Montemaggiore

I read some of the reviews for this winery and while I agree it is a bit difficult to find it is worth the trip! The family owned and operated winery is putting out some really tasty vino. I will definitely be sending my wine enthusiast friends to this winery.

Wow… what a fantastic experience. If you’re looking for the Napa wine limo experience, this is not for you. If you’re looking for intimate, understated elegance paired with incredibly good wines, I can not recommend Montemaggiore highly enough. Instead of chatting with an intern, here you get to taste wine with the owner. Vince was super-​friendly with an easy going hospitality that made us feel so very welcomed. As for the wines, there are only a handful of wineries where I have loved every single wine. This is one of them. We tasted probably 10 different wines ranging from a delightful viognier/​roussanne/​marsanne blend to an elegant cab/​syrah blend, with different vintages of several options that really showed both the character of the different years and the aging potential. We walked away with a mixed case and a membership, and we can’t wait to come back and introduce this hidden gem to all of our friends.

One of the best places you can tour in Sonoma — secluded, away from the madding crowd and you’ll get an intimate, owner tour. A fantastic view from the winery — and a PERFECT place to bring a picnic.
Their vineyards are all organic and biodynamic — so need to worry you’re getting exposed to nasty pesticides by visiting…
The wines are VERY GOOD, and although there are no bargains here, they are certainly not any more expensive than competitors in the region. I also think their wine club is very attractive — you get 15– 20% off and you pick only the wines you want (min. 1 – 2 cases per year) which makes that $ 38 bottle of Syrah close to $ 30.
This is the kind of place I totally enjoy. You will have a REAL experience here in this magical place. You just have to book ahead (to even find it — using the directions they provide you — the place is not findable via Google maps — believe me, I made that mistake the first time I visited.)
If you, like me, are sick of corporate winery tasting rooms — (and Dry Creek is full of crowded, overpriced tasting rooms) this is the antidote! Authentic and stunningly beautiful — with few visitors and fabulous wine. I am already planning my next picnic to bring here…

I love what this family is doing, and I appreciate their wines… but I cannot recommend a visit. Finding the tasting room is very difficult, and not possible using Google Maps.
The wines themselves were not very impressive, and in my estimation, overpriced.
The tasting room itself is very sterile — and I’m surprised that the experience is not more grand considering they are on the top of a mountain.
I was also extremely disappointed that they were completely out of olive oil when I went. This was 50% of the reason I chose to come.
So, while I think they are great people and create some very nice wines, I think that as a visitor, you can find some much more appealing tasting experiences that are closer Sonoma.

Amazing place! Great unique wines!

Montemaggiore is a gorgeous, intimate, private wine experience tucked away on top of a hill in overlooking Dry Creek. We came with a group of 20 or so people, and the proprietors Vince and Lise greeted us with a warm welcome, vast amounts of knowledge, great stories, and standout wines. It’s incredible the amount of labor and care they put into making sure they are employing environmentally friendly, sustainable and organic wine-​making practices. Lise’s signature rosé is divine and was the ideal pairing with the seared ahi tuna and pork tenderloin we had at dinner following our visit to their winery.
To be honest, I hesitated on whether to write a review because I don’t want other people to know about the best-​kept secret in wine country.

My wife and I visited the winery in 2008. What an experience! We did a private tasting with Lise at the winery. She gave us the «extreme» tour. Talk about knowledge and passion. Lise has it all.
I think we spent almost 45 minutes in the vineyards learning about pruning, biodynamics, etc. I never realized how much went into environmentally friendly vineyard management.
The winery was equally impressive. Lise educated us on almost every machine on the premises. I am not sure, but I think my wife and I learnt so much that we could open our own winery :)
From tour to tasting: At the time we were there, the winery produce only two or three wines. I liked them both a lot: a nice Syrah and the Superiore (a blend).
If you get a chance, call ahead to see if you can get a tour. I highly recommend it.

Vince and Lise are the coolest! (Ok, full disclosure: I worked with them years ago in their previous lives in the tech world.) And their wine is great too! I’m a purist and am partial to the Paolo’s Vineyard Syrah, and my tasting partner prefers the Superiore. [Oh, and B&E, if you read this, I have *still* not quite forgiven you for opening my last bottle of Superiore and failing to drink it … dragging us out instead to swill cheap dive-​bar beer. SHAME.]
I’ve been to the Montemaggiore winery a few times now for private events. Public tasting and tour by appointment only — and I do recommend it.
You can go drink the wine at restaurants in town, but hiking up the hill from the house to the winery, maybe picking some olives along the way, watching Zeppli chase imaginary (or real?) rodents through the rows of vines, entering through the huge copper doors glowing in the sun, then climbing up the metal staircase and looking into a huge vat of grapes-​on-​their-​way-​to-​becoming wine, and having Lise and Vince there to answer just about ANY technical question you might have … now that’s the real experience.

I went with some friends to the Orchid and Wine event at Fort Masson last month — an event I’d also give five star if I were more prolific. The orchids were amazing but many of the wine producers decided to only bring their mass produced stuff. Bummer!
It all comes down to trying lots of wine (what a burden) and you will eventually find some real gems. So, that’s what I did… I kept trying the wines from producers I had never tasted before and found one, Montemaggiore, that was truely outstanding. I contacted Vince and made an appointment to visit. I ended up going on Barrel Tasting weekend — see John G’s review — and found limos and crowds everywhere, until I get to Brack road and headed up the into the hills above dry creek valley.
Montemaggiore sits on a steep hill side (in the vicinity of McCray Ridge, but miles away by road) so I began to understand why I liked the ’03 Syrah so much at the Orchid event. Additionally, Montemaggiore
is striving for a Biodynamic winery; like using sheep to keep the weeds down, and using compost and other natural methods. To paraphrase their web site: The wine is grown in Schist, a very hard metamorphic rock that many experts believe underlies the greatest vineyards in the world: much of the Duoro in Portugal, the Cote Rotie in France, and the best Chianti vineyards in Italy. Schist produces great wines because it retains little water and contains few nutrients — stressing the vines just enough to produce small, intensely-​flavored grapes. These are soils only a grape could love!

In my opinion all of this produces wines of the highest quality, enough so I joind the wine club. Currently they make three wines: a syrah, a hilltop syrah and a cab/​syrah blend.
Due to their secluded spot and small size, they do not have a public tasting room, but offer vineyard tours and wine sales by appointment. If you like mountain fruit, syrah and Cab/​Syrah blends this is truely an outstanding winery.