in wine at The Hess Collection on Mount Veeder in the 1980s. Before establishing his eponymous winery, Bob's passion for Napa Valley Mountain Cabernet led him to spearhead the official recognition of both the Mount Veeder and Spring Mountain District AVAs.
In 1990, with the help of three friends he met at business school in Chicago 25 years earlier, Bob founded Robert Craig Winery. He arranged to purchase fruit and custom crush his first commercial release of the 1992 vintage. The 1993 vintage release introduced three Cabernets that remain the core of the winery's business today: Howell Mountain, Mount Veeder, and Affinity. Now, four decades later, Bob Craig is recognized as one of the most important figures in Mountain Cabernet development and production in Napa Valley history. Drawn to the mountain terroir of Napa Valley, Bob found his calling on Howell Mountain. In 1995, he and his partners purchased 22 acres at the summit of Howell Mountain, the vineyard property that would become the winery's estate. The first Howell Mountain vintage was released the following year to critical acclaim.
Bob and his wife Lynn worked tirelessly to promote the Mountain Cabernet message across the country over the next decade. The Wine Spectator named Robert Craig Winery one of its "Top 50 Producers," while reviewers such as Robert Parker Jr., Stephen Tanzer, and others heaped praise on the Howell Mountain, Mount Veeder, and Affinity Cabernets. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the number of wineries in Napa Valley nearly tripled, and the number of Napa Valley brands grew more than tenfold. This led to a much more competitive environment for small wineries. To navigate this crowded landscape, Robert and his partners hired wine business veteran and Mountain Cabernet aficionado Elton Slone in 2004 to direct all operations at the winery. Elton retooled and refocused farming practices, winery equipment, and personnel in the first years of his leadership, bringing the wines to their highest level of concentration, complexity, age-worthiness, and site expression. With a renewed emphasis on quality farming and winemaking, as well as carefully selected vineyard parcels, the winery received outstanding reviews from The Wine Spectator, Robert Parker Jr., and Antonio Galloni, among others.
Elton Slone and the Robert Craig Winery team continue to honor Bob’s founding principles of producing small-lot, site-expressive wines from high-elevation vineyards with shallow soils. Elton became a full partner in 2007 and, following Bob’s retirement and departure from the wine business in 2012, has continued to lead the winery forward with the other three founding partners: Michael Adams, Derek Ruston, and Michael Nugent.
