Groth Vineyards Reserve Marker

Oakville, California

While working on plans for a new visitor arrival and an insectary garden at their winery on the Oakville Cross Road, owners Judy and Dennis Groth asked ROCHE+ROCHE if they could design a marker for the 28-acre Reserve Vineyard along Conn Creek, birthplace of their Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  The Groth’s inspiration was a marker they had seen on visits to the Burgundy region at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a world-renown producer of fine Pinot-noir. Visitors often have their photo taken with the marker as evidence of their pilgrimage to Romanée-Conti.

For the Groth marker, we selected paired slabs of pink granite, in keeping with the pale pink hue of the winery’s Mission Revival buildings, embracing a 12” diameter cast-bronze version of the Goth ‘double G’ logo. The stone planks would carry vertically stacked lettering spelling out ‘Groth Reserve’. For the granite work, we enlisted brothers Dave and Steve Simich of Napa Granite & Marble Works, who cut and finished the marble planks before water etching the lettering. For the bronze logo work, Santa Rosa artist Virginia Harrison created a wood and wax original, which was then cast in bronze. The whole team assembled the piece at Napa Granite’s workshop before installing the piece at the vineyard.

As at Romanée-Conti, the Groth Reserve marker has become a location of choice for visitors to Groth to have their photo taken. And in an ‘art-imitates-life’ moment, the Reserve Vineyard and its marker recently became the subject of one of artist Suzanne Groth’s series of original paintings celebrating the annual Reserve Cabernet release.

 

Granite:  Napa Granite & Marble Works

Bronze:  Virginia Harrison