Daou Vineyards from Terror in Lebanon to Triumph in France and California

An engineered wine sounds terrible. But what if it has the soul of a lion? That, in a nutshell, is exactly what Daou Vineyards wine is: a meticulously crafted wine, one built with exacting precision from the number of vines planted per acre to the fine-grained oak barrels made from wood, often hand-selected by co-owner and vigneron Daniel Daou in French forests. Daniel manages the wine growing and making; his brother Georges, the proprietor, is in charge of the business of selling and marketing not just the wine, but the Daou experience. But the brothers infuse the wine, and the winery, with a kind of cultural terroir, drawn from tragedy, deep love and cross-continental emigration.

“This terroir in Paso is part of our destiny,” Daniel says, gesturing around the 200 acres of grapes under vine up and down the Adelaida Hills surrounding the property. “This place here was just dirt when we arrived, there was no water, no electricity and it didn’t even appear on Google maps.” Since their first vintage in 2010, Daou’s wines have been enrapturing critics, serious collectors and casual wine drinkers—a rare achievement in the 21st century. Daou’s single-varietal and Bordeaux blends are as poised, polished and pricey as they sound—they should be like a dozen other $100+ bottles of California red, capable of delighting and impressing. But Daou’s offer something more: something closer to, and as difficult to define as transcendence. Drinking a glass of Daou’s Soul of a Lion or Mayote is an uncommonly profound experience—especially at the winery perched at 2,200 feet of elevation in the Adelaida Hills of Paso Robles.

“There’s a lot of laughter, and a lot of crying here,” Maeve Pesquera, Daou’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, says. “There’s something about the place, the spirit Daniel and Georges bring to Daou, the history of the estate, the story of their family and the polish of the wines they have worked so hard to perfect. The experience of tasting wine, usually a straight-forward thing, often turns into something more emotional and cathartic for people who come here.”

Daou Origins

The brothers and Maeve point to one story from Daniel and Georges’ childhood as setting the stage for their personal and professional odyssey. “In 1973, the first rocket that hit Lebanon in the civil war hit the Daou house,” she explains. “Georges was 12, and Daniel was 8. Both boys, their father and their sister were almost killed. The boys were hit with shrapnel that they still carry with them today. Georges was in a coma. They almost died. But the experience bonded them in a way that is almost indescribable. It’s a deep trauma bond, but also a bond of incredible resilience.”

After the family recovered enough to flee, they emigrated to France, the birthplace of their mother. The boys were brought up steeped in French culture, and were fluent in French, so while the transition while not easy, was manageable. His father, Joseph, launched a successful factory business, and his mother, Marie, focused on healing the family’s psychological wounds from the war, cementing their ties to their homeland in Lebanon, but also introducing them to the wonders of la belle vie.

“I caught the wine bug in France,” Daniel admits, confessing that he embraced the cultural practice of serving young teenagers small sips of wine with meals with great aplomb. While most teenagers had other concerns on their mind, Daniel began immersing himself in the intricacies of Bordeaux classifications.

But as with many immigrants, education and career took precedence over passion. Georges was accepted to several California colleges, but ultimately chose University of California San Diego, where he studied engineering. He sent Daniel a computer as a gift, and Daniel became fascinated with the machine, taking it apart, and rebuilding it. He followed Georges to University of California San Diego, and also studied engineering.

While Georges was earning his PhD and Daniel was an undergraduate, they got a frantic call from home. “Their father lost their business, and he told them he could no longer fund their education,” Maeve says. “He told them to come home. The brothers hung up, discussed their options, and quickly called their parents back.” Daniel and Georges asked them to sell what they could, pack up, and bring themselves, their sister, her two children and their last $50,000 to Berkeley. The brothers had been working on a business plan for months, and this crisis proved to be the impetus that launched it.

“With the entire family living in that tiny apartment, Daniel used that money to build out an intranet and computer networking system for hospitals,” Maeve says. “They sold it to their first hospital client in office space they rented for a day, asking their friends from college to come in and pose as office workers.” The audacious gamble paid off. Ten years later, in 1997, Daou Systems was sold and they retired—very comfortably—at the ripe old ages of 36 and 32, respectively. Which is when Daniel began making wine in his garage at home, and dreaming of finally living the life he wanted, making wine and spending time with his brother, wife and five children. For 10 years, he searched for the perfect place to plant a vineyard. Would it be Bordeaux? Tuscany? Argentina? Napa? He looked in all of those places.

The Terroir

“I searched the globe, but ended up finding a place close to home,” Daniel says. “When I called Georges and told him I found the perfect place, he said, ‘Where’s Paso Robles? Texas?’” He wasn’t alone. After a decade-long search, Daniel stumbled on what he identified as a perfect place to put down roots—a forgotten place, but one with a fascinating role in California’s wine history.

The 600-acre ranch is part of a historic 1,200 ranch originally owned by Dr. Stanley Hoffman, who recruited legendary enologist André Tchelistcheff to help him identify the perfect grapes (French varietals, including Cabernet Sauvignon) to plant in this unique pocket of terroir in the 1960s. The Hoffmans had to give the ranch up after running into financial difficulties in the 1980s. “They were pioneers and visionaries, and maybe 30 years ahead of their time,” notes Maeve. Between the Hoffman’s leave-taking and Daou’s arrival, the land was untouched. But Daniel could visualize what it was capable of producing.

“The soil here in this small corner of Paso is unique,” Daniel says. “It is clay-based, with an underlying layer of calcareous soil. Very similar to Bordeaux, a region I very much admire. Clay is common in wine regions across California, but they don’t have the calcareous soils underneath. That’s the key, because it adds a sense of minerality, which is missing from many of the jammier California wines.”

