Ramazzotti Wines

Ramazzotti Wines traces a line straight back to Le Marche, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, where Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Ramazzotti was born in 1950. He came to Dry Creek Valley at eight, in 1958, when his parents Germano and Yolanda crossed over to help family farm; he studied pomology at Chico State and spent some thirty years growing grapes across Dry Creek and Alexander Valley before bonding his own winery in 2002. The wines are unapologetically Italian: old-country varietals and field-blend reds built the way Northern California’s immigrant growers once built them. La terra, the family calls it: the earth and what it gives.

This is a two-person operation in the truest sense: Joe manages the vineyards, the picking, and the crush, while Norma, whom he met at Santa Rosa Junior College, keeps the books and hand-sorts fruit at harvest, pulling every leaf and stem before the crush. The signature bottlings carry Italian names: Raffinto, the Super Tuscan blend; Regale, the Cabernet; Ricordo, the Zinfandel field blend. The Geyserville tasting room sits among the village’s restaurants, a short walk from dinner. Often they are poured by the people who grew the grapes.