There’s a question we often hear from first-time visitors to the Miner Family tasting room: “What’s the story with the guitars?”
Those being the five gorgeous instruments in display cases on the wall opposite the front entrance, part of Dave Miner’s prized collection of Benedetto jazz guitars. Three others are found in the winery’s third floor hospitality space—a welcoming room known as the Benedetto Lounge.
And then there are the special bottlings of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon: the Benedetto Signature Series produced here at the winery since the 2002 vintage.
It’s all part of Dave’s longtime collaboration with the jazz guitar manufacturing company of the same name, founded in 1968 by his friend, the luthier—or guitar-maker—Bob Benedetto. While the cross-branding is intentional, signifying his deep engagement with both wine and music, the instruments themselves are much more than objects to admire. “Dave’s pretty unique among guitar collectors,” says his close friend, the renowned jazz guitarist Howard Paul. “He plays every guitar he owns, and he plays them all of the time.”
To hear Dave tell it, “the story with the guitars” is one that started a long time ago.
“When I was growing up, there was always music in the house,” he recalled recently. His parents enjoyed a variety of music, from classical to pop. Just as influential was his aunt Gloria, who played the cello and owned a classical guitar. “At family gatherings at her house, my brother Ed and I would sneak off to play the guitar in her room because there were no other kids our age.”
Around this time, Dave began taking piano lessons from a teacher who, he laughed, “was always yelling at me for not practicing.” During a lesson one day, he noticed a different instrument in the music room: a Gretsch archtop guitar. As a kid who’d already played around with his aunt’s guitar, it caught his attention. “And that just launched my imagination,” he said.
At 13, Dave and his family moved from Chicago to Southern California. His brother had started guitar lessons a couple of years earlier. Like the piano, Dave wasn’t interested in studying guitar, but the memory of that Gretsch came with him to his new home in Orange County.
“When my brother wasn’t around, I’d go into his room, turn on some music, plug in one of his guitars, and try to play along with the music—and not screw up!” he laughed again. “So I taught myself how to play as a teenager. Then around 16, I bought my own first guitar.”
That instrument, a Guild brand acoustic (“just a folk guitar,” as he described it) is long-lost. But the fascination with jazz he developed while in high school—the music of the great guitarist Joe Pass, in particular—predicted bigger things for his guitar-owning future.
A few years later, as an undergrad at UC San Diego, Dave got to see Pass at Elario’s, a storied restaurant and jazz club in La Jolla. “It was my real introduction to live jazz and the archtop,” he said, pausing to explain that this type of guitar is made in the style of a violin: hand-carved from a single piece of wood, with an “arched,” or curved, top and back, and thicker in the middle than at the sides. It has been Bob Benedetto’s signature method since he began his career.
“There was another famous player I followed, Bucky Pizzarelli, who I didn’t realize at the time played a Benedetto, but I’d been hearing about these guitars probably from the early 80s on. And to any guitar nut, if you’re talking about an archtop guitar, the Benedetto was what everybody wanted. Couldn’t afford, but wanted!”
Out of college in the mid-80s, Dave enjoyed success in the early Bay Area tech industry. He and Ed were living in Palo Alto. They saw jazz shows together, and Dave regularly attended the Monterey Jazz Festival. He would even spend hours on the weekends hanging out near his apartment at Gryphon Stringed Instruments. “It’s one of the best guitar stores in the country. Some well-known, local guitarists would be in there all of the time.”
But he was quick to point out that guitars and music meant something different to him.
“It was a big part of my life by then. It was something I did for fun and relaxation, but not professionally, and I never played in a band. But I’ve always had a good ear for music, and I have a really good ear when I play a guitar. I can tell in twenty seconds whether it’s a well-made guitar just by listening to it. I’ve always kind of had that knack and ability.”
Dave also had the understanding that Bob Benedetto’s company was behind some of the best-sounding, best-made guitars in the world, though he had yet to hold one in his hands. This changed after he met his future wife, Emily.
As a wedding present in 1999, Emily’s stepfather brought Bucky Pizzarelli and another virtuoso jazz guitarist, Howard Alden, to Napa Valley to perform at the new Miner Family Winery. “They both played Benedettos,” Dave remembered. “By that time, I had a growing collection of guitars. But the first time I ever touched a Benedetto in person was with Bucky and Howard.”
Coincidentally, he had just reached out to Bob about building him a guitar, as a handful of other custom builders had done for him. In 2003, the master luthier took him on as a client.
Meanwhile, Dave had a friend at another top manufacturer, Fender Guitars, who was a wine enthusiast and a participant in the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction. His friend, Rick Anderson, approached him with an idea: a custom Fender guitar, stained during the finishing process with Miner’s Napa Valley cabernet to create a beautiful, unique instrument. Rick pitched it as an attention-getting—and funds-raising—item. The Fender achieved both at the 2005 live auction, going for forty thousand dollars.
