Jan 9, 2015
I had the honor of talking with
Bill and Betsy Nachbaur of ACORN Winery in Sonoma. From Sonoma
history, to grape leaf shape, canopy management, barrel toast, and
their specialty -- field blends -- you will learn so much from this
podcast. I know I did!
A few more details on the winery
we forgot to hit...the significance of the winery and vineyard
names...
Vineyard
Name
Our Vineyard name, “Alegría”,
means happiness and joy in Spanish. Bill chose the name, because he
was much happier as a farmer than he’d been as a lawyer (and folks
like his products) . He chose a Spanish word to honor
California’s Mexican heritage, and to recognize that our ranch
was part of the Rancho Sotoyome land grant. Spanish was
spoken here before English, and our workers are mostly Mexican. We
also use it as a toast. Alegría!
We wanted the winery name to be
different than the vineyard name, because we wanted out grape
buyers (we sell about a third of our grapes to other wineries), to
vineyard-designate the wines they made from our Alegría
Vineyard grapes. We felt they’d be more likely to do so, if the
vineyard name was not also the name of a winery. Also,
because Betsy’s Dad (and others) kept mispronouncing Alegría
(saying Algeria), we wanted a name that was easily pronounceable
and memorable.
Winery Name
We chose “ACORN” because we are
tiny like an acorn; there are oak trees in our vineyards, our wine
is aged in oak barrels; and an acorn is a symbol of potential,
prosperity, and good fortune. It is also easy to pronounce. A
writer once headlined an article about us: “Mighty Wines From
Little Acorn Flow.”