Trione Vineyards & Winery

Cabernet Sauvignon — The wine Henry Trione asked for; an early vintage out-scored the Napa Cabernet it was modeled on.

Henry’s Blend — The winery’s best-selling red, named for the founder.

Estate Chardonnay & Pinot Noir — From the family’s Russian River Valley ground.

Sparkling Brut — A traditional-method bubbly in the lineup.

About seventy-five hundred cases a year, drawn from the top few percent of nearly six hundred estate acres.

Trione Vineyards and Winery is the family brand of one of Sonoma County’s long-established farming families. The patriarch, Henry Trione — raised in Fortuna by Italian immigrants, a Navy veteran who built the county’s first mortgage company and once held a piece of the Oakland Raiders — began developing vineyards with his sons Mark and Vic in the 1970s. They planted close to a thousand acres across the Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, and Sonoma Coast, owned Geyser Peak Winery for sixteen years, and in 2005 returned to wine under their own name. The winery keeps only the top few percent of what the family grows.

The winery stands beside the Old Stone Building, a landmark 1908 stone winery — originally Nervo, the state’s 350th bonded winery — restored as an event space, its bond number kept intact. Founding winemaker Scot Covington designed the working winery for small lots and set the house style; John Duckett directs the winemaking now, across Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Zinfandel. There is a good Henry story: he once left a bottle of a famous Napa Cabernet on the winemaker’s desk with a card reading ‘Make this.’ The reply, a couple of vintages later, out-scored it.

John Duckett directs the winemaking at Trione, continuing the program the founding winemaker, Scot Covington, built from 2005 — small lots drawn from the top few percent of the family’s estate fruit across the Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley, and Sonoma Coast. Covington designed the working winery for hands-on, small-lot production, and set a house style meant to show the range of what the Triones grow.

Denise Trione-Hicks, granddaughter of founder Henry Trione and daughter of Mark, helps lead the family brand and oversees its sales, marketing, and branding; her husband, Kris Hicks, manages the estate vineyards. The winery is a family affair — Mark Trione is president and his brother Vic is vice president — across three generations of farming in Sonoma County.