Discover gold for the second time with Lava Cap wine. People always ask, what is Lava Cap? “Lava Cap” is an old miners term denoting a hard, volcanic rock layer than locally overlies gold-bearing gravels. It weathers to a rare soil exceptionally well suited for growing fine wine grapes. We believe that this special volcanic soil imparts to our grapes intense flavors and aromas that are especially appealing, giving Lava Cap wines an outstanding and distinctive character.

Lava Cap’s 120 acres of vineyard are nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Placerville, California just below 3,000 feet in elevation. This mountain setting offers unique soil composition, elevation, slope, and sun exposure. Different grape varieties are carefully planted within this array of microenvironments to insure optimum growing conditions and the highest quality fruit flavors and complexity. First planted in 1981, our vines are now fully mature and offer the best in mountain grown wines.

We are pleased to offer you our limited reserve Stromberg Merlot and Stromberg Cabernet Sauvignon. Lava Cap is the exclusive producer of wines from the Stromberg-Carpenter vineyard. This vineyard is one of the Sierra Nevada’s highest; at 3,300’ the vines are dry farmed and carefully tended to produce low yields (less than one ton per acre). As a result the fruit has a great concentration of flavors, full body and marvelous varietal characteristic.