The co-founder of three Napa wineries and three-time cancer survivor has put into words the ethos behind his 100-point cult labels: mortality as fuel to live fully and lift others. A #1 New Release on Amazon in preorder.
August 6, 2026 (Napa Valley, CA) — For a decade, Hayes Drumwright has made wine in service of a single question: given that we must die, how should we live? Memento Mori (remember, you must die) poses it. Vida Valiente (valiant life) answers it. Now, after his third cancer diagnosis at 53, the co-founder of three of Napa Valley’s most critically acclaimed and story-driven wineries has put pen to paper to write it all down. The Empty Center: Permission, Connection, and What We Build When the Future is Uncertain publishes August 25, 2026 from Palmetto Publishing. As of late July, it had already reached #1 New Release in its Amazon category within days of preorder.
Wine runs through the book the way it runs through Drumwright’s life. Readers will find the founding story of Memento Mori: three lifelong friends deciding that a phrase most people avoid saying out loud was exactly the right thing to put on a wine bottle. They’ll find the purpose engine of Vida Valiente, whose wine revenue helps fund last-dollar scholarships for more than 200 first-generation, low-income Stanford students through the Vida Valiente Foundation. Both wineries have enjoyed 100-point scores and steady growth over the last five years.
The backdrop includes Edge Hill, the historic St. Helena property Drumwright is resurrecting with his longtime winemaker Sam Kaplan at the helm. As the oldest gravity-fed winery in Napa Valley, Drumwright is betting it follows the trajectory Memento Mori and Vida Valiente have already proven.
But, The Empty Center is not a wine memoir. Written days after cancer surgery — and, in a first for the category, in open partnership with an AI collaborator — it is a field guide to the question every cellar in Napa must pose in a difficult wine economy: if time is short and the future uncertain, what is worth building? Drumwright’s answer has been on his labels all along. The book simply shows the work: connection over outcome, purpose over accumulation, and the conviction that “it is who we lift and what we leave behind that tells our story. Not what we amass.”
“Memento Mori was never a morbid idea to us; it was fuel,” Drumwright said. “Every vintage is a bet you make before you know the weather. That’s what hope is. I’ve had cancer three times, and I wrote this book the way we make wine: honestly, with people I love, for people we may never meet. If you’ve ever felt what a great bottle does to a table full of friends (slows it down, opens it up) this book is chasing that same thing. It just took me fifty-four years to put it in words instead of a glass.”
The book arrives alongside the launch of Los Padrinos (The Godparents), Vida Valiente’s new membership that unites collectors around the same conviction: legacy is created by lifting others.
The through-line of Drumwright’s wine businesses is rare and complete: a vintner whose labels, foundation, club, and now book all pour from a single philosophy. This story runs from cult Cabernet to cancer wards to, improbably, an exploration of frontier artificial intelligence, which ultimately became the book’s co-author.
The Empty Center is available for preorder now at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, publishing August 25, 2026 in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. Author essays — including several written by his AI co-author — can be found at HayesDrumwright.com and hayesdrumwright.substack.com. Instagram: @hayes_drumwright.
About Hayes Drumwright
Hayes Drumwright is a serial entrepreneur, three-time cancer survivor, and co-founder of Memento Mori, Vida Valiente, and Edge Hill in Napa Valley. Alongside his wife Susana, he leads the Vida Valiente Foundation, providing last-dollar scholarships to first-generation Stanford undergraduates. He and Susana have five children and a working theory that the things worth building are the things that lift others.
