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A Storied Winery Runs Toward Tech, Reaps the Rewards

Here's a toast to the Napa Valley mainstay that's fomenting -- and fermenting -- a wine revolution.

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By Jason Ankeny

Jake Stangel

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Sometimes an ending is also a beginning.

Around 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, 2006, firetrucks from across Napa Valley raced to the Oakville, Calif., site of Silver Oak Cellars, one of the region's oldest and most celebrated boutique wineries. Smoldering fireplace ashes discarded in a nearby dumpster had caught fire sometime before sunrise, and the flames soon engulfed Bonny's Chai, the 7,000-square-foot erstwhile dairy barn that served as Silver Oak's original winemaking facility in 1972, the year Ray Duncan and Justin Meyer began crafting the first vintage of their signature cabernet sauvignon.

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