Montage International is working part of the land of its 258-acre Montage Healdsburg in Sonoma County to provide an exclusive, namesake luxury product at all its hotels—a Montage wine collection.
Founder Alan Fuerstman partnered with renowned winemaker Jesse Katz to turn 15.5 acres of the Healdsburg resort in Alexander Valley into the Montage Estate Vineyard, built in 2019 ahead of the resort’s 2020 opening. It’s one of 14 properties in the Irvine-based firm’s portfolio, which includes Pendry Newport Beach.
Montage launched its inaugural 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon last fall and this year, the luxury hotel management firm released two new wines—a 2025 rosé and 2025 Sauvignon Blanc.
The three wines are all sourced directly from the Montage vineyard and made at Katz’s Aperture Cellars in Healdsburg, known as Aperture’s “Montage Estate” collection. The collection is served both in dining venues and in guest rooms across the six Montage properties and eight Pendry resorts.
“To now craft a full collection of wines from this estate is a reflection of the same elevated standards that define the resort’s hospitality—an intersection of a world-class destination and winegrowing,” Katz, who designed the vineyard from the ground up, said in a statement.
The winemaker opened Aperture Cellars in 2009; he was Wine Enthusiast’s Winemaker of the Year in 2025. The International Wine Report gave Montage and Aperture’s first vintage of the 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon a 98-point score.
“The Montage Estate collection stands as a defining expression of place-driven winemaking within luxury hospitality, where vineyard, resort, and guest experience are seamlessly intertwined,” the company said.
Cultivating Elevated Hospitality
Montage’s Julie De Witz, senior vice president of food and beverage, said the idea for a wine collection started when the Montage Healdsburg was still in development.
“The idea was rooted in the land itself,” she told the Business Journal.
“We approached Jesse Katz in 2016 and asked him to walk the property and identify the sites he felt were most prime for planting,” De Witz said. “That conversation was the beginning of everything.”
The first iteration of the Healdsburg wine was known as Surveyor, before rebranding into the Montage Estate collection.
By serving the wines only at Montage and Pendry properties, De Witz said the experience can’t be replicated anywhere else, which adds to the luxury of the brand.
“That exclusivity, paired with the caliber of what Jesse has produced, is exactly what we mean when we talk about elevated hospitality,” she added.
De Witz also said that winemaking wasn’t just another addition to Montage’s resume of luxury hospitality – it was a natural choice.
“Very few hotels in the world can say that the wine on their menu was grown on their own grounds and crafted by one of the most celebrated winemakers of his generation,” she said.
The hotel management firm has nine more Montage and Pendry hotels under development, seven of which are outside the U.S.