The Tom Gamble Interview: The Napa Wine Parlay

Listen to the Podcast Interview Here

Tom Gamble isn’t the kind of winemaker who romanticizes the past—he lives in it, farms it, and builds on it. A third-generation Napa Valley farmer, Gamble still lives a mile from where he grew up. His mother still lives down the road in Oakville, and as he jokes, that might not sound like going very far in life, but it tells you everything about his roots.

“I guess you could say I haven’t gone far in my life,” he says. “If I still live next to my mother.”

Roots in the Ground, Not in the Spotlight

The Gamble family first arrived in Napa in 1916, just as Prohibition was looming. Tom’s grandfather had recently graduated from UC Davis—then known for agricultural engineering, not viticulture—and opted to focus on livestock and crops instead of a doomed wine industry. “He had to make a living,” Gamble says, “so he raised what paid—beef, hay, orchards. Wine grapes were a side note.”

And that’s the part most people forget: Napa wasn’t always wine country. It was hard-scrabble farmland for most of the 20th century, full of bootlegging sheriffs, failed vineyards, and stone wineries turned to dust. Tom Gamble’s family lived through all of that, not as winemaking royalty, but as grinders—working farmers who kept land alive through drought, hail, and market collapse.

From Grapes to Bottles

Gamble didn’t plant his flag as a winemaker right away. He started off growing grapes—like his father and grandfather before him—and did that for over 15 years before making his first commercial wine. But he was always curious. In the 1980s, he started tinkering in the garage with childhood friend Mark Aubert. “It was rocket fuel,” Gamble says of their early efforts with Petite Sirah, “but we didn’t give up.”

Eventually, he made the leap—not just for passion, but for survival. “It was about sustainability,” he says. “Selling grapes by the ton just didn’t pencil out long-term.” Transitioning to estate winemaking meant selling by the bottle, diversifying risk, and ensuring a future for the next generation. “We’re not just stewards of land,” he says. “We’re stewards of legacy.”

Today, Gamble Family Vineyards produces wines from Oakville, Rutherford, Mt. Veeder, and Yountville—mostly Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc, but with a few surprises. Petite Sirah still shows up, if only for sentimental reasons. And once upon a time, he even made Charbono—until it became a labor of love that lost him money.

“I love the grape,” he says. “But you’ve got to focus on what you can sell.”

No Glamour, Just Real Work

There’s no pretense in how Tom talks about wine. He laughs off the “old man and his dog in the vineyard” marketing trope that’s sold a lot of bad wine. “Sometimes it’s just one person doing all the work,” he says. “But the big companies slap that photo on a label and call it authenticity. That’s not what we do.”

Tom still walks his vineyards every day. He manages restoration projects along the Napa River. He knows his clones like a breeder knows bloodlines—Loire selections, old Wente cuttings, Bordeaux imports, even a few oddballs like Sauvignon Gris.

The Sauvignon Blanc he makes from his Riverbound Vineyard—tucked between two rivers in cooler Yountville—is a study in balance. Whole cluster pressed, barrel-fermented in European oak, no skin contact, no malolactic. It’s rich in texture but still linear in acid—more inspired by Loire than by the tropical Sauvignon caricatures of California’s past. “I wanted mouthfeel,” Gamble says. “But I didn’t want to mess up what the vineyard gives me.”

From Philippe Melka to the East Coast Hustle

Tom’s wines might be relatively unknown on the East Coast, but Napa insiders know the caliber. He’s grown fruit for Philippe Melka for over 25 years, starting with Lail Vineyards’ Sauvignon Blanc project before their Georgia Vineyard was ready. Melka is now Gamble’s consulting winemaker.

And yet, despite pedigree and partnerships, Gamble still hustles. Like many boutique Napa producers, he flies east, pours wine in Philly and D.C., and evangelizes one glass at a time. Because Napa may be where the grapes grow, but the East Coast is where the money flows.

“You have to have at least a foot in wholesale,” he says. “You can’t just live on direct-to-consumer. You’ve got to get in the right restaurants. Talk to the right somms. Build word of mouth.”

And that word of mouth brought him to Philadelphia—to chat with students, drink some Sauvignon Blanc, and share stories of Prohibition, Charbono, and compliance court in Missouri.

The Honest Grit of a Napa Vintner

Tom Gamble doesn’t try to impress you with marketing. He doesn’t talk about scores. He doesn’t call his wines “luxury.” He talks about fire risk, rootstocks, and the hell of getting licenses in 50 jurisdictions. He tells stories about his uncle using dynamite to clear stumps. About bootleggers and bankruptcies and picking grapes by hand at midnight.

And then he offers a taste of wine that—quietly, humbly—tells the story of a man who never left his land, who saw something beautiful in a bottle, and who had the guts to risk it all on dirt, grapes, and a dream.