Ep 118: ACORN Winery of Sonoma California

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2015

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for
0:07.0	listening to Wine for Normal People.
0:09.0	The podcast for people who want to learn about Wine but can do without the attitude that seems to go
0:13.2	with it. I'm Elizabeth Schneider a certified Silmaier and certified specialist of
0:19.4	wine. And I'm MC Ice, just a wine-loving normal person.
0:23.0	Well, welcome today to people I have been trying to get on the podcast forever and it's my fault.
0:30.0	The founders of Acorn Winery, which is one of my favorite wineries in the Russian River Valley of
0:36.3	Sonoma in California.
0:38.5	They do something that no one else does in Sonoma, as far as I know, know we'll discuss it which is co-fermented field blends and they are both
0:47.5	growers and producers and we have both Bill and Betsy Nackbar here to tell us all about Acorn, how they got into this and why what they do is so different and special.
1:01.4	And Bill has also said that he is willing to super dork out with me, which I am so excited about because I know all of you guys love those moments.
1:10.0	And I know that many people have been turned on to Acorn both through some of the
1:16.0	posts that we've done and also just on their own. So you guys are so special.
1:20.1	Thank you both for coming. Thank you for having us.
1:23.0	Glad we were finally able to make it work.
1:25.0	I know that little you know baby thing I had really just threw a wrench and everything.
1:30.0	Sorry about that.
1:31.0	You had a baby in a remodel. We had a harvest.
1:34.2	You did.
1:35.2	So tell me, you know what, actually, let's talk about harvest.
1:37.2	How was it?
1:38.2	That was great.
	...

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