The Napa Fires

On Saturday, October 14th, my wife Mary Ann and I returned home after being displaced by the Napa and Sonoma fires. My son Matthew and his family evacuated Monday at 1:30 am and came to our house. By 3 pm that afternoon, we all decided to get out of the valley. Our grandaughter is only four months old and we were especially concerned with the amount of smoke that was accumulating in Napa.

This was the worst act of nature that I have ever experienced. Luckily, all of us are well and our homes escaped destruction. Our hearts go out to friends, family, neighbors, and fellow vintners that were not as fortunate. Napa came together as a community like never beore, and I am proud be a resident.

We are thankful that all of our grapes had been picked and crushed before the fires began. It is now time for us all to move forward and help our neighbors get their lives back to some type of normality.

Thank you to family, friends, and customers that reached out to us during that week. We are grateful for your thoughts and prayers.

A special thanks to fire fighters, police, rescue crews, and all first responders. You are awesome!
 

Oct 21, 2017 at 9:49 PM Permalink

Sonoma Harvest Fair

Last night my wife, Mary Ann, and I poured our award winning wines for the Sonoma County Harvest Fair. The event was held at the Sonoma fairgrounds in the Pavilion. I am proud to inform you that we won Double Gold on our 2016 Michael Pozzan Russian River Chardonnay. We also won Silver Medals for both Michael Pozzan Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and the Michael Pozzan Sonoma County Pinot Noir.

Last night's event brought out hundreds of wine enthusiasts from all over Northern California. We also had the opportunity to speak to people that were visiting from Chicago and Houston. It's always been very enjoyable for me to be able to chat with consumer's and gives me a better understanding of what they look for when selecting wines for themselves.

The Russian River Chardonnay was the big hit of the night. So many people commented on the fact that the wine wasn't dominated by too much oak and how it showed wonderful balance and finesse. 

Mary Ann did a great job decorating our table. She shopped for flowers earlier that day and brought bunches of grapes that she picked from our backyard. 
 

Oct 15, 2017 at 9:54 PM Permalink

Epcot Food and Wine Festival

I was a presenter last weekend at the legendary Epcot Food and Wine Festival at Walt Disney Resort in Orlando, Florida. We were thrilled that the festival was still able to take place after Hurricane Irma. Orlando came out pretty good compared to the Florida Keys – Disney World only closed for 2 days to be on the safe side. By the time we arrived the resort was bustling and looked to be totally in order.

We had over a 100 people at our tasting event. I shared some history of our family and Michael Pozzan Winery. Mary Ann and I started the business on a shoestring budget and only produced 200 cases our first year. We’ve since grown production to over 125,000 cases. I tasted the group through the Michael Pozzan 2016 Russian River Chardonnay, 2012 Sailors Grave, and Annabella 2015 Cabernet – which was showing exceptionally well.

One highlight of the trip was a question and answer session after the tasting. I was also able to chat with guests one-on-one during a bottle signing, where we sold out of the Sailors Grave! Luckily, we have the new vintage ready to go.

The food was another highlight of our trip. We went to two fantastic restaurants and had meals we will not soon forget. First, our family had dinner at Il Molino at the Disney Swan Hotel. We started with a wonderful caesar salad and linguini marinara, and finished the meal with Veal and Eggplant Parmesan. We enjoyed a gorgeous Italian red blend to compliment the food.

Next we dined at the California Grill, where manager Andrey took exceptional care of us. Our table was overlooking the Disney Castle, and the evening ended with a firework show. They currently have the Michael Pozzan 2014 Russian River Pinot Noir as part of their wine list, so we enjoyed a bottle with our meals of grouper, filet & risotto, and a lobster tempura roll.  A sincere thanks to Florida for hosting us on such an outstanding trip!

Sep 29, 2017 at 9:51 AM Permalink

Martignetti Trade Show

My wife Mary Ann and I are in Boston doing a trade show with our Massachusetts distributor, Martignetti Wines. This is is a semi-annual event that we do in Spring and Fall. The goal behind these shows are to meet one on one with retailer's and restauranteer's to showcase our wines and to chat about new releases and upcoming vintages.  Typically, as a producer, we will work with the distributor's sales representatives traveling to different accounts to taste the buyers on our wines individually.  While this is a great way to showcase our wines on a personal level, it is nearly impossible to reach everyone in the state.  These tradeshows provide exactly that.

We have been working with the Martignetti family for close to twenty years and have enjoyed a close relationship based on mutual respect. The highlight for us today is to present our newest wine, Giapoza, that is named after our first grandchild, Gianna Pozzan.

For dinner we went to the Bristol Lounge Bar at the Four Seasons. They offer our Michael Pozzan 2014 Russian River Pinot Noir by the glass and enjoyed it with my burger.

The man on the right in the picture is Brian Keeping. Director of Fine Wines for Martignetti in Boston.

Sep 13, 2017 at 9:29 AM Permalink

Giapoza

Our New Wine Project – Giapoza

I am happy to say that we have just completed our newest wine project, Giapoza! Being a family owned and operated winery, we try to stress this theme by naming wine labels after our loved ones.  As a result, Giapoza comes from my first child, and daughter, Gianna.  However, we hit a speed bump getting there. The name Gianna was already used as a wine label. The wine industry is so large with the so many wines in the market, past and present, that many common names at one time or another have already been used. I was recently speaking with a friend of mine whose family has a new winery in Coombsville and, when creating the name for the winery, he was surprised by how many were already taken.  Eventually after much research on the many variations of Gianna or Gia, we centered on the combination of Gianna and Pozzan, thus creating Giapoza; dropping a “z” for the sake of symmetry.

Luckily, the difficulty of trade marking the name is over and we can focus on the winemaking. For now Giapoza comes in only 2 varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. 1,000 cases made of each; they are California appellated wines that are meant to retail around $18. This is currently where we have a gap in pricing. Even though they are California appellated we decided to some Napa fruit in the Cabernet and Russian River fruit in the Pinot inorder to boost the quality. These wines will first be released in our September wine club, and be released to the public sometime thereafter.

Aug 31, 2017 at 5:32 PM Permalink