The Next Chapter

A Letter from Alex Biale

I moved back to Napa in November 2025 with my wife and our daughter, who just turned one.

I want to be honest about what that decision looked like from the inside. I had built a career outside of the wine industry. I had a life that was working. Coming back was not the obvious move, and it was not without cost. But at some point, the question stopped being “should I go back?” and started being “what kind of person do I want to be?”

This is also our 35th year of “legal” winemaking. I put legal in quotes because the Biale story did not begin in 1991. It began decades earlier, when my great-grandfather Pietro made wine quietly and without fanfare, selling jugs out the back door of the family farmhouse in the heart of Napa. Humble, practical, and rooted in something deeper than commerce. It was about farming, family, and pride in what this valley could produce. My grandfather Aldo kept those vines alive through Prohibition, through hard years, through every reason a reasonable person might have walked away. My father Robert built a brand around those vines that earned a reputation I am genuinely humbled by. Each of them made a decision, at some point, to take on more than was required of them. To prioritize something larger than their own comfort.

I grew up in these vineyards. I was farming alongside Aldo and my dad by the time I was seven years old. I know what this land looks like at five in the morning and what it asks of the people who tend it. I left for a while. I learned things I needed to learn. And then I came back because I could not look at what three generations of my family had built and decide that my contribution would be to let someone else carry it.

I also came back with clear eyes about what the industry is facing. There is no point pretending otherwise. Consumers are drinking less. Some good wineries — historic wineries — have closed. Vineyard land is being pulled out. The headlines are not subtle. Napa is not immune. For those of us who have dedicated our lives to this valley, that is sobering.

But I think difficulty forces the right questions. Why are we here? What are we protecting? What actually matters?

For us the answers have not changed. We farm old vine Zinfandel and Petite Sirah in Napa Valley. These are not the easiest commercial path. They never have been. The vines are labor-intensive, head-trained, often dry-farmed. Yields are small. But they produce wines that speak honestly of place, and they are woven into the history of this valley in ways that predate Cabernet Sauvignon’s rise to prominence. When market pressure rises, the temptation is to pivot toward what is fashionable. We are not doing that. Legacy does not survive if every generation chases trends.

We are not selling. We are not pivoting. We are doubling down.

I did not want our 35th year to pass quietly — not because anniversaries demand celebration, but because this one coincides with something real. A family making a choice, again, to step up. The same choice Pietro made, the same one Aldo made, the same one my father made. I am aware of the weight of that, and I do not take it lightly.

You are hearing this before anyone else because your relationship with Biale is not a transaction to us. You kept heritage varieties alive. You sustained vineyards that might otherwise have disappeared. You made it possible for there to be something worth coming back to. Whether you have been with us for one vintage or all thirty-five, that matters to us more than I can adequately express here.

Thank you for being here. I look forward to seeing you on the back porch.