Acumen Wine Gallery Opens in Downtown Napa

Napa, California – Thriving downtown Napa is getting a chic new presence this summer when the Acumen Wine Gallery opens in a prime location on First Street. The new tasting room, created by internationally acclaimed artist and designer Vincent Xeus, is the retail home of Acumen, an Atlas Peak vineyard. An intimate seated tasting experience, virtual reality (VR) vineyard tours and a contemporary art gallery highlight the Acumen Wine Gallery.

19477603_2128328980727509_1529660316970668794_oLocated at 1315 First Street, the spacious, 2,500-square foot Acumen Wine Gallery was designed by Xeus to offer guests a collection of spatial experiences that focus on Acumen’s world-class Napa Valley wines. Entering through the street-level façade composed of natural materials and geometric planters, guests are welcomed into a grand tasting room where they can choose between a casual, lively space by the bar or a more structured environment with comfortable seating next to the scenic vineyard wall. A contemporary art gallery is located beyond the grand tasting room; the second level Peak Room & Cellar offers a private space for VIP tastings and other sensory and cultural experiences.

The Acumen Wine Gallery captures the Napa Valley spirit through refined yet bold aesthetic spaces filled with warmth and openness. The iconic vernacular of historic Napa Valley, including reclaimed wood, stucco and metalworks, evokes the understated, timeless Napa Valley originality in a modern space. Acumen’s focus on sustainability is translated into many design elements, such as gold-leaf dome lights made from tank heads and the wood bar façade made from a fallen tree at its Atlas Peak vineyard.

The opening art exhibition, titled “Peak,” surveys the lives of the generations that transformed Napa Valley from orchard farms to world-famous vineyards. “Peak” reveals to the audience, in 12 large-format oil paintings by Vincent Xeus, the passion and struggle of the unsung heroes in the Napa Valley wine industry. Xeus is a multidisciplinary artist with an emphasis on explorations in painting and spatial art. He is also the founder of Marque Design, an architecture, interior and landscape design firm.

Centrally located in downtown Napa, across from the Andaz and Archer hotels as well as high-end retail stores, the Acumen Wine Gallery offers three tasting options: Mountainside Flight ($25) with Acumen’s Mountainside wines, PEAK Flight ($40) with Acumen’s reserve-tier PEAK wines, and Portfolio Flight ($60) with Acumen’s entire wine collection, which is offered at 10am, 1pm and 4pm. The Tastings by Reservation program offers guests an experience of refined and warm hospitality. A Wine Futures program is also available, giving collectors an opportunity to taste barrel samples to secure early access to their PEAK wine allocations.

In addition, the Acumen Wine Gallery will connect guests with life on its Atlas Peak vineyard estate through cutting-edge virtual reality technology by offering VR tours of its Atlas Peak vineyards from the downtown Napa tasting room. Acumen also plans to provide VR viewers to its club members – the first American winery Acumen is aware of that does this.

The Acumen Wine Gallery is open seven days a week from 10am to 6pm. It is located at 1315 First St., Napa, CA 94559; telephone 707-492-8336. Additional information is available at www.acumenwine.com.

Acumen was founded in 2012 when Eric Yuan and his family acquired a prized 32-acre vineyard on Atlas Peak from Dr. Jan Krupp of Stagecoach Vineyard fame. In searching for a vineyard that could produce world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, they brought in a team of wine industry veterans, including viticulturists Steve Matthiasson and Garrett Buckland and winemaker Denis Malbec (who died tragically in 2015) to seek out an ideal site in the Napa Valley. They considered a number of top Napa Valley vineyards before settling on Krupp’s property in the rugged Atlas Peak AVA in the Vaca Mountains of eastern Napa Valley. A second, 84-acre vineyard, just a half mile up the road, was acquired in 2013. Both vineyards are farmed organically and certified by CCOF.