It’s a proud day for the Sebastiani family.  Today, the Vintners Hall of Fame at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) announced that my grandfather, August Sebastiani, is to be inducted with the class of 2011 for his contribution as a “Pioneer” who made significant contributions to the California wine industry. Read the official press release here.

My father and I just got back from a special luncheon at the CIA’s Greystone campus in St. Helena honoring the new inductees, and I couldn’t wait to share the news.

The Vintners Hall of Fame reads like a “who’s who” of the California wine industry. Robert Mondavi, Frederick and Jacob Beringer, John Daniel, Ernest and Julio Gallo, Mike Grgich, Jess Jackson, Charles Krug, Andre Tchelistcheff, Brother Timothy, and Warren Winiarski have all been inducted into the Hall. Counting my grandfather among those greats is a true honor, and a testament to the work that he did.

For more than 115 years, my family’s mission (started by my great-grandfather, Samuele Sebastiani) has always been to bring consumers consistently high-quality wines from California’s great appellations at affordable prices. At Don Sebastiani & Sons we are proud to continue this tradition. On behalf of the company and our family, we’d like to thank the CIA and the Vintners Hall of Fame nominating committee and voters for this special recognition and we’d like to thank our friends and all our customers for the many years you have supported our family’s great wine traditions.

So, raise a glass of zinfandel tonight – my grandfather’s favorite – to salute all those who came before us and gave us the opportunity to make a living in this incredible business.

Cheers,

Donny

At this year’s Women of Taste event in Oakland (a huge fundraiser for Girls Inc that we’ve been pleased to be a part of for the past two years), I was surprised to hear someone say “I love screwcaps, they’re quick and easy, and they save cork trees.”

Save cork trees? I don’t know why he thought harvesting cork involved chopping down the trees–in fact, the cork industry does a lot to support the cork trees’ unique ecosystem. Cork trees are harvested once every ten years by skilled laborers who carefully strip the cork off of mature cork trees without damaging the trees.

So I figured now would be a good time to get my act together and talk a bit about the trip two of our employees took to tour the Portuguese cork industry earlier this year.

John Nicolette, our Director of Operations, and Cynthia Foran, our Purchasing Manager, both flew from California halfway across the world to Lisbon to meet with Amorim, one of the world’s largest cork producers, and learn more about their process. Their trip is too much for one blog post–I’ll continue the story in a second post–but the greatest takeaway was the immense pride that the Portuguese have in one of their largest industries. Every single Amorim manager was beaming with pride over his or her team and facility. Here are a few pictures from the trip–Portugal looks a lot like Northern California to me, only with much older architecture!

The Campo Pequeno

Looks like the Golden Gate, doesn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_de_Abril_Bridge

Look at the top of the tree--see where the cork cutters stopped? No cork trees were felled here!

Given the recent rainstorm, we had a major push to get all our fruit in before hitting the wet weather. So last Friday, we brought in the remaining 68 tons of 2010 Wilson Vineyard Cabernet. So here is a picture of the last of the fruit for our 2010 wines. What a rocky ride but thankfullly it is over. I might now return to home to spend time with my family who I am sure are anxious to see me on a more regular basis. And some sleep might be nice too.

Over and out,
Your winemaking team!!

As you’ve probably noticed, Don & Sons is hosting a tweet-up and TasteLive! event tomorrow evening at Estate in Sonoma. After months of discussing, the scarce tweet or facebook update, rare blog post…we decided what the heck? and dove head first into Social Media. It’s been great getting to actually interact with you – our fans, consumers, Loons, family members. I am very excited (as are we all – Donny can’t wait!) for this event – not just because there are going to be some great Pepperwood Grove wines, food and hors d’œuvres, music, and tasting with the winemaker, all for free! (yeah, see what I did there?)…No, I’m really excited to meet all you other bloggers, tweeple and fans. Seriously! Please come out for a glass or two of wine and some cheesecake or appetizers. Yes, I said cheesecake. Yes, its free. :)

We will be at Estate on the West patio from 6-9pm, pouring Pepperwood Grove’s Big Green Box wines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Old Vine Zinfandel, Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio. Please RSVP, as there is limited space! All attendees must be 21 years or older.

Can’t wait to see you all! Look for a post with pics and videos from the night on Monday!

First of all, I’m happy to say that Pepperwood Grove and Smoking Loon are 100% vegan! In fact, most of our wines are, except for a few from Aquinas and The Crusher.

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!

You would think it would be easy for a winery to start an online wine shop: just add a shopping cart to the website and start shipping out wine, right? Well after months of planning and work, we have almost made it through our first week with our Don & Sons Marketplace live. It is amazing how much work goes in to setting up a direct-to-consumer channel, especially in the wine world.

Currently we have plans to ship to only 28 states that are relatively straightforward to set up direct shipping permits. For our brand new Marketplace, we figured we should keep things simple and open up more states in 2011. In addition, we’ve figured out how to set up electronic age verification, set up accounts with all 4 major credit cards, track changing state sales taxes… I am continually amazed by our Compliance Specialist, Niki Cook, and her ability to navigate the ever-changing patchwork of state laws.

But by and large, this first week has gone very smoothly. Orders are moving through and we’re receiving shipping permits from new states constantly. We’re also offering free shipping with a case order, plus some great deals for our Facebook fans and fans on Snooth–drop us a line on www.facebook.com/donsebastianiandsons for the info!

Let us know what you think of the new Marketplace–we read and respond to every email, and we love the feedback. Thanks!

Early this morning, I came across some old smudge pots in a Chardonnay vineyard in Oakville.  Smudge pots are old heaters that were used in the wine industry years ago to protect against frost.  Most vineyards these days are equiped with large fans that mix warm air with colder air to acheive the same goal.  I don’t see to many of these anymore but every once in a while stumble across a few.  I thought I would share this picture with you all.

So I was driving out to one of our Napa Pinot Noir vineyards today and drove past a “bush” that I must have passed a couple dozen times in the past 3 years.  Today, I realized that there was an antique hiding behind that bush.  As you can see in the pictures, this is an old harvester from probably 30 years ago that must have died in this same vineyard.  It has been camoflaged into the surrounding and I never noticed it until today.  I was amazed when I realized what it was and it reminded me to slow down a bit.   All of us wine producers get so wound up in harvest every year that we tend to miss the little things.  And this harvester is much larger than a little thing.  Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses cause you might find a huge harvester hiding behind it.   Deep thoughts from winemaking.

Here are a few pictures from this morning in Clarksburg. Yes, the shadow in these pics are yours truly.  This shows you how we harvest this vineyard. The machine harvester has short paddles that gently knock the grapes and clusters off the vine and onto a conveyer belt. The conveyer belt moves the grapes into a bin that collects the grapes. Then from this bin, the grapes are loaded onto trucks that come to our custom crush facility that process the grapes under our supervision. All of this happens in the dark at nite mostly, as we start picking at 2am when the grapes are nice and cold. Just thougth I would show you all the technology that we utilize in our production. I think it is cool and hope you do too!!!

While out checking fruit today, I snapped a few pics from the rolling hills in Carneros.  This is the Jaeger vineyards site where we source some of our Aquinas Pinot Noir.  The fruit is still pretty acidic as it needs another couple of weeks to fully mature.  But so far, this fruit looks really nice.  Pinot Noir excels in a cool climate and this growing season has been very cool.  This allow the fruit flavors to set with natural acidity.   Here we go, harvest of 2010 is soon to be official for Don and Sons.