There are those special places in our lives - places that matter to us on an almost meta-physical level - where we feel at peace with the universe. For us, our vineyards always matter to us in this way. Sometimes you find these places, and sometimes they find you. The story of La Place vineyard is one of these stories. This vineyard found us, thanks to our good friend Jim Barbour, who had recently taken over farming of this tiny site - it's one acre, the size of a small town square or Place. The story begins with Dan Higgins and Maiya Shaw, who were living in Mill Valley, CA, looking for a place to escape the summer fog, and to be a retreat for the whole family, including their two young girls. The search took them to Sonoma, Yountville, Calistoga, and beyond. Finally, a visit to a small listing with one acre in vines caught their eye. They knew it would be an incredible amount of work and were not sure they were up for it, until they started to think about its location and the proximity to the vineyards whose wines they loved: across the street and down the road from a famous vineyard known for its palm trees, adjacent and contiguous to another notable high-scoring vineyard, just a stroll down the road from many legendary sites, all benefitting from being on an alluvial fan coming out of a steep, vertiginous, rocky canyon. The soils here were legendary, and maybe the wine could be as well? They started to dream and in turn, fall in love… Just as they were about to put in an offer, the property went into contract with another buyer. Luckily for Dan and Maiya, it fell out of escrow. Fast forward a few years. They hired Jim Barbour and his team to farm the vineyard, which led to our meeting to discuss buying the Cabernet Sauvignon they were growing.