News from the grapevine: Unbottling the latest happenings in the local wine industry

Sonoma Valley wines made lots of wine news this winter, from high rating scores and bargain wine discount sales to art exhibits and new winemakers. Here’s a look at who’s crushing what these days...

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Vanesso Robledo has joined Rolando and Lorena Herrera as CEO of their Mi Sueño Winery, an exciting family project. Robledo will oversee business management, marketing and wine sales, both wholesale and direct to consumer.

She has a background of great success as president of Robledo Family Winery where she took sales from 200 cases a year in 1997 to 20,000 before she left the winery in 2007 and became president of Black Coyote winery in Napa Valley.

Sisters Lorena and Vanessa are fourth generation grape growers and daughters of immigrant vineyard workers. Her mother, fabulous cook Maria Robledo, used to take tamales and enchiladas in thermoses, along with the kids, to her husband working in the fields for lunch shared under a tree.

Rolando Herrera, one of the most respected winemakers in both Sonoma and Napa valleys, started their Mi Sueño winery in 1997, then making 200 cases of chardonnay and now producing 10,000 cases, mostly from their own 40 acres of vineyard.

Vanessa enthused: “I am very excited to be at Mi Sueño Winery. Rolando and Lorena Herrera have built a very successful business and my new challenge will be to take the company to the next level of success.” Robledo also manages her mother’s vineyards.

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Muscardini Cellars will present an opening reception for a unique art show, “Immediate Spaces – New Work by Flynn O’Brien” on Jan. 29. The show is curated by freelance curator and former Sonoma Valley Museum of Art executive director Kate Eilertsen.

A New Orleans native, O’Brien currently serves as Exhibitions Manager at SVMA and as water polo coach for Sonoma Valley High School and coach of the Sonoma Valley Water Polo Club. In between he graduated in photography from Cal State Long Beach, traveled and made art throughout the U.S. and Europe, went back to New Orleans in 2010 to get his MFA in Studio Art at Tulane, and then moved here to Sonoma, where he is married to Molly Curley O’Brien.

Catch the early viewing of O’Brien’s six new abstract and geometric photo collages at Muscardini Cellars. 5 to 7 p.m. 9380 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood. 933-9305.

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WineBusiness.com just anointed its “2015 Top 10 Hot Brands” that include Ned Hill and Matt Stornetta’s Sonoma Collection, District 3 wines, especially for its 2013 Red Blend. Hill owns La Prenda Vineyards Management, which farms more than 900 acres of estate properties for Parmelee-Hill Wines & Vineyards, Rams Gate Winery, Schug Carneros Estate, Nicholson Ranch, Hanna Winery, Roche Winery, Bennett Valley Cellars, Patz & Hall and the vineyards of many other independent growers.

Stornetta, son of Mark and Pat Stornetta, has grown up in farming and now works for La Prenda as operations manager. Stornetta and Hill started to help vineyard owners sell their excess grapes, and then thought they could make wine themselves with some of those grapes.

More info at Matt Stornetta matt@laprendavineyards.com or 815-8771.

Nakedwines.com and Mathis Wine of Sonoma were also named to the winebusiness.com Top 10 Hot Brands list.

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Stewart Resnick’s Landmark Vineyards is buying Hop Kiln Vineyards. Resnick, a big supporter of the arts in southern California, also owns Justin Vineyards and Pom Wonderful under the name of Roll Global. After the success of their “Pom Wonderful” campaign turning pomegranate juice into a giant fad beverage, Resnick has renamed his company the Wonderful Company.

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Jeff Zappelli has been appointed general manager of Walt and Hall wineries’ direct-to-consumer program. Zappelli has a BS in biopsychology, lives in Marin, and will be working with both Walt’s Sonoma tasting room and Hall’s facility south of St. Helena.

Kathryn Walt Hall is in charge of both wineries, her family having started growing grapes in Mendocino County, a vineyard she and her brother ran from 1982 to 1992. A former assistant city attorney in Berkeley, Hall is a lawyer with an MBA who has organized important community efforts in Dallas with her husband Craig’s Hall Financial Group. He is a former partial owner of the Dallas Cowboys and Radio Shack and a huge art collector.