Russian River Valley, Sonoma County

This is me about a year ago, enjoying what I thought were my last few days in Wine Country. I had just turned 22. Can you believe it? It’s a weird sort of duality for the people who work in the wine industry and who have lived in Napa and Sonoma all their lives– the scenery becomes so regular and day-to-day when you work here that you really have to take a step back, look around, and appreciate how beautiful this whole area is.

Today, I’m the Marketing Assistant at Don & Sons, based right off of the Sonoma (the town, not just the county) Plaza, and I never could have guessed that I would be somewhere like this, especially not at 23. Of all things, beer got me into wine in the first place. My dad had brewed his own beer and made wine at home several times when I was little, and so during my first summer home from college, I brewed beer with my dad and my friends. It was an awakening–seeing and smelling each ingredient going into the brew kettle gave me an understanding of  how to pick apart the different flavors and aromas in beer, and later wine. It also taught me the importance of balance–crucial in both beer and wine.
As I learned and tasted more beers (and a few wines, slowly) through my time at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, I got a job selling both beer and wine at a shop called The Wine Cellar. It was my own personal Wine 101, an intense crash course taught by our regular customers, coworkers, and the small library of wine books we had. I learned more about wine in a month or so there than I could’ve dreamed. Then, one day, the winemaker from Silverado Vineyards came in. He had come all the way from Napa Valley for a family vacation, and on a whim, he said I should come out and work the harvest!

You'll have to excuse the ragged cellarworker's beard...

That eventually led me in here. Working in the cellar for Harvest 2008, I must have filled upwards of 900 barrels full of white and red wine, one by one. About half of the days I had off that Autumn (and free weekends during harvest are precious) I spent wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma.
After a brief stint back home in Menlo Park, CA, I got the next amazing opportunity to use my Marketing degree and come up to Sonoma to work with Don Sebastiani & Sons. I love it here–yes, things can get a little intense with all of the new projects constantly in the works, but working in the marketing office for such a fast-moving, down-to-earth, family company like this is constantly rewarding. We’re in the midst of planning several new initiatives for 2010, so keep an eye out for a beautiful redesign of our Smoking Loon label, an SKN Valentine’s Day partnership with SpaFinder, updates to our Facebook page, a new Twitter profile… the list goes on and on! And most of all, don’t be that guy who lives in New York City and has never seen the Statue of Liberty–enjoy the area around you! Chances are you live somewhere that has a lot to offer, whether it’s the outdoors or a great urban social scene, so take a moment to appreciate it.

Thanks, and look out for Aug Sebastiani’s post later this week!