Delicious tastes at Sonoma Wine Country Weekend

Harvest time is here again! As always, this splendid season is marked by the noticeable scents of fresh picked grapes and the growing anticipation of finished wines from the 2009 vintage.

This weekend, the beauties of this bounty will be celebrated at the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, an exciting three-day event highlighted by an all-star cast of local grape growers, winemakers, chefs and sommeliers, Sept. 4-6.

As in years past, the festivities are built around two of Sonoma’s flagship wine and food events. On Saturday, the Showcase: Taste of Sonoma at the historic MacMurray Ranch in Russian River Valley will offer wine lovers and foodies direct access to the diversity, creativity, and the delicious “farm to table” bounty of California’s oldest wine country.

On Sunday, the biggest “party” of the year, the Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction, will offer fun for everyone at the lovely garden area at Cline Cellars in Sonoma. Founded in 1991, this joyous event has donated more than $8 million to local charities.

The honorary chair for this year’s extravaganza of taste-tempting delights is the Sangiacomo farmily, a multi-generational family known for its hands-on grape-growing practices on 1,500 acres of vineyards and over 100 unique sites planted in the highly esteemed wine-growing regions of Carneros, Sonoma Valley and Sonoma Coast.

Emigrants from Genoa, Italy, Vittorio and Maria Sangiacomo purchased the original 120-acre Home Ranch property located south of the historic town of Sonoma in 1927. After establishing a reputation for growing delicious pears, apples and prunes, the family planted its first vineyard in 1969.

In the 1970s, the expansion of the grape-growing program was led by the second generation of Sangiacomo siblings: Angelo, Bob, Buck and Lorraine. Today, the lessons learned in the vineyards have been passed down to the third generation: Michael and wife Whitney, Steve and wife Connie, and Mia and her husband Mike Pucci, who now run the Sangiacomo Family Vineyards operations on a day-to-day basis.

Expansion to Petaluma

While the majority of the Sangiacomo property is in Carneros; many of the newer plantings of chardonnay, pinot noir and cool-climate syrah can be found in the southern section of the Sonoma Coast appellation known as the Petaluma Gap.

Ten miles south of downtown Petaluma, one of these special sites is the Lakeville Vineyard. Influenced by the powerful Petaluma Gap winds and the close proximity to San Pablo Bay, the vines planted in 1990 were among the first in this region since Prohibition.

After completing the development of the Fedrick Vineyard across Lakeville Highway in 2000, the Sangiacomos shared the information about growing in the unique cool-climate conditions with local residents. Among the attentive listeners was Joan Griffin, who planted the nearby Griffin’s Lair Vineyard with her husband, Jim, in 2000.

“Anything Angelo Sangiacomo and his family found out about soils, roots, clones, sources of water or even the grapes grown in the area before Prohibition, they were generous enough to share with us,” said Griffin.

“Not only did this information make the planting of our vineyard that much easier, but their family helped show us the potential of the region way before anyone else was really talking about it.”

In the Penngrove-Cotati area, the Sangiacomos developed the Roberts Road Vineyard in 1999. One of the fans of this special site is Greg La Follette, a talented winemaker who has been bottling his Tandem Pinot Noir made with fruit grown on this pristine piece of property since 2001. Today, the latest release from the 2006 vintage is layered with lovely flavors of ripe berry, plum, spice, and an amazing gamey note which La Follette refers to with a French accent as “sauvage et animale.”

“The microbiology of the Roberts vineyard is very special and the wines show it,” says La Follette. “The grapes have great hang due to the cool weather in the region. To me, there is something magical and viscerally exciting about the flavor profile that is like no other wine I make.”

Sommelier stars on wine

On Saturday, Tandem and many other vineyard designate wines made with grapes farmed by the Sangiacomos will be tasted at the Showcase: Taste of Sonoma event and an evening dinner being held at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn. During the day, many of these wines will also be featured in educational wine tours and seminars led by the “Sommelier Stars” team.

Besides myself (the local host), other sommeliers participating will include: from San Francisco, Emily Wines of Fifth Floor Restaurant at the Kimpton Hotel, Christie Dufault of RN74, Jeff Anderson of Gary Danko Restaurant, Michael Garcia of XYZ at the W Hotel, Amy Currens of the Intercontinental Hotel and Danielle Kuzinich of Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar SF; from Napa Valley, Gillian Balance of Farm at Carneros Inn and Traci Dutton of Culinary Institute of America, Greystone; from Chicago, Chantelle Pabros of L20 Restaurant and Kim Beto of Southern Wine & Spirits, the main sponsor of the Sommelier Stars team. In short, a fun time for all!

For more information about these exciting weekend festivities, visit www.sonomawinecountryweekend.com.

(Petaluma resident Christopher Sawyer is a journalist, wine judge and the world’s only official film festival sommelier at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival held each April. He can be contacted at csawyer@sonic.net.)