Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/12827
Foppiano Vineyard Manager and fifth-gener- ation family winery member Paul Foppiano on the estate’s upper benchland, with Petite Sirah vines. Fine Tuning at ONE OF SONOMA COUNTY’S OLDEST FAMILY WINERIES RECLAIMS ITS russIan rIver roots by meridith may / photos by ryan lely Relics: an old train caboose, a weathered barn and an old family residence that dates back to the 1930s. The home ranch setting for Foppiano Vineyards, just minutes from downtown Healdsburg, in the northern end of the Russian River Valley, is rustic and so charmingly real. It’s late May, and there’s an unusual weather pattern in Sonoma wine country for this season. In the cold drizzle, we walk the benchland vineyards, smell the Chardonnay bloom, its full flower anxious for summer to announce itself. And, in the same way, the new team is bursting to show off its re-branding—news as big as that of 1937, when the Foppiano Wine Company became one of the first Sonoma County wineries to bottle under its own label. july 2010 / the tasting panel / 73