The Route to Umbriaso
The Route to Umbriaso began at a Fourth of July party in San Francisco’s Sunset district in 2005. I was writing about the wine I was tasting. Someone approached and asked a question that changed my life.
“What are you doing?”
I replied that I wrote about every wine I sampled. “Try this.” He poured me a glass. It was his – a lovely Dry Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. He invited me to make wine.
Guided by many, among them my mentor and late friend Tim Patterson (Wine and Place: A Terroir Reader and Home Winemaking for Dummies), I began learning the ropes and meeting growers in Dry Creek Valley.
The route became clear in Dry Creek Valley. From the east slope of Bradford Mountain (see above), where we nearly crowd-sourced a small hillside vineyard with our innovative “Wineshare” model, to Ray Teldeschi’s (West) Dry Creek Valley bench, I made lasting connections.
Not a uniform American Viticultural Area (AVA), Dry Creek Valley is a big tent, encompassing distinctive terroirs. It resembles nothing so much as Umbria (the “Green Heart of Italy”).
Umbria invokes the Old World style of winemaking I came to embrace – blending fruit to express terroir. And this: creating wines to pair with food vs. making standalone dreadnoughts that chase Big Ratings. The necessity of scale – small batches – created a virtuous cycle that enforced attention to detail.
Umbria in Sonoma: Umbriaso.
Putting Umbriaso on the map was the next milestone. That door opened after a tasting of varietals from my 2013 vintage at Treasure Island Wines, the original San Francisco urban wine collective on the island. Among the tasters: UC Davis Mondavi Institute Staff Winemaker Chik Brenneman, wine blogger exraordinaire CJ Callen, and the captain of the ship: winemaker and principal Jim Morowski. Absent from that tasting but indispensable were Treasure Island’s virtuoso cellar master Danny Sullivan and marketing connoisseur Carole Martinson. With Danny and Jim and Carole’s support and guidance, Umbriaso was launched at Treasure Island Wines in 2016.
About the Umbriaso Mark
The route to Umbriaso is encoded in our logo. Designed by Sato Bon and deftly illustrated by Martine Freiberger, the mark features contour lines from a topological map of Bradford Mountain (Dry Creek Valley Sonoma). The topo lines ‘ground’ the mark. They are a reminder of the terroir that we seek to express in our wine.
Treasure Island Wines
Work and Play
“A spirit of cooperation prevails here.”
– SF Chronicle December 2018
Umbriaso is part of Treasure Island Wines, a San Francisco wine collective. We are passionate about process, product, and food. We share winemaking resources as well as a lab, a kitchen, and a (rustically) elegant tasting room.
