FF Coppola Directors Cut Cabernet Valley

The Francis Ford Coppola Winery is a California producer in Sonoma County owned by the eponymous filmmaker, famous for directing The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. The winery has the highest production among the varied Coppola wine estates and produces the group’s value brands.

Coppola had entered the wine industry in 1975 by buying the historic Inglenook estate in Rutherford, Napa Valley, and establishing the Neibaum-Coppola Winery with its flagship Rubicon red blend. The Francis Ford Coppola Winery was created decades later to separate the different brands the Neibaum-Coppola estate had cultivated.

In the mid-1990s Rubicon gained prestige, earning critical praise and a following, and increasing in price. As a result Neibaum-Coppola added a range of value wines priced at less than $20, which soon became the largest earners for the winery. These wines were released under a variety of labels including Francis Coppola Wines, Francis Coppola Presents and the highly successful Diamond Collection. The majority of fruit for these wines was purchased from growers with the wines carrying the broad California designation – the estate fruit was reserved for Rubicon.