Soon afterward, Dave called Bob to check on the progress of his Benedetto guitar. When he shared the news about the wine-stained Fender at the auction, a light went off in Bob’s head.
“He said, ‘Wow! That’s interesting, because your guitar is getting to the point where I’m starting to think about finishing it.’ So he asked me to send him some red wine to try out as a stain. Three weeks later he called me and was very excited. ‘This is really cool! I have some wonderful ideas about what I’m going to do.’”
“But then he told me, ‘I drank all the stain!’”
Dave obligingly shipped Bob another case of wine, and the result was a guitar they christened, unofficially, “Vinodetto One.” Roughly a guitar every other year has followed. To date, a dozen of these masterpieces—officially known in the Miner and Benedetto universes as the Vinodetto Guitar Series—have been crafted.
For Dave, they’re jewels in a larger crown.
“When I got out of college, had a job, and was making good money, I started getting more serious about what I was buying. Now I have guitars that are all over the map: I have old and new acoustic guitars; I have flattop electrics, like Fenders and a Gibson or two; I have a couple classical guitars; I’ve got a mandolin. Almost all the rest are archtops, and many of those are Benedettos.”
“Every day, Dave’s got a guitar in his hand, and every week he’s switching to another guitar,” his friend Howard Paul told us. “So they all get played. I think they’re kind of like children to him. And he feels like he can’t ignore them. For a collector, he’s a little unusual in that way.”
Howard and Dave got acquainted through Bob and his wife, Cindy, in 2001 when Dave was traveling near Howard’s home in Savannah, Georgia. Hearing from the Benedettos that Dave played guitar, he invited him on a gig one evening with his band. “I think he was a little bit stressed out about being there,” Howard recalled with amusement. “But it was a really loud and crowded room, so nobody could hear us. I stuck Dave behind me with a guitar. He played a few notes here and there, and he had a good time. We’ve been best friends ever since.”
Dave Miner with Howard Paul
They are also cross-country business partners: Howard is CEO of Benedetto Guitars (and one of its more prominent players). In 2006, when Bob moved his manufacturing facility to Savannah, Dave became an investor in the company.
He recounted how, the previous year, he and Howard conceived of a summer dinner and concert at the winery to “show off this Vinodetto, the first guitar Bob made for me.” Being an ambitious vintner, Dave took it to the next level. “I decided to make a little wine—a cabernet that’s unique and maybe we would age a little longer. Just a couple hundred cases that we could sell at this concert we were talking about doing.”
“We came up with Benedetto Cabernet to release for the dinner and show, which evolved into the Benedetto Concert, and I got my guitar. I was overjoyed.”
Nearly 20 years later, the story with the Benedetto guitars, and the wines made to complement them, have only become more intrinsic to Miner’s identity.
“The Benedetto red is something different every year, but it’s always a high-end, Bordeaux-style blend designed to age,” Michelle Shafrir says of the special bottling she and Dave collaborate on to offer to Miner customers.
Made since its inception from a large percentage of cabernet sauvignon, Michelle notes that “the last couple vintages have been cabernet franc-based because that’s what Dave loves to drink.”
Another thing he loves is listening to live jazz guitar, whether performed locally in Napa Valley, at favorite San Francisco and Bay Area clubs, or clear across the country, from Chicago to New York. Unsurprisingly, Benedetto Guitars’ backyard of Savannah has its share of venues, as does Hilton Head Island a little ways across the state line in South Carolina. His knowledge of the best places to find live jazz is impressive.
As Dave told us, he’s a great listener. And as Howard mentioned, his friend and business partner plays all of the many guitars he owns and plays them well, including here in Oakville. Past Benedetto Concerts at the winery have seen intimate, outdoor performances by Howard and his group of fellow, world-class guitarists and other musicians. A less nervous—or, according to Howard, a more confident—Dave Miner has sat in with the band, playing one of his own Benedetto archtops to help entertain the audience. “That’s everything to Dave,” he said. “And, I think, to all of us. I mean, it’s why we’re in the businesses that we’re in.”
When Dave observed, while sharing the Miner-Benedetto story, that “it’s way more of an art than a science,” he was talking at the same time about winemaking and guitars—both their crafting and playing. It was a comparison that Howard, a knowledgeable and well-traveled wine enthusiast, echoed more than once.
“The way we make our guitars and the way Miner makes wines are really similar: for the consistently great outcome,” he said. “We’re both doing it for the integrity of the finished product. And we’re trying to make the very best product that we can make.”