08/20/2026
On Wednesday evening, the Miró Quartet took the Veranda stage at Hudson Ranch for a sold out crowd, closing Music in the Vineyards’ 32nd season program with Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in G major, D. 887, the piece scholars often call his farewell to the form. It is nearly symphonic in scale, written in the final year of his life, and rarely paired with anything but silence.
Music in the Vineyards has spent three decades bringing world class chamber music into Napa Valley’s wineries, and this year’s season carries the theme “Taking Root,” marking America’s 250th anniversary through composers who drew on their own cultural roots to shape the American sound. Tickets to Wednesday’s performance were gone long before the season’s final stretch.
The wine poured at intermission was not incidental. Hudson Ranch’s fruit is sought after enough that producers like Kongsgaard, Kistler, and Arietta have built bottlings from Hudson’s own blocks. The ranch’s estate Chardonnay has become one of Carneros’s defining expressions, prized for its restraint and elegance, a quiet reputation built over 40 years by owners Lee and Cristina Hudson.
The setting made the case for itself. Hudson Ranch is a 2,000 acre working estate in Carneros, its vineyards sharing the land with wild flower beds, succulent gardens, heritage livestock, and a working farm whose produce supplies Hudson Greens & Goods. Few places in America let you hear the end of Schubert’s life while drinking one of California’s most respected Chardonnays, on a landscape built entirely by hand.
📍 Hudson Ranch & Vineyards Music in the Vineyards Miró Quartet in California's Napa Valley
🎥 Michael Cuffe
