Now, why in the world am I doing a blog post on vegan wine you may ask? Well, I was contacted by a fan on Twitter the other day asking me if our wines were vegan. The first thing I thought was…well, its wine…made from grapes…how could it NOT be vegan?? But a quick google search and an email to our winemaker told me otherwise. And it has to do with finings.

Finings are substances used in winemaking usually at or near the end of the winemaking process where the winemaker adds an agent to the wine that binds to and removes organic particles, yeasts, etc., to improve clarity or adjust the flavor and aroma. Finings are usually derived from animals – such as gelatin, isinglass, chitosan, casein and egg albumen – thus making the wine not vegan. The finings and other matter are of course removed and filtered out of the wine before its bottled, but  I suppose (guessing, I’m not vegan) because the wine came in contact with an animal derived product it’s no longer considered vegan.

We are doing an interview about vegan wine and how to taste wine for this fan on Twitter, so look for a link to that soon!

This is also the time of the season where your winemaking team starts making regular visits into the vineyards to make sure our crop is being grown correctly and manicured appropriately.  We had one block of Pinot Noir this year that has been a bit of a struggle.  This block was very vigorous (rapid growth) and it was complicated further by a vineyard crew that missed some vital pruning.  So we made the decision to open up the canopy (the leaf coverage above the fruit) and prune a few extra shoots of each vine which should concentrate the vine’s efforts.  At this same time, we also asked that the grower drops a considerable volume of crop in order to get the vines back in balance.  As you can see in the pictures attached, the fruit is spaced out for good airflow and opened up for some sunlight on the fruit.

And as you can see as well, we had the grower drop a lot of fruit on the ground to make sure the remaining fruit gets the concentration we desire for our Smoking Loon and Crusher Pinot Noir programs.  It seems like a shame to drop this fruit but it is what is required for quality winemaking in the cellar.  You will also see that the Pinot Noir is starting to turn color known as veraison.  This is our indicator that these vines are changing their efforts from berry growth to berry ripening.  This block should be approaching perfect ripeness in 45-60 days all depending on the weather.

Wish us luck as harvest is upon us.

When Im not working, my passions are riding my horse or taking photographs.

I just turned 21 recently. A relief more than anything, because I work at a wine company and all my friends are over 21. I can finally start to really explore this business! I work in the Don & Sons marketing office as the webmaster. I keep the website updated, the blog moderated, the facebook account fresh, and the internal web portal up to date and running smoothly. I also work with the graphic designers, occasionally direct photography shoots, and even designed the new label for Mia’s Kitchen.

I grew up here in Sonoma County, Napa’s little sister, but still great wine country. Driving past acres and acres of vineyards is as normal as seeing a sky scraper to a city person; you don’t even notice. But I recently had the opportunity to see the vineyards a little differently. Well, for one, they were in Paso Robles, a AVA with a rich history of grape growing dating back to the late 1700′s, and located approximately halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Donny Sebastiani and Greg Kitchens (winemaker) invited a few of us from Marketing to go on a little field trip to SVP Winery, one of our suppliers for Smoking Loon, Pepperwood Grove, Flock and others. A brand new experience for me, we got to tour the facility and taste new wines, fresh from the tanks. We tried a couple whites (cloudy still, and green tasting – in the most raw form I could imagine) and a handful of reds (thick and juicy and nicely acidic) with both Kitchens and SVP’s winemaker, Jason Bushang, commenting and discussing the wines in very serious wine geek talk — its like a different language. Sam Balakian, owner of SVP, has been a supplier to the Sebastiani’s for many many years — he remembers selling wine to August Sebastiani, Donny’s grandfather.

After returning to town, we all met up at the hotel bar for drinks with some of our distributors from Young’s Market Company. The night continued at Villa Creek, where we dined for a good four hours on amazing food, fantastic wine, and enjoyed some really awesome conversation and company.

Below you can see some photos from the trip. Happy holidays everyone!

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!