Daou: behind this Paso Robles estate, plus 11 tasting notes

The land on which Georges and Daniel Daou’s eponymous estate sits has always been highly regarded. However, under their guardianship its true potential has been released, today the source of critically acclaimed wines.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 11 wines from Daou and Patrimony Estate

The 2020 vintage marks the 10th anniversary of Soul of a Lion, the crown jewel in Daou’s portfolio. The wine (about $150 a bottle) is released annually on 11 February, the wedding anniversary of the brothers’ parents, Joseph and Marie, and is a tribute to their father.

Soul of a Lion is made exclusively with estate fruit. The 2020 blend is 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Cabernet Franc and 6% Petit Verdot. French, pink-wood barrel staves are seasoned for five years prior to coopering.

It’s a rigorous selection process as they only use wood with extremely fine grain – less than one millimetre. The wine then spends two years in barrel, plus further bottle ageing before release.

‘When you drink Soul of a Lion, even though it’s aged in 100% new French oak for 22 months, you barely taste the oak. You taste the effect of the wood; the nuance: vanilla, coffee, tobacco and cigar box,’ suggests winemaker Daniel.

The brothers are also responsible for Patrimony Estate which, at $275 a bottle, is a premium extension of Daou, made from small, dedicated blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

The brothers have also just purchased land in the Val d’Orcia region of Tuscany.

An upbringing of contrasts

Growing up in Lebanon, a country between continents and cultures, they had a good life. Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, with art and music flourishing around them.

In 1973, when Georges was 12 and Daniel was eight, they were playing on the sidewalk in front of the family home. Their mother called them in for breakfast just as a missile hit the sidewalk. It was a day of heavy fighting around Beirut between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian militias – one of the many conflicts in the lead-up to the Lebanese Civil War.

Georges was in a coma for 48 hours and in the hospital for two months. Both brothers had shrapnel throughout their bodies and Daniel walked away with partial facial paralysis.

In 1975 the family fled. As Marie was born in Guadeloupe, an archipelago of French-owned islands in the Caribbean, they were allowed to settle in France as refugees.

New beginnings

In France, their father enjoyed wine. One day, Joseph came home with excitement because he’d gotten a deal on Cheval Blanc. Georges remembers his dad carrying the bottle with such reverence.

Joseph wanted to water the wine down for 15-year-old Daniel, but Daniel wanted to enjoy it as it was – his wine journey had begun. Daniel had thoughts of making wine, but as a Middle Eastern immigrant in the 1970s, this dream felt unrealistic.

Georges went to the US at 18 years old. He attended the University of California at San Diego and studied engineering. During that time, he sent Daniel a computer he’d built. Daniel became enthralled. He took it apart and put it back together. Not long thereafter, Daniel came to the US and also enrolled in UCSD.

A call from their father in France changed everything. The family was almost out of money and asked them to come home.

The brothers had a counter offer. They asked their family to come to the US and give them half of the money left. They promised that they would try to make more from it.

It was a gutsy move, but as Georges says: ‘As a 12-year-old boy, I literally stared death right in the face. I’m not afraid of anything.’ Risk-taking has been a part of the brothers’ DNA since that shared trauma.

The transatlantic move

Their parents took the risk. Seven people crammed to live in their San Diego condo. Daniel built an intranet system in the living room while Georges sold this system to hospitals, creating networking solutions. In 1997, before going public, Daou Systems had a value of $700 million.

Daniel realised his dream and started winemaking in their garage, but he wanted to do more. He sought out regions with calcareous clay and limestone subsoils.

Paso Robles came up in the search. In addition to the desired soils, Paso has one of the highest diurnal swings of any California AVA sometimes up to 10°C.

On visiting Paso Robles, Daniel discovered Hoffman Mountain Ranch which sits at 670m, 23km from the ocean. Now called Daou Mountain, legendary winemaker André Tchelistcheff had described it as a ‘jewel of ecological elements’.

In 2007, the brothers stated they would make world-class Cabernet and Bordeaux wines from Paso’s Adelaida District and founded Daou. It was a bold statement.

Their wines consistently receive high praises from critics and Wine Business Monthly ranks them as one of the 50 largest US wineries US by case sales.

Their initial motto was ‘live the dream, come to Paso’. Georges now adds another: ‘a high tide floats all boats’. They aim to elevate the region and helped found the Paso Robles Cab Collective which aims to drive the message that premium Cabernet Sauvignon and other Bordeaux varieties can thrive here.

The Daou brothers keep a firm footing in the past to honour their experiences, culture and family history. ‘We come from a place where we value tradition – millennia of tradition,’ says Georges. ‘If we cannot respect the past, we cannot respect the future.’

Soul of a Lion and more: 11 wines from Daou and Patrimony Estate

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