January 2020 - Winemaker Journal - Janice Schmidt MS May 2020 bring you and your family many successes and new opportunities. For the Estate 1856 family, we are happy to shut the door on 2019 where, yet again, we faced an extended fire season, multiple power outages and an evacuation that affected more than 200,000 residents of Sonoma County. Thankfully, we've now had several inches of rain in the past few weeks. Today, our hillsides are covered with lovely green grasses and I can see the newly emerging cover crop in the vineyards which will nourish the soil in the [...]

Our family has lived in Sonoma since 1856 and have raised several generations of  family who each embrace the rich diversity of life in this little piece of Heaven, aka the Dry Creek Valley. In the Winter, we enjoy occasional snow flurries as our grapes lay deep in their winter sleep. Spring is the season of abundance as our grapes begin to grow. Blossoms can be found on every corner of our ranch. Summer is filled with warm summer days and cool, foggy nights, absolutely perfect for grape growing. And the Fall season is the time that we watch [...]

We are thrilled to announced that Estate 1856 has been awarded two gold medals in the 2019 Los Angeles International Wine Competition. 2016 Malbec earned Best in Class, Gold and 96 points in the judges evaluation. 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon earned our second Gold Medal and 93 points. The competition is truly international and judged 2,350 wines from 19 countries and 800 wineries, including: Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine and the USA. A total of 155 Best of Class Awards and 519 Gold Medal Awards were [...]