Never has an award seemed so well-deserved. Jean-Charles Boisset, the French-born wine entrepreneur and proprietor of Boisset Collection, adds another moniker to his name: Wine Enthusiast’s “2024 Person of the Year.”
Boisset has made an indelible mark in America’s wine industry since he purchased his first winery, DeLoach Vineyards, in 2003. Since then, he has only made that mark more pronounced as he acquired and restored historical properties and wineries throughout Northern California. The acquisitions are but a part of his accomplishments. Boisset has brought joie de vivre to the Napa wine industry, which is unmatched by his contemporaries. Boisset stands apart in his showmanship, undaunting positivity and joy.
After bursting into the California wine scene, he met and married a scion of one of America’s most revered wine families, Gina Gallo, with whom he has twin daughters. He has brought a French flair to the more rustic, down-to-earth, and traditional vibe of Napa Valley. Those who know or have worked with the flamboyant vino savant loudly sing his praises as someone authentic to his public persona.
Hailing from Vougeot, France, in Burgundy, Boisset’s vintner father and family own historically significant vineyards and wineries throughout France. Boisset first visited California and Buena Vista Winery when he was eleven, and he began a lifelong love affair with the winery, eventually fulfilling his dream by purchasing it decades later. It remains central to Boisset’s portfolio of California properties as it represents his childhood dream and the region’s history.
“I fell in love with the history of California, the sense of pioneering, and the idea that everything is possible in this beautiful state. In the last 150 years, we have the amazing innovators, pioneers, the Gold Rush, and everything that followed—the spiritual endeavor that says everything can be done here.”
He has made it his mission to help conserve Napa Valley’s short but poignant history. He does this by purchasing landmark sites, preserving their cultural importance, and restoring them to their former glory and beyond.
Boisset acquired California’s oldest continually operating grocery store, Oakville Grocery. Adjacent to Oakville Grocery stands what used to be the founder’s home, which Boisset restored and transformed into Napa’s first wine history museum—the 1881 Napa Museum at Oakville Wine Merchant. Boisset also purchased the Elizabeth Spencer Winery with its 1872 Post Office Building as its tasting room, the Calistoga Depot—1868—the historic rail terminus built by Sam Brannan, and the Ink House Luxury Inn built in 1885 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
As part of Raymond Vineyard’s 50th-anniversary celebrations this year, Boisset unveiled “The Eye,” a commissioned outdoor sculpture of a giant eye modeled on Boisset’s own. It is an abstract sculpture of a man that many consider a visionary. His vision for Napa is a positive one. “We [Napa Valley] have transitioned over the last three decades into a [region] of extreme knowledge and savoir-faire. Now we are entering into a world of creativity and craft—a time of true artistry.”
