Continuing their hospitality-oriented modifications, they enlisted the son of the house’s original builder to build the guesthouse. “He had access to all the finishes his father had used,” including extensive wood details, “so all of it totally matched,” she says.
The couple often held parties—hosting about 100 people to celebrate a friend’s birthday one year—but Steven also used it as a place to write. “He was always writing,” Bochco says. “The way he wrote would be sitting in bed with a yellow pad and pencil.”
During their time there, her husband wrote episodes of TV shows including Raising the Bar and Murder in the First, as well as his memoir, Truth is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television.
In keeping with the house’s light-filled, indoor/outdoor series of entertaining areas, the finishes are largely white or neutral colors.
The main living room has a French limestone floor and a dramatic, vaulted and beamed double-height roof; the dining room, which opens onto the terrace, has a more traditional coffered ceiling. The chef’s kitchen features wood paneling, granite counters, and a six-burner Viking range. (Bochco has already removed her furniture; the interior decor was staged for photographs.)
All the bedrooms are en suite. The master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, fireplace, and two French doors that open onto the patio and pool.
The Property
Her husband, Bochco says, “was a city boy, but he didn’t like the city. Most people who live in New York get tired of it, and when he moved to Los Angeles, it was a huge change.”
But even L.A. didn’t prepare him for the house in Napa, which sits on top of a hill, surrounded by forests, and has views of cypresses, oaks, and, of course, vineyards. “He’d never lived in a place that was set in nature. You’re never far away from anything, but when you go home, you really feel you’re in the country.”
Neighbors on nearby mountains had chosen to start small vineyards, “but my husband always said he liked to drink wine, not grow it,” Bochco says. Instead, they put in a lovely olive grove with mature trees, which is set slightly down the hill from the home. “You go in the back, and everyone says, ‘Oh my god, it looks like we’re in Tuscany!’” she says. “It’s a view of rolling hills and gorgeous trees—it gives you the sense that you’re out there in the world by yourself.”