Coin Dealer Expands Wine Business

A Napa Valley California winery, owned by a well-known professional numismatist and named after an important design element on United States coins, is expanding.

Steven L. Contursi, chief executive officer of Rare Coin Wholesalers, and his wife, Seanne, are proprietors of the Arrow&Branch Estate Vineyard in Coombsville in the famous Napa Valley.

Steve Contursi has been a professional coin dealer since 1975, specializing in historically significant U.S. coins. The name Arrow&Branch was inspired by the unique EB-on-eagle’s-breast 1787 Brasher Doubloon he owned and frequently displayed across the country.

Part of the design on that early American gold coin struck by Ephraim Brasher, and a motif used on many other U.S. coins since then, is an eagle holding an olive branch and arrows in its talons. That enduring design prompted the name Arrow&Branch for both the vineyard and wine brand name.

Contursi sold his Brasher Doubloon for $7.4 million to a Wall Street investment firm in 2011.

He and his wife opened their wine business in 2007 with a 3.5-acre vineyard. In 2011 they acquired an additional 1.5 contiguous acres, and now they have purchased for approximately $4 million the 10-acre Williamson Family Vineyard in Napa that produces wines under the name Ideology Cellars.

“The property already has a winery permit, and we now are planning to build a winery on the property. This will be the new home of Arrow&Branch and our goal is to crush our first grapes there in 2022,” he said.

Information about currently available Arrow&Branch wines can be found online here or by phone at (707) 200-3640, or by email at wine@arrowandbranch.com