St.Amant Winery

Nice article by Bob Highfill on our ports!

We're open for tasting beginning this weekend! Enjoy a charcuterie board alongside a tasting of 6 wines. To ensure we provide all of our guests with a great experience, we are offering appointment only tastings for now. Booking is easy. Reserve your tasting on our website www.stamantwine.com/visit/reservations, or call us at (209) 367-0646.

Harvest began on August 18th for St.Amant, and it’s been a busy month. The wildfires across California and the endless smoke has created a great deal of stress for the wine community. Fortunately, at this point, all our wines look unaffected by the smoke, and quite honestly taste great. Yields have been extremely low. Some of our blocks have seen the lowest yields ever. Not a money-making year on the farming side, but wines look fantastic. We are about halfway through harvest, with our two biggest varieties (Zinfandel & Tempranillo) all done. That’s a relief. Here a few pictures of the past couple weeks.

My dad passed away 14 years ago today at the age of 68 after a long hard-fought battle with lymphoma. Strangely, by today’s standards, we were at the beginning of harvest, and didn’t have time to mourn. We had to move forward, and he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. This picture was taken in March 1972 as he was planting our original vineyard in the Jackson Valley of Amador County. Nearly 50 years later we are still farming it and growing great wines. My dad was generou...s and honest as they come; he inspired many and was loyal to the core. He had little patience for fools but would spend hours with those willing to listen and learn. He despised pretentiousness and snobbery and insisted that wine was best enjoyed with good friends and family. He chose his own path in life, and never bent to the winds of fashion or succumbed to the easy road. When others dismissed Lodi as a backwater region incapable of producing fine wine, he embraced it, crafting thrilling wines that garnered prestigious awards and national attention. He worked hard and wore the scars of his toils with pride. He once drove a redwood grape stake through his arm, lost his wedding ring to a black widow bite, chopped the tip of his finger off, and was bitten by a rattlesnake. All in our vineyard, and through all of it he never missed a day of work. He lived his life with integrity. And we miss him a lot!

2020 harvest got off to an early and frantic pace. A heat wave in mid-August combined with a light crop saw our earliest harvest in recent memory. As of today, we've picked Verdelho, Touriga Nacional Rose, Trousseau, Bastardo Port, Mohr-Fry and Marian's Zin. Finished picking Marian's this morning, and will start Tempranillo on Wednesday. And since my youngest is stuck doing distance learning, we put her to work for some real learning. Been pleased with the quality so far, and look forward to the rest of harvest.

https://www.stamantwine.com/blog/Spring-in-the-Vineyard

The tasting room may be closed, but it has never been easier to stock up on St. Amant! Order online and save 50% on shipping for 6+ bottles or free shipping for 12+ bottles Call (209) 367-0646 for curbside pickup 11AM-4PM every day... Shop Now: https://www.stamantwine.com/Wines

Delighted to be featured as on of the San Francisco Chronicle's 52 California wineries you need to visit in 2020! https://thepress.sfchronicle.com//the-52-california-winer/

Great piece by Mike Dunne on the SF Chronicle website. https://thepress.sfchronicle.com/review/st-amant/

St.Amant vineyard 1974. Miss you dad! Hard to believe it’s been 13 years. We’ve come a long ways and have much more to do.