Kyle Cameron and Gianna Fugazi of Trecini Winery are our first-time guests on California Wine Country with Daedalus Howell in for Steve Jaxon, and with Dan Berger.

Kyle is a seventh generation Russian River Valley farmer. They are farming grapes now. He and his wife Christina bought Trecini Winery in order to get more involved in the rest of the wine business, apart from growing grapes. The wine market is in a downturn, so he has a positive outlook. Dan Berger says this downturn is a predictable one or two year cyclic drop.

Giana Fugazi is originally from Linden, California, where she grew up on a cherry orchard. She studied wine business and archaeology at Sonoma State. Her dad calls grape growing “fancy farming.”  She worked as an archaeologist in Italy for three years.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Dan Berger believes that the future will include more Italian grape varieties. He peaks to retailers all around the country and the world. Retailers are telling him that there is less enthusiam for the Number one varietals in white and red, which are Chards and Cabs. There are many wines that used to be obscure that people are asking for. “I’m interested in making any kind of obscure wine,” says Kyle.

As a starter, Dan has brought a wine from grape grower Francis Mahoney, a friend of his. It is a 2024 Albariño, quite dry, sells for about $24 a bottle. It’s in a lot of local retain shops. Gianna has brought a Verdolo from Portugal. There are less than 500 acres of this grape in California. This is a 2024 from Taft Street, where Gianna is a series winemaker. This is her first take, a 100% neutral barrel. The organic grapes are from Calaveras County. She fermented it outside in barrels, no temperature control, then she consolidated it into an egg (concrete). There was no temperature control, so it was risky but successful.

Darryl Miller from Dehlinger Winery is back on California Wine Country today with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger. He has been on the show before, the last time was this episode, last summer.

This is the 50th anniversary of Dehlinger Winery. Darryl has known the family for forty years. Tom Dehlinger was a biochemist and got the wine bug. He studied wine at Davis and worked with some local wineries. Then, bought a property on the corner of Vine Hill Road and Guerneville Road in 1972. He and his brother built an octagonal house in the middle of the property which is iconic. They crushed their first grapes in 1975.

Dan Berger started writing about wine at that time and tasted his first Dehlinger wines in 1979. They were among the first to plant grapes in the area which would later become Pinot Noir and Chardoheaven. The other local pioneers were the Rocchioli and Martinelli vineyards, not far from there. The vineyard is a rolling hill property with two types of soil, Altamont, a red iron based clay, and Goldridge, a gray sandy loam. The sections of the vineyard with different soils produce different results in the wine. This is why they produce some wines from each section and soil type.

The 40th Winesong Weekend Celebration is Sept. 5-6, 2025. Click the Winesong 40th logo for details.

Dan Berger has brought a bottle of his Bahl Fratty Riesling It is a 2023 that just got a Gold Medal at the American Fine Wine Competition in Miami. The grapes are from Cole Ranch in Mendocino County, near Booneville. Bahl Fratty means Good Drink in Boontling, the local lingo. Dan’s goal was to make the wine as dry as possible. The 2022 was also a gold medal winner.

Darryl went to college in Humbolt State then moved to Seattle and worked as a waiter. He met someone who suggested he could sell wine and he did end up selling a lot of wine. The business took him to San Francisco, Hawaii and Tahoe. Eventually he ended up in Sonoma County, the same year as Dan, in 1981. He started his own company as a broker and sold some very famous wines like Taft Street, Davis Bynum and Iron Horse. Then in 1995 he sold his company to the Henry Wine Group and continued to work with them. Darryl is one of the judges at Dan Berger’s annual wine competition.

There are different ways to know good wine but what’s really important is what you like. -Darryl Miller

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Dehlinger makes about 8,000 cases of wine per year, but they grow enough grapes for 40,000. Many famous wineries get grapes from them, whose names are not to be made public. The rest of the show is the tasting of the wines Darryl has brought.

First  is the 2021 Goldridge Pinot Noir. Round, rich and juicy, Dan says silky with a crisp finish. The next one is also a Pinot Noir, from the Altamont soil section, that has more structure because it also gets some whole cluster fermentation. Darryl calls the Altamont tighter, stronger with more minerality. Visit the website for details.

Matt Duffy from Vaughn Duffy Wines joins Steve Jaxon, Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell on California Wine Country today. Daedalus Howell is also in. He is doing an hour every weekday from 2 to 3 PM on Wine Country Radio.

