The backstory of the Sonoma County Barrel Auction

Every major event has a backstory, a puzzle of infighting, negotiations and concessions before unity can be pieced together. The Sonoma County Barrel Auction is no exception.

By all accounts the inaugural event was a success logistically and financially. The auction raised $461,700, roughly a cool half million from lots snapped up by bidders impressed by Sonoma County wine.

However, creating unity for the event took some doing, according to some of the players involved.

The new Sonoma County Barrel Auction required the Russian River Valley Winegrowers (RRVW) to rethink their Pinot Classic event since a barrel auction was going to be part of it.

Changing the event was initially disappointing to people like Mark McWilliams of Healdsburg’s Arista Winery, one of the organizers.

“The Pinot Classic was our baby, an original idea around a pinot event but we realized the challenge both financially and logistically as a small organization to put on an event of that caliber,” McWilliams said. “We felt we could have eventually pulled it off, but it would have been a slow process … It would have been a hard, long runway.”

In light of the Sonoma County Barrel Auction, the RRVW ultimately decided to forgo a barrel auction and even relinquished the name “Pinot Classic.”

The group has held onto La Paulée dinner as an auxiliary event of the Sonoma County Barrel Auction.

Traditionally, La Paulée dinner in France is held to celebrate the end of the harvest. Vintners would gather for a communal meal and bring special bottlings from their cellars to share.

This year La Paulée was at the Kosta-Browne Winery in Sebastopol’s Barlow. People brought wine of many varietals to share; this was not a pinot-centric event.

Rod Berglund, vintner of Forestville’s Joseph Swan Vineyards and president of the Russian River Valley Winegrowers, said even before there was talk of the Sonoma County Barrel Auction there was a “small but loud and passionate” group of growers who argued against the Pinot Classic. They claimed that focusing on one varietal was not the best way to showcase the Russian River Valley.

“Sometimes it takes heated discussions … there’s a lot of give and take and people have to listen to each other,” Berglund said.

Corey Beck, winemaker of Geyserville’s Francis Ford Coppola Winery and president of the Sonoma County Vintners Association, said last year the vintners reached out to the Russian River Valley Winegrowers to collaborate with them.

“I think we needed to provide clarification in terms of what the event was meant to be – marketing the AVAs (American Viticultural Areas),” Beck said. “Pinot noir is an iconic varietal, but we also want to showcase the diversity of Sonoma County. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t about one appellation and one varietal.”

Diversity, it seems, is the poster child of Sonoma County.

“The success of this county won’t rest on any one AVA,” Beck said. “It will rest on the shoulders of all the AVAs and the shoulders of the leaders of those AVAs.”