Last week, we began something.
The response to our first Her Way conversation — with Carissa Mondavi of Continuum Estate — was a reminder of why we started this series in the first place. These stories matter. The women telling them matter. And the people listening, it turns out, are hungry for exactly this kind of conversation.
So we’re not waiting long to share the next one.
This week, we return to Napa. Same hillside, in a sense — the legendary stretch of Oakville that Robert Mondavi helped put on the map. But a different family. A different story. And in many ways, an even more unlikely one.
You may already know the name Dalla Valle. Or more specifically, you may know the wine. Maya — black glass, black label, a single word in red — is one of the most coveted bottles in the world. Cult status. Perfect scores. Multi-year waiting lists. The kind of wine that gets whispered about in the rooms where serious collectors gather.
What you may not know is the woman behind it.
Maya Dalla Valle grew up on that hillside above Oakville as the daughter of two immigrants who came to Napa with a dream that had nothing to do with cult wine. She lost her father at eight years old, watched her mother — alone, grieving, and still learning English — quietly refuse to walk away from everything they had built together. And then, years later, Maya herself went out into the world — Cornell, Tuscany, Argentina, Bordeaux, Château Latour, Pétrus — and came back home ready to earn her place in one of the most storied estates in American wine history.
This is a story about legacy. About what it means to carry a name — your own name — on the most important bottle your family makes. About stewardship, humility, and the particular kind of strength it takes to not change everything, when changing everything would have been so much easier.
Before you listen to the conversation, I want you to read what Kelsey wrote to accompany it. As she did with Carissa, Kelsey has given us the context we need to truly hear Maya’s story — tracing Napa’s rise from post-Judgment of Paris credibility to the cult wine era that would make estates like Dalla Valle into legends. It’s called “When Napa Became Cult.”
Read it slowly. It’s worth it.
The full audio version lives on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If this is the kind of storytelling you want more of, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
This summer, we’ll be releasing the full filmed episodes from Her Way — and every bit of support between now and then helps us keep making work like this possible.