Vaughn Duffy specializes in Pinot Noir. They make 8 or 10 Pinot Noir wines from Russian River Valley and Petaluma Gap. Their tasting room is on Sonoma Highway next to Palooza Restaurant. Today he has brought two bottles of Pinot Noir. The San Giacomo vineyard and Uberroth vineyard, as well as a barrel sample of another Pinot Noir that is in production.

In August there will be a tasting event that culminates on August 10 at a new venue in Santa Rosa called The Backdrop. There will be over 100 Petaluma Gap wines to taste.

Petaluma Gap is one of the greatest wine growing regions that gets its cool climate from the wind. This keeps the acidity levels high. As the climate gets warmer, regions like Petaluma Gap will enjoy favorable conditions. The wind comes up every evening at about 5:00 and it is unstoppable. The region is ideal for Pinot Noir but they grow Grenache, Syrah and Blau Frankish. Great Pinot Noir will not be dark red, and Dan noticed that about these wines.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Pinot Noir lovers have been drinking Petaluma Gap wines since even before the AVA of Petaluma Gap was establihed in 2017. Before that, it was all Sonoma Coast AVA. But Sonoma Coast is a gigantic area and it made sense to carve out the Petaluma Gap due to its unique conditions and results.

The Wind to Wine Festival is coming on August 8, 9 & 10 with exclusive vineyard walks, winery tours and the great tasting on August 10 with super-chef Charlie Palmer.

Matt Duffy and his wife Sarah Vaughn are about to make their sixteenth consecutive bottling. His first year working was 2007. After being a harvest worker and learning winemaking from the process of doing it. He and his wife bought some grapes in 2009 and started making wine, while he was still working his day job managing the crush facility. They have a tasting room in Kenwood in the Sonoma Valley. “The wine business is a long game. It takes a year or two to get your line into the bottle to sell it… You’ve got to stick it out… Keep going, keep growing… look for better vineyards every year.”

David Hejl from Domaine Della is our guest on California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger. Blair Hardman is also in the studio today. The Domaine Della winery is named after David’s mother, Della.

David used to be the CEO and general manager for Kosta Browne. He worked for Kosta Browne winery after they were sold to new owners. He was entrusted with managing the staff through a transition to go from 10,000 cases per year to 30,000.

Before that, David started in the 1980s living in Paris, France, working for Nabisco. He had great French wine at dinner every night. That was the exposure to wine that started his lifelong interest.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

They are tasting a Chardonnay that Dan Berger calls, “Chardonnay to make you wake up,” and, “incredible.” David gives credit to the vineyard, one of Sonoma County’s finest. It’s all about picking to get the perfect acidity. He also prefers not to use too much oak. That is how he gets the fruit to take the lead.

Dan calls this wine perfectly balanced. It has the rich fruit that you want, but the acidity to make it pair well with food. It is a remarkable balance between big and delicate. And of course, it should get better in about three years.

Then they open a Pinot Noir. He uses fruit from some of the same vineyards that supplied Kosta Browne. The owners and growers are longtime friends. They are 85% direct to consumer. The rest sells through charity events around the country.

Dan says the Pinot Noir is excellent, and has all the best characteristics of Russian River Pinot Noir. Elegant, raspberry aromas, a little bit of cherry, and a spice component. David explains that there are 6 different clones, in two different vineyards.

Dan, Melissa and Deadalus.

Melissa Galliani and Daedalus Howell are our guests on California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger today. Melissa Galliani is the GM of Wine Country Radio.  Deadalus Howell is the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and some other local publications. He is also a frequent guest on The Drive with the Boho Buzz, a regular feature of what’s currently in the paper. Lisa Santos, the advertising director of The Bohemian, is also in.

This is Bay Area Burger Week. Co-incidentally, Dan Berger wrote an article this week about hamburger meat and hamburger sandwiches. There is just one vowel of difference between burger and Berger! There is a promotion with restaurants that have specials throughout the 12-day “week.” Daedalus has a trivia question for listeners, which is, what actor played the part of McDonald’s entrepreneur Ray Kroc in the movie The Founder? Listener Kelley knew that answer is Michael Keaton and she wins the prize. Later we will ask who played Pussy Galore in Goldfinger? Honor Blackman is the answer.

Terry Damskey from Dehlinger Winery could not come in as scheduled today. So Dan Berger has brought a few wines from Bottle Barn for tasting and discussion. The first one tasted is a Washington state wine which was at Bottle Barn for a mere $4.99. Today is the first day of summer, so there will be a lot of whites (and Rosés) on the show.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Then they taste a 2022 Babich Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. It is on sale at a close-out price at Bottle Barn. There is also a Cinsault from Lodi, California. The winery is called Jesse’s Grove. They have their own vineyards, some of which are original vines planted in 1886. They have some of the oldest Cinsault grapes in the world. Finally, Ammunition is a Sonoma County Pinot Noir.

