Balletto Vineyards

Vice President and winemaker at Balletto Vineyards since 2009, where he's now in his 20th year with the estate. A former newspaper journalist who left the trade for wine, Beckman graduated with high honors from the UC Davis viticulture and enology program and joined Balletto in 2007, working under John and Terri Balletto's expanding grape program. He was promoted to head winemaker two years later, in 2009. His approach is intentionally site-driven across 16 estate vineyards (Sebastopol Hills, Laguna Ridge, Santa Rosa Plains), with a focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, supported by a broader portfolio that includes Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Zinfandel, Syrah, sparkling Brut Rosé, and a Vin de Paille from Pinot Gris. The winery is 100% estate-grown and estate-bottled, drawn from the top 10% of the family's Sebastopol-area vineyard holdings, with the remainder sold to 30+ other producers. Beckman has championed cool-climate rosé from the beginning, calling himself a “rosé zealot.” Among the longest winemaker-winery pairings in the North Bay.

John Balletto is the farmer and founder behind these Russian River Valley estates. He took over his family’s vegetable business in 1977 at just seventeen, after his father’s death, and built it into the largest vegetable operation north of the Golden Gate Bridge. When El Niño storms and shifting economics made vegetables untenable in the late 1990s, neighbor Warren Dutton suggested grapes, and John and his wife Terri began converting their land to vineyards, producing the first Balletto Vineyards wines in 2001. Today the family farms hundreds of estate acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay across the Russian River Valley.