The postcard invites all to come “taste the wine where the Flags are flying.” Oakville Vineyards Winery was next door to the 1877 stucco-fronted Brun & Chaix Winery on the Napa highway at Oakville, south of Rutherford — a premium wine enterprise launched in 1970 by a group of connoisseurs headed by Wilfred E. (Bud) van Loben Sels of Carmel, an affluent asphalt company executive. The grand entrepreneurial undertaking became one of the major California winery failures of the 1970s. Van Loben Sels huge 400-member partnership acquired the Andrea Bartolucci Madonna Winery, originally built in 1892. It was large, with a capacity of 600,000 gallons and three hundred acres of vineyard. In late 1972 Van Lobel Sels also acquired, from the estate of John Daniel in Rutherford, the 1600-acre Niebaum Ranch, including the 1890 mansion and 110-acre prime Cabernet vineyard. The grapes were contracted to Oakville Winery. Inexplicably, even though the wines were a critical success, the partnership collapsed in 1976. When the Bartoluccis reclaimed their winery, they sold it to Heublein (who owned Inglenook). Robert Mondavi acquired the wine inventory and brand, while Francis Ford Coppola bought the Niebaum home and vineyard.