Wine importer Don Chigazola is back on California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger, with newly arrived wines from Alto Adige.  His company Chigazola Merchants brings small lots of carefully selected wines from small family producers in many different regions of Italy. Steve Jaxon describes what he does as “…the coolest job in the world.” Melissa Galliani is also with us in the studio today.

Don begins by describing how he has recently expanded his activity into France, by applying the same model that they do to their business with Italian winemakers.

They went to the Paris wine show, and they also spent some time visiting family winemakers in Provence. They met with four and they will definitely be importing from two of them. That will begin once the tariff situation settles down.

Don started traveling to Italy with his wife Debbie, visiting small hilltop towns, asking the locals about who made the best wine. He found a lot of great wine, and noticed that the quality of wines he found in Italy was not available here. So he figured out how to import wine from Italy, to sell directly to consumers. He needed three different licenses and eventually fulfilled all the requirements.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

In the first few years, Chigazola Merchants sold about 80% of their wine to local bars and restaurants, and 20% to individuals. That proportion has reversed now, since their wine club has grown so much.

Today Don has brought some white wines from the Alto Adige region, where they grow grapes at very high altitude. The wines come out with high minerality and fresh acidity. The first are tasting a Riesling that arrived in California last February. This Riesling is bone dry. Dan Berger calls this wine the anti-Chardonnay. It’s not so dry that it’s austere. It has fresh clean aromatics and it goes with food. Melissa agrees that it tastes fresh and crisp. The Rieslings from this producer will age well.

The second wine they taste is a Sylvaner, which is a dry white variety very different than the Riesling. Dan says it is oriented to delicate foods, as a delicate wine. It could go with halibut or sturgeon. Riesling is more aromatic, this wine is more minerally. Melissa suggests Teriyaki Sea Bass. These wines are all 2023s.

The third wine is a varietal that if very difficult to find here in California called Kerner. It typically makes a little sweeter wine, a little bit like Gruner Veltliner. It has a nice balance between sugar and acid. It’s a “porch pounder” says Dan.

There is a section on the Chigazola Merchants website called Our Producers where you can learn more about the families that produce the wines that Don imports.

The fourth varietal tasted today is a Gewürtztraminer. Usually that is a sweet wine, but Dan describes this one as “succulent without being sweet.” The label says 3g of residual sugar, which Dan calls “nothing.” Dan says it’s not an easy wine to make because you have to be in a really cold climate and know exactly when to pick the grapes. The producer makes a very small amount and sells most of it in their local village. Don got 10 cases. Dan Berger says it is the most amazing Gewürtztraminer he has ever tasted.

Leah Scurto and Chris Puppione.

Chris Puppione from Puppione Family Wines joins Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger on California Wine Country today.

Leah Scurto from PizzaLeah is also here, and she brought several different pizzas. We will try some pizza and wine pairings.

Chris Puppione starts telling the story of the family winery. He had worked in wine and thought of bottles of wine as time capsules. So when his first daughter was born, he made a wine for her to celebrate her birth. A neighbor in the Russian River area sold him one ton of Syrah grapes.

He even told a tall tale to his wife to get her to come out and prune the first grapes for their wine. When the second daughter was born he made another wine and they kept on making wine that connects to their family history. This wine they are tasting today is a 2017.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Dan Berger discovered Puppione Family Wines when he was a judge in a blended red category at a recent competition. Immediately he liked it so much he found out who made it. It was a really low alcohol wine, which Dan likes. About 10 days later, Dan found the winery and met Chris for the first time. Chris Puppione mentions his day job, he oversees US wineries for Coravin, a company that makes wine equipment.

Festa Bianco + Sicilian

We’re going to do pizza and wine pairing today. Leah Scurto has brought four different pizzas, each one with very different flavors. We will pair them with four Puppione wines.

The first pairing is a bottle of Festa Bianco, a white wine, with the Sicilian pizza. Festa was Chris’ grandmother’s maiden name. The Sicilian pizza has Castelvetrano olives, Italian salame, chili flakes, ricotta and a little red onion. The wine is a Friulano, which is a northern Italian white wine often mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc. It goes well with green vegetables and salads. It come from the Friuli region of Italy, which is the north-eastern part of the country, next to Slovenia.

