Ravenswood Vineyard Designate Wines

In the beginning, Dom Paino didn't know anything about growing grapes. His parents had come to America from an island north of Sicily, and after they settled in Boston, his father managed a supermarket while his mother worked in a shoe factory. When Dom graduated from Harvard business school, it was the ultimate fulfillment of an immigrant family's dream.

Dom went into real estate development, helping create the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. Some of his Harvard classmates also worked in California, and one of them wanted to start a winery specializing in Bordeaux-style grapes. Dom may have been ignorant about viticulture, but he did know a lot about real estate, and from the fi rst moment he visited the site—Moon Mountain above Sonoma Valley—he was bullish about the idea. When he was invited to become a partner, he said yes. Dom's group founded Carmenet Vineyards, a first-class operation that helped pioneer the "Meritage" style of California wine. Ultimately, the company went public and the partners decided to liquidate their holdings; by that time, though, guess who found himself reluctant to leave.

Turned out Dom had fallen in love with vines. He now knew how to farm on hillsides, and he knew that Moon Mountain—a thousand feet above sea level, but right in the path of San Pablo Bay breezes—was a great place for Bordeaux-type grapes. He started searching the vicinity for a similar piece of property, finding an utterly spectacular one on an adjacent ridge with a bird's-eye view of Sonoma. A former quarry for cobblestones, it was empty of water, electricity, or roads, but since Dom was a developer, that didn't faze him at all.

Today Dom farms forty acres of meticulously maintained Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. To make wine from it, Ravenswood harvests and ferments each varietal separately, combining them only later and barreling the blend for two years. As rich in texture as in fl avor, the bottled wine is full of dark fruit, herbs, smoke, tar and spice. Structured like a classic Margaux, it's built for the long haul (ten years or more of aging) but is lively and luscious when young.

Through all the decades and developments, Dom didn't forget that his fortunes changed when his parents immigrated before he was born. But neither did he dishonor the importance of his family's roots. When he obtained his own piece of earth, he called it Salina—the island that his parents came from, whose name also echoes early California. A bridge between the Old and New Worlds, it's a perfect reflection of the wine it produces.

FLAVOR PROFILE:				Layers of red fruit, herbs, vanilla and spice flavors


Location				Sonoma Valley

Acreage				About 15 acres

Year planted				First blocks planted in 1989

Soil type				Red hill clay loam with rocks

Climate				Warm Sonoma climate, above fog line with breezes from the bay

Elevation				Around 800 feet

Exposure				Northern and western

Spacing				5'X10', 5'X12', 6'X12'

Yield				Between 3 and 4 tons per acre

Varietals				Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Blends vary based on vintage characteristics.

Rootstock				1103P and 110R