How Memento Mori’s Philosophy Shapes Its Winemaking
In Napa Valley, access and advantage usually belong to legacy families and global corporations. Vineyard land is scarce, and prices have climbed accordingly. So, when Memento Mori’s three founders with no wine background, a winemaker who grew up making homemade wine in Oklahoma, and a once-private art estate in Calistoga, converged—and with their winemaker going on to earn three separate 100-point wines in a single vintage—it felt less like a business plan and more like a case study in daring and manifestation.
In November, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW of The Wine Palate awarded 100-point scores to three wines crafted by winemaker Sam Kaplan—one for Memento Mori, and two for other labels he oversees: 2023 Memento Mori Vine Hill Ranch Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, 2023 Vida Valiente The Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2023 Arkenstone Estate Red Blend. For two of those labels—Vida Valiente and Arkenstone—it was their first perfect score.
Behind those numbers is a story about what can still happen in Napa if you’re willing to go all in—and the stars actually align.
Memento Mori: The “Remember You Will Die” Mindset
Memento Mori was born from a near-death moment. Founders Adriel Lares, Hayes Drumwright, and Adam Craun grew up together; Hayes was diagnosed with cancer young and, at one point, told he might not survive. Surgery and treatment cleared him, but the experience rewired his sense of time.
He chose the phrase memento mori—Latin for “remember you will die”—as a reminder to live aggressively in the present, not morbidly but with clarity about what matters. That philosophy eventually shaped their decision to jump into wine.
When they decided to launch a Napa label, they didn’t have an estate or vineyards. What they had were relationships, curiosity, and a willingness to look slightly unreasonable.
“I think in the end what they liked is that I wasn’t telling [them] what they wanted to hear,” Kaplan recalls of his first meeting with the three founders.
“They are risk takers. They’re entrepreneurs. They trust their gut and instinct and [they’re] good people.”Sam Kaplan, speaking about Memento Mori’s three founders.
He wasn’t a consulting brand name at the top of everyone’s list at the time. He was a young winemaker at Arkenstone whose wines they loved and whose bluntness made him stand out. Choosing him was the first in a series of gut-level, “why not?” decisions.
Sam Kaplan’s Journey From Oklahoma Garage Wine To Napa’s Inner Circle
Kaplan’s own origin story has the same improbable energy. He was born in Boston, then raised on a small farm at the edge of a reservation in Edmond, Oklahoma. His father, a pediatrician and early organic advocate, planted French-hybrid vines and made wine in the garage with other East Coast transplants.
“Every year until like 4th grade, I was making wine with my dad, you know, getting dirty, pressing, stomping on grapes,” he says. Wine was always at the family table, poured for him in small amounts with meals. It wasn’t glamorous; it was just part of life.
Later, in Oregon, he brewed beer, grew a massive vegetable garden, and met his first wine mentor. A harvest job in Napa—originally just a “see if you like it” season—changed everything.
“My first day on site, that was it. I’d never been as happy in my life.”Memento Mori Winemaker Sam Kaplan
Kaplan built a career making site-driven, age-worthy wines that favor lift over sheer power. “My style has always been from the beginning much more sort of higher tone, brighter acidity, floral, uplifting notes,” he explains. “I like freshness and acidity. I think wine is meant to be [enjoyed] with food.”
Memento Mori gave him access to top vineyards and a founding team willing to prioritize quality over yield.
He still laughs about presenting the first flagship blend to the partners. Out of 13 barrels, the wine he believed in used only five.
“They’re tasting and they’re just… like, ‘Oh, my God. This one is insane. I love it,’” he says. When he confessed it would mean discarding most of the vintage, their response surprised him: “They looked at me and they’re like, ‘Oh, we don’t care.’”
“From that moment, they really sort of instilled in me this… trust and really this freedom to do whatever I needed to do to make the best [wine] possible.”
Landing The Unicorn—The Memento Mori Estate
For years, Memento Mori operated the way many small luxury Napa brands do: buying fruit from blue-chip sites, pouring in a modest venue, and sometimes selling wine out of the trunk of a car.
They could not have planned what happened next.
In 2022, a 17-acre estate at the base of Diamond Mountain quietly came onto the market: Stonescape, the former home of Norman and Norah Stone, two of San Francisco’s most influential contemporary art collectors.
The property was one-of-a-kind even by Napa standards—a historic 1880s farmhouse, terraced vines, and, most remarkably, an underground art cave and a reflective pool crowned by a James Turrell
light installation, “Stone Sky,” a white cube that reflects light.
Those game to swim underwater to the center of the cube are rewarded with an ethereal, light-filled view through its Pantheon-like opening to the sky, an architectural memento mori—something built years before the first bottle of Memento Mori existed.
After both Stones passed away during the pandemic, the estate changed hands. Kaplan saw it and knew instantly that it was the kind of chance that almost never appears in modern Napa.
He urged the founders to move, fast.
From the outside, it wasn’t an obvious or safe decision. They were still a relatively young brand, but it fit their history of betting big when the right door opened: the cancer-tempered decision to live boldly, the early meeting with vineyard titan Andy Beckstoffer that secured them coveted fruit, the choice to hire an up-and-coming winemaker because they believed in his palate.
The Calistoga estate was a place where serious art, serious agriculture, and a slightly renegade entrepreneurial energy could coexist.
Why Memento Mori Is A Different Kind Of Napa Success Story
Kaplan’s 100-point streak wasn’t just a personal triumph—it was validation of the founders’ earliest, most audacious instinct about Kaplan and his approach.
“The founders just want wine that tastes the best that it can, and leave the ego out of it,” Kaplan says. That attitude, he admits, is “kind of wild” in a region where site names and scarcity usually anchor the story.
From the beginning, he believed in blending fearlessly—using only what elevated the wine, even if that meant discarding most of a vintage. Memento Mori’s flagship wine has always been a blend of elite sites, a deliberate inversion of Napa’s single-vineyard prestige model.
While most wineries treat Beckstoffer sites and other grand cru–equivalent vineyards as sacred, standalone trophies, Memento Mori blends them—now including fruit from its own estate—into a single cuvée.
The goal isn’t to showcase one parcel but to make the most complete wine possible.
There’s a through-line from Hayes’s cancer recovery to the Stones’ art estate to a Calistoga winery with a Turrell piece above the pool: these are people who treat time as precious capital.
Memento Mori’s story is not a template—most aspiring Napa producers won’t stumble into a former world-class art compound. But it does illustrate what can still happen when you combine audacity and gratitude with the right partners.
Kaplan sums it up like someone who still remembers making wine barefoot in a hot Oklahoma garage.
“I try to keep my head down, just keep going, just try to keep making great wines,” he says.
Memento Mori’s improbable rise—and now, a winemaker with a 100-point trifecta across three labels—suggests that there is still room for long-shot stories in Napa. You just have to be willing to risk the barrels, chase the unicorn estate when it appears, and surround yourself with people who think “remember you will die” is an excellent reason to build something that might last.