Festa Rosso + Nico

The next pizza is the Nico, which is an award winner. It has confit garlic, fresh rosemary, black pepper and Italian sausage. This is paired with Festa Rossa, which is a blend of Syrah, Cabernet and Friulano. It is again, pretty low alcohol.

Dan calls PizzaLeah’s pizza the most classic pizza in Sonoma County. A lot of factors make PizzaLeah’s pizza special. Importantly, the dough is made by a slow, cold fermentation process. She uses local flour from Central Milling. She makes dough fresh daily. Only after two or three days of proofing in cold storage does it become pizza. Extended fermentation makes bread more digestible. It also gives the dough the right texture. Some deep dish pizzas are not really even pizza, they are more like cake. For comparison, it’s almost more like a casserole. PizzaLeah does have two Detroit-style pan pizzas. The crust comes out looking like a brick but light as a feather when you eat it.

Juventus + Spade

Dan appreciates Chris Pappapietro’s wine for the abundant fruit flavors. To make their Friulano, he had to go up into the hills near Tahoe, to a vineyard called Snow’s Crossing. It’s an alpine wilderness. They foot stomp all of their fruit, just like his grandfather did. His kids get into the bins and stomp fruit. There are pictures of that on their site. Especially, they left the Friulano on the skins in order to get more flavors from it.

Next up is the Juventus wine, named after the goddess of youth and rejuvenation (not the soccer team). Instead, he wanted to make a red wine that would invigorate people instead of bringing heaviness. He made it in stainless steel which helps maintain the fruit flavors.

Syrah + Detroit Pepperoni

The Spade pizza won an award in the American category in a competition in Napoli.

The next wine is their Intero Syrah. Intero means “whole” in Italian. It is the first wine that his whole family stomped on, but also they stomped on whole clusters. Leah has paired it perfectly with the original Detroit pepperoni pizza, which is finished with their hot meatball sauce. It has a little bit of Pecorino Romano. Steve grew up in Detroit and doesn’t remember the term “Detroit” pizza, it was all just pizza. Detroit style is very popular these days.

Dan and Paul from Small Vines.

Paul Sloan from Small Vines Wines joins Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger on California Wine Country. Daedalus Howell also joins us today. Small Vines Wines makes “world class wines of distinction.” Paul grew up in Sonoma County on a 250-acre horse and cattle ranch, on the eastern side of Santa Rosa. He worked in restaurants and ended up at John Ash & Co., known as one of the original farm-to-table restaurants.

His favorite wines were always from families that grew the fruit and also made the wine. When he fell in love with age-worthy, food-friendly wines, he continued to work for the Dutton family and studied viticulture at Santa Rosa JC. He planted some high-density vineyards over the years and his wines come from them.

Dan Berger says that the predictions of weather are less reliable than ever, as climate change is not uniform. Paul finds that high-density planting helps, in hot years by shading the vines. High density planting works but you have to take careful care of the vines.

Paul was the first person to actually design a wine with good natural acidity by planting high density vines.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Phylloxera is a root louse that is so small it is hard to see. It chews on certain roots and in particular, native roots. So you have to choose rootstock that is impervious to it. It appeared in the late 1980s. It was inevitable that all the vines affected had to be torn out and the vineyards replanted.

The more leaf surface you have, the more dappled sunlight you have, instead of direct light. By planting a 4-foot tractor row instead of an 8-foot tractor row, you can get fifty percent less direct sunlight on the fruit.

Daedalus asks about automation and the potential to use drones in the vineyard. Paul tells about advanced tractors that gather data. The high end producers will continue to do things by hand, but a lot of less expensive wines will have to use some automation. Dan Berger mentions that a lot of the automation is in the winery, rather than in the vineyard. There are tanks with built-in chemical analysis equipment. Also, sorting the fruit is still an important manual process. Ideally, you only harvest the ideally formed clusters of fruit.

Their first tasting is a 2021 TBH Chardonnay, that demonstrates the fruit selection. They sort the fruit on the vine. You only take the ideal length of cluster and diameter of berries. Their 2021 Chardonnay is the current release. His goal is to make age-worthy, food-friendly wines, so he sees no reason not to hold his wines for a few years before releasing them.

Erica, Judy & Doug.

Doug Mryglod, Judy Phillips and Erica Stancliff from Deodora Wine are our guests with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger on California Wine Country. Daedalus Howell is also in the studio today.

This is the first time that Doug and Judy have been on the show for Deodora Estate Vineyards. Erica Stancliff has been on CWC before on this episode of June 24, 2020.

