A real-estate agent, an old vineyard and one small block.

Screaming Eagle is a small wine estate in Oakville, in California’s Napa Valley. It began with Jean Phillips, who had worked in Napa Valley real estate and had no winemaking background, according to Club Oenologique in 2019. In 1986 she bought a vineyard of about 60 acres in Oakville — Wine Spectator gave 60 acres in 2006; English Wikipedia gives 57. Club Oenologique says the site had been planted since at least the 1940s with a mix of grape varieties, and that Phillips replanted around 50 acres to Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

For her first years she sold most of the fruit to other Napa wineries. She learned the vineyard by making wine at home, Club Oenologique says, and in 1992 she made a Cabernet from one small block and named it Screaming Eagle, Wine Spectator reported in 2006. That first commercial wine was made with the winemaker Heidi Peterson Barrett and with Gustav Dalla Valle, according to Club Oenologique; English Wikipedia, citing Wine Spectator in 2000, says Phillips met Barrett through her father, the winemaker Richard Peterson. The wine became an overnight sensation and helped launch a new era of cult Cabernets, Wine Spectator wrote in 2006. Output stayed tiny — roughly 500 cases a vintage, Wine Spectator said in 2006 — and the wine was made in a small stone winery on the property.

The name invites confusion. “Screaming Eagles” is also the long-standing nickname of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division; this guide is about the Oakville winery only.

A letter, a sale and a sole proprietor.

In March 2006 Phillips sold the estate. Wine Spectator reported on 21 March 2006 that the buyers were Charles Banks, a San Francisco investment manager, and Stanley Kroenke, a real-estate developer and sports-team owner, and that the deal had closed the week before. Phillips announced it in a handwritten letter postmarked 17 March, which the magazine quoted: “I have sold my beautiful ranch with my precious little winery.” She wrote that the property needed a major redevelopment of winery, house and vineyard, which she had already begun.

The new owners kept the scale small and rebuilt around it. Leafroll virus in parts of the vineyard meant extensive replanting, Club Oenologique says; Wine Spectator reported in 2006 that the vineyard manager David Abreu had been hired to oversee it and that the buyers planned a new gravity-flow winery incorporating the existing building. The owners hired Andy Erickson as winemaker, with the French consultant Michel Rolland, according to Club Oenologique.

On 9 April 2009 Wine Spectator reported that Banks had left both Screaming Eagle and Jonata, the Santa Barbara County winery the two men also shared, and that Kroenke was now sole proprietor of both. Erickson stayed on as winemaker, with Annie Favia and David Abreu as vineyard managers, the magazine said, and a new Screaming Eagle winery in Oakville was then under construction. Club Oenologique says Erickson hired Nick Gislason as his assistant in 2010 and left after that season, and that Gislason has led the winemaking since the 2011 vintage.

The seven brands in this group are all Napa and California wineries: Opus One, Silver Oak, Ridge Vineyards, Shafer, Screaming Eagle, Joseph Phelps and Heitz Cellar. Wineries in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family estates that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger owners, and a single wine can be sold everywhere from a winery’s own tasting room to a restaurant list.

A winery’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, bought or sold vineyards or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its grapes are grown and its wine is made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, its vineyards and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One estate, a waiting list and a family of sister wineries.

The range is short. Besides the Cabernet Sauvignon there is a Merlot-based red first made in 2006 under the name Second Flight and renamed The Flight in 2015, Club Oenologique says, so that it would read as a sister wine rather than a second tier. The same report says a very small amount of Sauvignon Blanc — about 50 cases in 2012 — has been made but is not sold commercially.

The wine is made in Oakville: the owners built a new winery on the property, Club Oenologique says, and Wine Spectator reported it under construction in 2009. The company’s FAQ page says the property “cannot accommodate tours,” that there are no tastings, and that it produces “an extremely small quantity of wine”; buyers join a waiting list and are contacted only once they move onto the active list, for which the company gives no firm timeframe. Most of the wine goes to collectors on that private list, Club Oenologique reported in 2019.

Screaming Eagle is now one estate within a wider group of wine properties owned by Kroenke. In January 2017 Wine Spectator reported that he had bought a majority stake in Domaine Bonneau du Martray, a Corton-Charlemagne grower in Burgundy — his first winery outside the United States — and described him as the owner of Screaming Eagle, Jonata and The Hilt in California. The same report named Armand de Maigret as the manager of Kroenke’s wine properties. In 2026 the Screaming Eagle website links to The Hilt Estate, Jonata, Bonneau du Martray and Karolus Wine Imports under a “Discover” heading.

For a design guide, Screaming Eagle shows how a wine brand can build its presence on scarcity and restraint rather than on visits, tastings or a visible shop. Compare Opus One, another Oakville estate, and Robert Mondavi, the Oakville winery founded in 1966. For this guide we use plum, cream and an old gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Screaming Eagle’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.