Turning heads

The "experiment" was concealed in a 5-gallon Tupperware container, tucked behind a couple of boxes and hidden beneath a towel in the garage of his Forestville home.

But 15-year-old renegade Trini Amador IV was busted when his parents discovered his secret potion — fermenting pinot noir.

Today, Amador is the winemaker/partner of Gracianna Winery, the producer making noise with its new tasting room in Healdsburg and tasty wines that are turning heads. Amador grins remembering that quirky experiment 12 years ago that set his winemaking adventure in motion.

"My parents weren't very happy with it because I was making alcohol and I had to pour it out," Amador says.

Of course, it wasn't long before they realized Amador wasn't mischievous — just curious.

"When we realized Trini was genuinely interested in &‘how do you turn a grape into wine,' we wanted to support that interest and decided to buy him some more professional equipment for Christmas that year," explains his father, Trini Amador III.

For Trini the teenager, that winemaking kit was packaged ambition.

"I've been making wine ever since, every harvest from 2001 on," he says. "It started as a curiosity. Then it grew into a hobby and now it has grown into a profession."

Amador's latest enterprise? Establishing a tasting room to give Gracianna a home. The brand, which makes 1,200 cases a year, is being produced at Vinify Wine Services, a custom crush facility on Coffey Lane in Santa Rosa.

The rustic, chocolate-colored tasting room at 6914 Westside Road is barn-like, with broad sweeping doors. It has curb appeal and on a recent sunny day it reeled in two tourists from Glastonbury, Conn.

"We drove by and noticed the new place," says Babak Atighechi. "A lot of wineries are kind of hidden, sealed up, but this was so open. It gives you the impression of a laid-back atmosphere with its big barn doors."

At the bar inside, three Gracianna wines are being poured — the chardonnay, zinfandel and pinot noir — all produced from Russian River fruit. Critics are fond of the wines, particularly the chardonnay.

Tasters can meander to the back patio, which opens up into a few acres of vines that reach to the banks of the Russian River. A lineup of potted plants — Dwarf White Spruce — gives the outdoor space a cozy feel.

The tasting room is in good company on Westside Road, not far from heavy hitters like Arista Winery, Gary Farrell Winery, Rochioli Vineyards & Winery and Williams Selyem. Amador's father refers to this stretch as the "miracle mile," even though the distance isn't exactly a mile.

"My dad always said he wanted to live on the miracle mile of Westside Road," Amador says. "We're all really excited it worked out to have our tasting room here."

Amador, clad in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, is 6 foot 1 inch and weighs 255. He says his nickname is "House," because "I'm big as a house. ... I'm a big guy."

On most days he's wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and an Oregon State ball cap. At 27, Amador still looks like a college kid, the one who turned fermentation into a sport.

"We were crazy college kids," Amador says. "We experimented with a lot of things. Whatever was on sale at Safeway, like peaches or watermelon or blackberries or apples."

It was the suspense that what was the most fun, he says.

"It was not knowing what would happen," he says. "It worked probably 50 percent of the time."

Amador said now that he's in charge of Gracianna, he's given up being the mad scientist.

"Instead of experimenting, now I'm more quality-focused," he said. "If we want to try new yeast or a new barrel, we'll do that."

Amador says Gracianna will never surpass 6,000 cases a year because he always wants it to be a boutique winery.

"We want to focus on the quality and the consumer," says Amador, who works about 50 hours a week between winemaking and working events.

Amador's advice to would-be precocious winemakers: "Follow your dreams and then work really hard ... it won't always be easy. You have an idea in your head of what you think is going to happen and it usually doesn't happen that way."

Of course, whenever Amador get frustrated, the Gracianna label helps him keep perspective.

The label features a wrapped package, because the word gracianna means "gratitude" in Italian. It's also the name of Amador's great-great-grandmother.

Family lineage is celebrated at Gracianna and Amador said being Trini Amador IV is an honor.

"I'm the fourth and I've never met another fourth before, which makes it very unique and special," he says, adding with a grin, "Big shoes to fill."

You can reach Staff Writer Peg Melnik at 521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com.