WineInk: A meteoric rise

“I’m going to tell you a story that will amaze you …”

It is an introduction that vintner Daniel Daou uses often and then, seemingly without exception, delivers on the promise.

This past December it was the wine world that was amazed when Daniel and his brother Georges sold their eponymous winery, DAOU Vineyards, to the Australian wine concern Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) for a reported $1 billion. It was one of the largest transactions for a single winery in the history of wine and amazingly, to use that word again, it was for an estate based not in Napa or Bordeaux, but in Paso Robles, California, an emerging wine region but one still under the global radar. Perhaps not much longer.

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As I sat recently with Daniel on the patio of DAOU Mountain, the heart and soul of the property, he explained how the deal came together. “Georges and I had a dinner last August at The Little Nell with Tim and Ben (Tim Ford, CEO and Ben Dollard, President Americas) from Treasury. They loved our wines and they understood the value of what we do and got it. We felt very comfortable with partnering with them to help move our dream forward.” The Little Nell served as the venue for the momentous gathering as both Daniel and Georges own houses here in the Roaring Fork Valley and consider this to be their home.

“We have grand plans for DAOU to become the next brand with the international scale and luxury credentials of Penfolds (a premier TWE brand),” said Ford in a press release following the acquisition. “With DAOU, we will be well-positioned to connect with a new generation of wine lovers, combining tradition with innovation, culture-led experiences, and global distribution.” Daniel remains DAOU’s founder and winemaker.

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The journey for the brothers to the pinnacle of the wine world reads like a novel. Born to a Lebanese father and a French mother, they were raised in Beirut, Lebanon, then known as the Paris of the Middle East. In 1973, civil war erupted, and their home was hit by a rocket in the opening salvo of the fighting. Both brothers were severely injured leaving Georges in a coma for two days and Daniel wounded by shrapnel in the face, heart, and legs. After an arduous recovery, the family emigrated to France where they lived in Paris and Cannes.

“Since that time Georges and I have always felt most comfortable being uncomfortable,” Daniel explained. “We are always looking for the next thing and solving situations. It is how we move forward.”

The brothers moved to California and attended the University of California in San Diego majoring in engineering. Despite initial financial struggles for the pair, they saw an emerging niche in high-tech and started Daou Systems, a company that built intranet computer networks. In a decade they successfully took the company public and, at just 32 years of age, Daniel could have retired.

But he had a second act in mind. “I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make wine. I wanted to make a world-class Cabernet Sauvignon but everyone told me I was crazy.” Daniel had long been a prolific collector of fine wines and had a wine epiphany drinking a 1986 Léoville-Las-Cases. But the transition to becoming a winemaker from a tech entrepreneur was formidable.

“I began looking around the world for the right soils because I knew that soils were the key,” he said. For eight years he searched, looking in Bordeaux, California, and Argentina. “We looked for limestone but I was interested in calcareous soils, those created from the deposits of the sea.” The brothers came across a plot of land that sat at 2,200 feet above the winemaking region of Paso Robles, about 14 miles from the Pacific with just the right combination of soils and climate.

As a wine region, Paso was known to be exceedingly warm and a sweet spot for Rhone varieties. But Daniel saw the potential for producing the kind of Cabernet Sauvignon that he had dreamed of making. “Go two miles this way and the temperatures are too hot for Cabernet,” he said as he gestured towards the hills to the southeast. “Two miles that way it’s too cold. We found just the right spot.”

They immediately began to plant a 26-acre vineyard and produced their first wines. In the decade and a half since, they have created an estate that encompasses nearly 400 acres with four winery buildings and a mountaintop visitors center that serves as home to those who love DAOU, their wines, and the exquisite views. “We didn’t buy a winery,” Daniel noted. “We bought dirt, no wells, no vines, no buildings, no power, no tasting room. Just dirt.⁠ But we did bring passion, imagination, hard work, and energy to unlock the potential that was there to begin with.”

Today, nearly a year following the sale, the brothers, in addition to overseeing their dream with TWE, are working on their next project. Tenuta Giorgio e Daniele  (@tgd_toscana) is a 173-acre property in southern Tuscany’s Val d’Orcia region and the goal is to produce world-class Cabernet-based wines there as well. “It is remarkably similar to what we found in Paso,” says Daniel. Daniel’s daughter Lizzie, who inherited a passion for wine from her father and has a pedigree that includes time spent at Château Latour, is deeply involved in the stunning project. ­

The Daou brothers have found their calling. “All I want to do is make wine for the rest of my life,” said Daniel as he gazed across the vines ready for harvest on Daou Mountain.  

It is an amazing story indeed.