Enjoy this pictorial journey of Fall in the Sonoma Valley

From our sun-soaked vineyard to the bustling crush pad, immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of the Sonocaia Estate Winery in the Sonoma Valley. Explore the heart of California wine country and savor every moment of the season.

With our 2022 vintage, we reached the promised land having created a Sagrantino wine with superb color, great depth, structure, and varietal distinction. It’s simply a gorgeous wine that goes so very well with grilled beef, rich pastas, and aged cheese.  And the most perfect match of all – mushroom risotto!

Bottling the 2022 vintage

The finished product – vintage 2022 Sonocaia estate reserve Sagrantino. The first truly representative example of our almost decade-long effort to replicate Umbrian Montefalco Sagrantino in the Sonoma Valley. 

Shop here for Sonocaia Sagrantino

The bottling crew

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  Gas 'em and fill 'em Pete

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  Cork 'em and capsule 'em Cynthia

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  Label 'em Patrick

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  Case 'em and palletize 'em Dan

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  Our terrific bottling team grabbing lunch

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  and sometimes you happily get served a tuna melt on the tractor

Valley of the Moon “Vintage Festival”  – Grand Tasting Event

We poured our recently bottled 2022 Sonocaia Sagrantino estate reserve and the 2021 Dysfunctional Family ‘Double Buffalo” wine at the Valley of the Moon “Grand Tasting” event at the Barracks on the Sonoma Plaza. A really large audience crowded around our tasting table for three hours, a wonderful surprise given that we were literally surrounded by much larger and more famous wineries. 

The Grand Tasting inspired a big crowd from around the country

Lead by Executive Director, Robyn Sebastiani (2nd from right), the entire Vallay of the Moon “Vintage Festival” staff made the event a great success.

Valley of the Moon “Vintage Festival”  – Harvest Dinner and Auction Event

Celebrating 200 years of Sonoma Valley wine and farming, we donated a monster 6 Liter Methuselah of the 2017 Red Blend – 32% Cabernet, 29% Petite Sirah, 25% Syrah, and 14% Merlot, all from 100% organic, 100% Sonoma Valley vineyards, and 100% grown, produced, and bottled by our company.

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  200 years of Sonoma Valley history

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  Our donation to the auction, a monster 6 liter Dysfunctional Family Winery methuselah

Valley of the Moon “Vintage Festival” – Grape Stomp

As a large audience roared with encouragement (from a significant distance), 2-person teams raced each other to stomp ten pounds of grapes and produce a winning volume of liquid, and happily got themselves and the judges covered in red grape juice in the process

This was the winning team’s submission. And the stomping was much harder than it looked, even for the energetic youngsters.

Recent visitors to the Sonocaia estate

These are a few of the photos of various visitors to the winery, very random and with instructions to “just act natural.” They were all very good at following instructions.

Vintage 2024 – harvest prep

Sanitation and equipment checks are a constant at the winery. And especially at the start of harvest. Even more so when your assistant winemaker, Dominic Smith, also of Domesday wines, shows up with a new ultra-sleek, super-gentle, and very expensive Italian must pump.

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  Prepping the crush pad and the shiny new Raggazini peristaltic pump

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  and checking the Sagrantino brix and pH fruit for ripeness

A brief pause for some fun on the Sonoma Plaza

The Sonoma Plaza has an all-summer-long Tuesday night Farmer’s Market. It always attracts a large audience, especially when the food trucks and the music make the scene.

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  Tuesday Farmer's Market on the Sonoma Plaza

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  with friends, food, music, and vino

A grand rodeo at the Wing and Barrel Ranch in Carneros

The most incredibly all-American and patriotic event of the year in Sonoma, other than Fourth of July, our hosts Christine and Jon Curry of Landers Curry (famed Sonoma home builder and interior designer) served us ample cold beverages, provided perfect seats to view the parachute, barrel racing, and bull riding (and it should be called bull falling), followed by an hours-long BBQ. The right way to prep for harvest.

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  Parachutist floats into the rodeo grounds

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  and the celebration of the flag begins

Watching, waiting, tick tock, and finally, it’s go-time for the harvest

It’s a bit nerve-racking and daunting to work to diligently farm a vineyard and then put your head on the pillow every night in October and say to yourself “should I pick…now?” The decision will affect the quality and features of that vintage for years to come – in barrel, in bottle, and on your dinner table. But the decision must be made. And so in my view you make it fearlessly and without hesitation.

5:00am, the sky is dark, the air is perfectly cool, the tractor lights are glowing, it’s time, let’s do this.

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  Fat juicy berries get all the attention

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  Early morning hot air balloons

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  Manually loading fruit

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  A few escaped grape clusters are captured

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  Raking fruit into the destemmer

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  Some old school accounting

The team is psyched for the final bin as the sun begins to set on a long day, and the mighty Kubota tractor keeps on chugging

Wait, did you wash those feet?

Funny? Yes. But not a joke. Mike and Dom dropped the last 20% of this fruit into the bin as ‘whole clusters’ (stems on) and foot-tread the fruit. Truly, the most gentle and really pretty compelling way to very softly break up the berry skins without cracking the seeds. Works really well on smaller lots of 1-2 tons. Not so much on 100 tons!

Final thoughts

With all the wines quietly fermenting in the winery, we’re now busy with punchdowns and pumpovers 2-4 times every day for the next month. Then, it will be time to press that wine into barrels. And then eat some turkey and mashed potatoes.

But meanwhile…wait for it…Acorns! Just like clockwork, as the last grapes are harvested, the oak trees start dropping acorns. And I start yet another year of passionately collecting them for the baby oak tree nursery.

And from the Hydeout gardens, a payoff of amazing Fall potatoes

Warmest regards to you each for a fantastic, cold, rainy, quiet, and peaceful winter

Shop Sonocaia here – buy now in time for Thanksgiving – online or pick up at the winery

Next post – a review of the over 100 blogs posted here since June 2017

Happy tourists in their hot air balloons grace the early morning October skies over the Hydeout Farm and Sonocaia Winery