It all started when…

We began enjoying wine in the late 90’s while attending a number of local wine tasting fundraisers in our local area, moving onto wine tasting in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino, Sierra foothill wineries and falling in love with wine while traveling through Europe (Italy, France, Spain and Germany to name a few) also in the late 90’s, early 2000. It was from these travels that Don became curious as to what wine making might involve and whether he might be up for the task.

Dons’ first attempts at making wine as a home winemaker was in 2000. At a local wine tasting event Don ran into a friend who had become a winemaker and he offered to help him with winemaking in order to learn how to make it himself. The plan was to make a barrel of wine. The reality turned out to be 5 barrels made by the end of the 2000 crush season.

We continued to make more wine each year under another local winemaker’s license (Curtis and David) until 2005 when not only the winery Don built on our property was complete but the enormous amount of paperwork was finished, turned in and we were finally bonded and could start selling our nicely aged wine.  Not intending to become a bonded winery, we both found we loved the process of making wine and by 2001 realized we were destined to become more than home winemakers. 

 Once bonded, we began selling wine in July 2005 to stores and restaurants and realized we could benefit by having a tasting room. That dream was accomplished in 2009 when the Trinidad museum moved to their new home and we moved into where they had been.

 From 2001 we grew from making 12 barrels of wine to anywhere from 28 to 53 barrels of wine, averaging around 35 barrels many years. Don’s passion became finding many of the less common varietals that we have tasted while traveling through Europe.

 From 2005 to 2015 our lives revolved around making and selling (and yes, drinking) wine. It is immense and satisfying work and we also hoped to find the time to travel back to some of our favorite places and places we hadn’t made it to in Europe. In 2016 we made it back to France enjoying the Cabernet Franc and Sancerre of the Loire Valley and have also been to Croatia, (in search of Vranac and pleasantly surprised by Malvasia Bianca), Sicily (Nero d’Avola), Italy, Spain and France since then.

 Our favorite wine region would be…” love the one you’re with!”. Wines (and food) of Italy may own our hearts but the wines of France, Croatia, Sicily and Spain fall close behind. We are planning a trip this year to Spain:  Rueda for the Verdejo and Galicia for the Albariño wines. And then on to Porto for … port of course.

 Most of our wines have turned out anywhere from drinkable to delicious. A “drinkable” wine we called the Tuesday Evening blend. It was a blend of 5 so-so wines, not our best but “okay for a Tuesday evening” and cheaper than our other varietals. Covid then hit and we marked it down to $150/case, including sales tax. It sold like hot cakes!

 Another “happy accident” wine is the sweeter varietal called Symphony. We bottled it, filtering as necessary to keep it as a still wine. One warm day the bottled wine was outside, and Don noticed some of the corks pushing up. Well, best laid plans, that filtering did not do the trick and we had some sparkling wine we weren’t expecting. We double foiled the bottles and the wine, which we call our best mistake ever, was delicious and sold like crazy (minus the ones we lost because the corks blew off).

Currently and for the past few years we have been making less wine, around 10-15 tons a year. This past year after a trip to middle/southern Italy we made for the first time, montepulciano d’abbruzzo, both as a  rose’ and as a full-bodied red wine along with Fiano, a crisp white wine. Don is currently composing for label approval and printing 45 new releases to look forward to in the Spring of 2025.  Also, we are currently featuring upcoming releases on tap at our tasting room that are just awaiting these labels. We launched a curated wine club in late 2024 with the next drop happening this May.  Two particularly exciting releases are our “2022 Hayley’s Comet”, a beautiful blend of 4 varieties that play harmoniously well together.  Also, we have a sparkling red made from the very full-bodied red Tannat grape that we bottled during the Aurora Borealis light show last summer.  Can you guess it’s name?

During the 25 years we have been making wine we have seen many ups and downs in the market.  As with most things, the pendulum swings back and forth.  Certain varietals fall out of favor while other become extremely desirable and sought after (think of the movie “Sideways” – poor merlot, lucky pinot noir).  We are optimistic about the future as we focus on support from our local stores and restaurants and from locals and tourists in our Trinidad Tasting Room.  Our style is based on old world wine making techniques, leaning on a classic approach, which is a rarity found in California winemaking these days. Our unique wines evoke the ancient nostalgia of handmade wine shared between kinfolk for all the ages past, present, and future. Bending and flexing with the times, economy and climate change to produce wines we stand behind and are passionate about. With the times always evolving, we aim to embrace the new with the support of the old world inspirations.  

Our tasting room in the center of Trinidad is one of the best decisions we have made in this wine adventure. Cozy atmosphere with both inside and outside seating you can choose from over 65 wines! We have music on Sundays from 4-6pm. Open 7 days a week from June through October and 5 days a week November through May. Join us, we look forward to pouring for you.