A Backen compound
above Calistoga.

The estate at 225 Franz Valley School Road began as a school. A small boarding school for boys once occupied this land in the hills northwest of Calistoga, on a gently sloping shoulder of Diamond Mountain, and the property still carries that campus logic. Not a single house but a settlement of buildings, set among heritage oaks, gardens, and a spring-fed pond across forty-six acres.

Six structures organize the estate. The anchor is a main residence designed by Howard Backen, the architect who shaped much of how Napa understands country living. Around it sit a guest cottage, a one-bedroom Victorian, a pool house suite, and a former administration building remade as a tasting room, gym, and studio. Together they hold six bedrooms across a campus made for gathering, with a pool, tennis, bocce, and basketball dispersed through the grounds.

The land also makes wine. Roughly six acres of Cabernet, planted across four small vineyards, produce a Cabernet Sauvignon under the hand of Thomas Rivers Brown, among the most decorated winemakers in the valley. A library of older vintages conveyed with the sale, along with a wine club for an owner inclined to keep it going.

Represented as a co-listing, the estate found its new owner in a single transaction. A property of this scale and history could not be assembled in Napa again. Its next chapter belongs to one owner, willing to take on all of it at once.