winemaker

Something we often complain about is the price tags of wine. And it’s totally understandable - wine, on the surface, is just fermented grape juice bottled in a glass container. How hard can it be to consistently grow grapes, make wine, and sell to customers at a low price while still allowing the families who make the wines to earn a decent living? 

The wine world is an ever-evolving phenomenon with climate change, consumer awareness and economic strains. In order to be a successful winemaker in today's world, you need to be able to adapt at the drop of a dime. The winemakers of Crete have embraced this philosophy and their culture, tapping into their vast potential to create more quality wines from grape varieties never heard of before, native to their lands.

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Turning on to the drive leading up to the Riofavara Vineyards in Val di Noto, the first thing you notice is all the plant and animal life thriving around you. The biodiversity on the vineyard is evident from the gate, butterflies abundant and flora in full bloom. Massimo Padova and his family have been growing vines for generations but only began bottling their own juice in 1993.

The fellas at Austin Winery are anything but traditional winemakers. Cooper Anderson and Ross McLauchlan are navigating the wine world by following their own north star, as neither come to winemaking natively. It’s a path chosen rather than given, self taught, these gentlemen have encompassed in ten years what takes some wineries generations to obtain. Mastering first ‘conventional’ winemaking, then rolling the dice and taking a chance on a more natural, terroir driven approach. As proof by their wine portfolio, they are creating fun and interesting wines by interpreting others' winemaking styles in their own way and giving them a proper Texas twist by sourcing all their organic fruit within state lines.

They’re on their way to prestige and taking their tribe with them along the way, emboldening their team to try their own hands at creating the good juice under the Austin Winery Umbrella, with a ‘what is good for them, is good for us’ philosophy and even displaying their friend’s artwork on th...

Cooper Mountain Vineyards is a winery ahead of the curve in the Willamette Valley, being certified organic since the early '90s.  Barbara Gross, co-owner and operator, sat down to speak with me about growing up on a Willamette vineyard, finding her place among the vines, and maintaining the spirit of the vineyard through the good times and the bad.