Tom Rinaldi

Tom Rinaldi was a Napa Valley winemaker whose career stretched across roughly fifty harvests, from the dusty start-up years of modern boutique Napa to a late-career boutique label of his own. He is best remembered as the founding winemaker of Duckhorn Vineyards, where the 1978 Three Palms Vineyard Merlot helped convince American drinkers that Merlot could stand alone as a serious wine, not only a blending grape. This page is for that winemaker. It is not a page for the ESPN and Fox Sports journalist also named Tom Rinaldi. Those are different people. No Wikipedia biography of the winemaker was found as of September 2026, and the journalist's Wikipedia page is not used here.

He was born in 1949 in San Francisco, the middle of three sons. The exact day of his birth has not been published, and this profile does not treat 1 January as his birthday. His father and paternal grandmother were San Francisco-born. His mother was conceived in Sicily and born in Brooklyn, a Dodgers fan in a Giants household. Given names of his parents and brothers have not been published in the sources used here, and none are invented. He attended St. Ignatius High School, played football on a city championship team, and came of age amid Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love. As a teenager he rode a motorcycle into Napa, tasted at Beaulieu, Martini, Krug, and Christian Brothers, and once bought Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour for about three dollars a bottle. Summers took the family to a place in Boyes Hot Springs. Jug wine was on the table at home.

Uncomfortable with the hard-drug drift around him, and not ready for college or a desk job, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17, in 1967. He trained as an aircrewman, attempted SEAL training until a foot infection ended that path, then flew typhoon-tracking missions from Guam in an EC-121. He later described thirty penetrations into real typhoons and ground work tied to Vietnam, including time with the 101st Airborne. He dated a first Vietnam deployment to April 1969. He later returned to Vietnam with his wife for a 50th-anniversary trip that he called a memory cleanser. Napa Valley Register profiles place the Navy years at roughly 1967 to 1971.

Using the G.I. Bill he studied at Santa Rosa Junior College, then UC Davis, on a fermentation science path that included malting and brewing with Dr. Lewis, then viticulture and enology. He sat in a celebrated mid-1970s cohort that included Tim Mondavi, Mike Martini, Cathy Corison, Randy Dunn, and Bob Levy. He took Maynard Amerine's last class and Ann Noble's first. He had planned medicine or veterinary school. He later said he had met a lot of miserable doctors and a lot of happy winemakers, and he never applied.

His first Napa harvest was 1976, as a Freemark Abbey intern under Jerry Luper, with Brad Webb among mentors. He worked the lab and cellar at Rutherford Hill with Phil Baxter, then became founding winemaker at Round Hill for Ernie Van Asperen, blending bulk lots as an early negociant-style house. In June 1978 friends including Ric Forman recommended him to Dan Duckhorn. Rinaldi rode up on his motorcycle while Duckhorn worked in the trees and was hired on the spot. Margaret Duckhorn later recalled that he looked like a flower child.

At Duckhorn he helped craft the first Three Palms Merlot. Forman had steered them to the rocky Calistoga vineyard. Merlot was still mostly a blender. Rinaldi later admitted he put about 15 percent Howell Mountain Cabernet into that first Merlot and ran afoul of labeling rules, a one-time BATF allowance. Duckhorn lore also records a kitchen-table argument. Rinaldi urged a single Cabernet-Merlot cuvee. Dan and Margaret insisted Merlot stand alone. They priced it with serious Cabernets. The wine took off. A 1979 disaster vintage pushed the house further toward Merlot. Over 22 vintages (sources variously say he left in 1999 or 2000) Duckhorn grew into a multi-brand company. Colleagues remembered him as meticulous about quality, barrels, and second labels such as Decoy.

Around age 50 he left to get back in the driver's seat. In a 2003 Chronicle interview later quoted by the New York Post, he said he felt Duckhorn was in a steady state, that he was not creating anything new, and that three good winemakers worked under him. Turning 50, he said, put him in a different frame of mind. He became founding winemaker for Hewitt Vineyard and Provenance Vineyards (Chalone, later Diageo), working Beckstoffer fruit and building Provenance's home at the former Beaucanon facility by August 2002. His 2010 Hewitt Cabernet Sauvignon landed in Wine Spectator's global Top 10, often cited as about No. 4 worldwide and a top California Cabernet for that list year. He left Provenance and Hewitt around November 2014, then moved into consulting: Pellet Estate, Teaderman in Oakville, Ambassador Wines in Washington, Stout Family, and international seminars. Places he made or spoke about wine included China, Russia, and Bulgaria.

With Eric Risch he launched Patent Wine Co., also discussed earlier under the working name Double Plus, after his barrel chalk marks: check, plus, double-plus, and X. Patent wines are made at Madrigal Family Winery in Calistoga from site-specific Napa fruit. A Napa Valley wine site cites an establishment around 2019. Rinaldi remained the hands-on blender. He was known for Hawaiian shirts, cargo shorts, a thick beard, bocce at Crane Park, harvest notes for the St. Helena Star, and obsessive cycling, including multiple Death Rides and a full-moon overnight ride toward Tahoe. A 2023 Scale Wine Group note placed him near a 48th vintage. By 2025 he and partners were talking about a 50th Napa harvest season. He told Napa Valley Focus that the valley was like an artist's palette, and that each season's fruit had to be read rather than forced into a formula.

He married Beverly Kinney on Mother's Day 1981 after meeting her in Calistoga wine circles. They later reconnected at an oenology event in Las Vegas. Beverly, a former teacher at Robert Louis Stevenson School in St. Helena, died in August 2024 after 43 years of marriage. They raised daughter Angelina, later Angelina Bigelow. He is survived by Angelina and six grandchildren. Individual names of the grandchildren have not been published in the sources used here.

In early September 2026 he died peacefully in his sleep at 77. The death was unexpected. His daughter Angelina Bigelow told the San Francisco Chronicle, in reporting published by the New York Post on 8 September 2026, that he had died this past weekend. That framing points to the weekend of about 5 and 6 September 2026. The exact calendar day was not stated, and this profile does not pick 5 September or 6 September as a confirmed date. The place of death was not made public. A more specific medical cause than dying peacefully in his sleep has not been made public. Resting place and funeral details had not been announced in the sources reviewed as of 9 September 2026. He had been reviewing the final chapter of a biography in progress. Doug Shafer told the Chronicle that Rinaldi put Merlot on the map in the modern era, and that he was generous with his time and advice. Angelina Bigelow said he was charismatic, a people person, and that he led a beautiful life and did everything he wanted to do. Net worth is not published in the sources used here, and none is stated.