Skalli moves into the northern Rhône

Skalli, owners of St Supéry in the Napa Valley, continue to expand, perhaps just as well in view of how difficult it can be to sell the varietal wines of the Languedoc on which Robert Skalli's reputation was originally based. He's the little boy being held up in this 1955 family photo. The family began producing wine in Algeria in the 1920s. By the 1960s they were developing vineyards on Corsica as well as importing Algerian wine into the French port of Sète.

Skalli have been constantly in expansion mode. In 2000 they bought the southern French retailer Caves Notre...