Donn Chappellet, whose deep, long-lived cabernets, produced at his Chappellet Vineyard, helped establish the Napa Valley as a serious rival to Bordeaux, died on Sunday at his home in St. Helena, Calif. He was 84.  His death was confirmed by his son Cyril, Chappellet’s chairman.  Mr. Chappellet began collecting serious Burgundies and Bordeaux when he was still in college, but until he was in his 30s wine remained a hobby. He devoted most of his time to Interstate United Corporation, a coffee-vending distributorship he co-founded in the mid-1950s, which he helped turn into the third-largest such business in the United States, with more than 7,000 employees and a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.  By the mid-1960s, Mr. Chappellet was bored with the business. “The bigger it got, the less fun it became,” he told People magazine in 1974.  In 1966 he sold his shares in Interstate United and, guided by the pioneer winemaker André Tchelistcheff of Beaulieu Vineyards, bought 320 acres of tough terrain on Pritchard Hill, at the eastern edge of the Napa Valley. “I think I had subconsciously wanted to become a winemaker for years,” he told The New York Times in 1971.  He built a distinctive pyramid-shaped winery on the property. It was only the second to be built in the Napa Valley since Prohibition, after the Robert Mondavi estate. The winery released its first official cabernet vintage in 1969, in a lean, mineral style, with profound layers of blackberry fruit underneath, that paid homage to the wines of Château Latour.  The 1969, produced by the winemaker Philip Togni, and the vintages that immediately followed became reference points for Napa cabernets. “Unbelievably rich, powerful and muscular,” the critic Robert Parker wrote of the 1969 cabernet in his 2002 wine buyer’s guide. “One of the classics.”  Cyril Donn Chappellet was born on Sept. 11, 1931, in Los Angeles, where he grew up in the Bel Air neighborhood. His father, Cyril, was a former pilot who, with six partners, bought the bankrupt Lockheed Aircraft and transformed it into an aviation giant. His mother was the former Sybil Benita Kane.  He attended Principia High School, a private institution in St. Louis, and graduated from Pomona College in 1954 with a degree in economics. While still at school he married Molly Cosgrave, an arts student at nearby Scripps College, who survives him. They had met as teenagers at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.  In addition to his wife and his son Cyril, Mr. Chappellet is survived by a sister, Sybil Chappellet; two other sons, Jon-Mark and Dominic; three daughters, Lygia Chappellet, Carissa Chappellet and Alexa Chappellet Flagler; 11 grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.  With Ronald Wolff, a friend, he founded a small company to distribute the first vending machines that made hot coffee from grounds. Over the years the company diversified into restaurants — it ran the Brass Rail restaurants in New York — as well as hospital food services and other operations. By 1964, under the name Interstate United, it had $125 million in annual sales.  Chappellet Vineyard initially concentrated on cabernets and its celebrated chenin blanc. “It is chardonnay without the apples or the oak, wine with a heft but no sweetness; crisp, fresh and dry,” the British wine critic Hugh Johnson wrote in his book “A Life Uncorked” (2006). In 1990, in response to changing tastes, Mr. Chappellet hired Phillip Corallo-Titus to make more approachable cabernets, supple and juicy.  At various times the winery, which produces only about 30,000 cases yearly, has also made cabernet franc, merlot, riesling, petite sirah and chardonnay. After acquiring the Sonoma-Loeb winery in 2011, it added chardonnay and viognier from Carneros, and pinot noir from the Sonoma Coast and the Russian River Valley, to its portfolio.  Since 1980, Chappellet’s best cabernets, intended for aging, have been sold under the Signature label. In the mid-1990s, it began making cabernets from small, select lots, labeled Pritchard Hill.  Over the years, Mr. Chappellet attracted some of the industry’s most talented winemakers, including Joe Cafaro, Tony Soter, Helen Turley, Cathy Corison and Mia Klein.  Mr. Chappellet was a founding member of the Wine Service Co-op, and one of the first 18 members of the Napa Valley Vintners trade association.
After becoming bored with his food services company, a hobbyist became a pioneer in Napa Valley, creating Chappellet Vineyard, now known for its cabernets.