There is a near-constant breeze blowing through the Templeton Gap from the Pacific Ocean, which is about 14 miles away, bringing relief from the temperatures that are on average, about 5-7 degrees higher than Bordeaux during the growing season. The constant wind also blows off disease pressure, another key element in Daniel and Georges’ vision.

The Farming

He hand-planted much of the vineyards himself, at a much higher density (about 2,600 vines per acre, as opposed to the 600 or so that is standard), with the goal of making the vines “struggle to grow, which adds complexity,” he says. It also allows them to green-harvest, or drop fruit during the growing season. Daniel and Georges decided that the terroir called for Bordeaux varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Today, they produce a range of single-varietal and classic Bordeaux blends, in addition to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, rosé and many others.

“We want everything that is done here to be in harmony with the earth,” Daniel says. “Everything is about natural balance. We are in the process of certifying these 200 acres under vine as organic, and we just put an additional 170 acres under vine that will also be certified organic.” The brothers own 900 acres now, all within the Adelaida Hills, possibly the “best terroir in California,” Daniel says.

Daniel has experimented with a number of other farming techniques that leave many scratching their heads. “Daniel didn’t go to Davis,” Maeve says, referring to University of California Davis, the Harvard of wine schools. “He was not trained by anyone else. He is an engineer, and a wine lover with an exceptional palate, and his brilliant mind sees things that others who are constrained by their formal education would never see.”

Noting the perils of climate change—and watching his grapes suffer through the incredible heatwaves in 2017—he began using shade cloth to shield the Bordeaux varieties from sunburn, a strategy he says originated in Israel. Daniel also began deploying an organic product called BluVite, which activates soil microorganisms and strengthens vines and began delivering “microbursts” of water during the most vertiginous heat spikes in August.

“This tri-pronged approach allows me to grow perfectly balanced grapes,” Daniel says. All of the harvesting is done manually, at night, to lock in flavor.

The Winemaking

Post-harvest, the grapes are fermented with a very particular native yeast. “I wanted the best of both worlds,” Daniel says. “I wanted to bring in the terroir and complexity that only wild yeast can bring, but I also wanted the consistency that manufactured yeasts bring. So I found 100 native yeasts from our vineyards and sent them to Enartis in Italy, where they were cultivated.”

The lab was so impressed with one yeast in particular—dubbed D20—that they asked if they could share it with other wineries. “We were happy to share the yeast with other wineries,” says Georges. “It is a phenomenal yeast, especially for red wines, and we like the idea of sharing a bit of our Paso terroir with winemakers across the world. But we also see it as an opportunity to share the name of Daou, and the region of Paso Robles, with other winemakers in South Africa, France, Italy and New Zealand. It’s quite possible that many of them had never heard of Paso Robles until they started using our yeast. Winemakers in thirty-five countries use it now. I could never have imagined the reach we’d have when we got started.”

Daou has also been working feverishly with Enartis to cultivate an equally excellent native yeast for their whites. Stay tuned for the official commercial rollout of D12, which, Daniel hopes, will be as successful for other winemakers as D20.

It would be hard to overestimate the impact that Daou has had in just 15 years, starting with the winery’s inaugural release. In its debut vintage—2010—25 of the 29 wines they released received scores of 95 or above from the likes of Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator. “We felt like every decision we made in our lives, that our parents made, led up to that moment,” Daniel says. “It was incredible. Winemakers spend their entire lives trying to achieve a score of 95 and we did it right out of the gate, in a relatively unknown region.”

It was a personal victory, Daniel says, but also a regional win. “Paso was overlooked for decades,” Daniel says. “We have been working with other winemakers on initiatives like the Paso Robles Cab Collective to show how much potential the region has for making world-class wines.” And with a winemaker without formal training at the helm, and his brother, a newbie to the wine industry, running the business side.

The Soul

Their work, the brothers say, is far from over, despite the fact that they continue to receive accolades for their premium wine, and their new line of Discovery wines, available at grocery stores and $30 or less. “We want everyone to be able to enjoy our wines,” Daniel says. “We also want to bring new wine lovers to the table.”

They want to do a lot of things: create an environmentally friendly harmonious wine, democratize an industry often seen as elitist, help lift up a region that they feel—still!—hasn’t gotten its due. But really what it boils down to—the other laudable objectives notwithstanding—is a deep desire to honor the legacy of their mother and father. That legacy is most visible in their two flagship wines: Soul of a Lion, in honor of Joseph, and Mayote, to honor their mother, Marie. “We call Soul of a Lion a dream fulfilled,” Daniel says. “It represents everything our father stood for. When life knocks you down—and it will—you get back up roaring and fighting like a lion.” Soul of a Lion, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, retails for around $150 and has consistently won 96+ points from the major critics. It has also outsold every other—save Opus One—luxury California red for three years running.

But more than anything, their parents’ influence can be felt in the brothers’ vision, determination and character. In their dream, fulfilled. “Until we created Daou Vineyards, we were grateful, but we weren’t happy,” Georges says. “We were successful beyond our wildest dreams. We, in many ways, were the living embodiment of the American Dream. But we weren’t happy. Now we’re happy, and we’re fulfilled.”

The Daou’s journey is especially poignant now, when another great nation and its people are being brutalized in a violent war. We can only hope that stories of bravery, determination and resilience will continue to pour out of Ukraine, and that the victims, in the years to come, will roar as fiercely and successfully as Georges and Daniel.