Dan Berger introduces Deodora for winning a gold medal for a dry Riesling at the latest wine competition. The 2019 that won was up against some very stiff competition.

The 2024 is maybe better, says Dan. Judy says they bottled it back in February and this is the first bottle they are opening. The grapes come from “an amazing site in the Petaluma Gap.” This is precisely what the American consumer wants, and doesn’t know it. It is dry but not too much, with just enough personality in the aftertaste to suggest what kind of food it would go with. It should be served chilled but not ice cold. Dan describes plumeria, wild tropical fruit, and citrus flavors. The lime flavors will come out in about two years. Judy says Dan’s commentary makes the perfect tasting notes for this wine. It is not gripping and so lemony.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

Daedalus Howell is also here today. He notices the minerality in this wine, “a quiet little whisper” of slate, underneath the fruit flavors. It was barreled in concrete, there was no malolactic fermentation, and there was one neutral French oak barrel, and stainless steel.

Doug tells the Deodora story that starts with Judy. In 2012 they got a property that was an old goat farm. It took them months to clean it up and decide what to plant. There is a story behind the Riesling. He worked with Ford family in the Finger Lakes region, Heron Hill wine. Doug fell in love with Riesling after tasting theirs.

Doug didn’t want his Riesling to be too dry or too sweet, just in the middle, and for himself only. Dan says, “I did the same thing… just for me.” Dan says that Riesling makes itself if you have the right grapes. Judy says it was hard for them to believe they won that award for the Riesling.

Erica Stancliff tells how she was born and raised in Forestville with parents who were home winemakers. They started Trombetta Winery where Erica is the winemaker. Her mentor was Paul Hobbs and she is now a winemaker for various local labels. She loves Petaluma Gap for the wind, climate, Sonoma coast influence and the fog. That makes it perfect, absolutely perfect for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and also Riesling.

Daedalus asks Erica if their friend Chris Sawyer, the “sommelier to the stars” is really the originator of the term Petaluma Gap. He claimed it, says Daedalus. Erica has a precise technical description of the climate that makes for slow development of brix levels. In Petaluma Gap you only get a few hours of the peak heat, before the wind comes in every day.

The name Deodora comes from an old tree that is on a property he owns on a golf course. The tree is beautiful and comes from the Himalayas.

Steve, Ben, Yolanda and Olli.

Ben Papapietro and his wife Yolanda join Steve Jaxon on California Wine Country. Dan Berger is away today, visiting the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival, which we talked about on this episode two weeks ago. Ben is a co-founder of the Papapietr0-Perry winery. This is Ben and Yolanda’s first time on CWC.

Ben Papapietro started in his basement in San Francisco as a home winemaker. He had a friend, Bruce Perry, who worked with Ben in the delivery of the San Francisco Chronicle. They wanted to make Pinot but there was hardly any fruit at that time. Another friend, Burt Williams, also helped him get some Pinot fruit. But they made a lot of Cabernet Franc blends and Zinfandel. In 1990 he got a really good source of Pinot fruit. Then his partner talked him into opening a professional winery in 1997. Early in his winemaking career, Ben did some harvests with Burt Williams, the co-founder of Williams-Selyem, who was a mentor to Ben. He was one of the local winemakers who started producing Pinot Noir in Sonoma County.

California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines.

They are tasting a 2023 Pinot Noir, a vineyard designate from Peter’s Vineyard. It is in the high southern hills with the famous Goldridge soil that makes the region famous.

Melissa Galliani joins us in the studio today. Her t-shirt says “near perfect” and it has a story. Ben’s partner made the t-shirt that reproduces the comments of wine reviewers who liked their wine. Bruce Perry was Ben’s partner and very close friend. He passed away a couple of years ago.

Papapietro-Perry is participating in the Healdsburg Wine and Food Experience this weekend. But he and his wife are taking 80 people on a cruise up the Douro River in Portugal. They have organized several other cruises with as many as 140 people with them. They visit a lot of wineries and taste a lot of wine.

Ben grew up in the Mission district of San Francisco and visited Italy several times to see relatives on both sides of his family.

Papapietro-Perry has a “Light and Bright” club, which is for Rosé and Chardonnay. On June 14th there is an event called “Wine, Cheese and Chocolate.” Even during Covid they did a once-a-week live show that kept people involved. And in July there is the Papapietro-Perry Lobster and Chardonnay Festival.

Next they taste a Chardonnay which is a lighter style, fruit forward with a nice spicy finish that lingers. Ben also brought a Pinot Noir, made from the 777 clone grown in four different vineyards with different growing conditions.