When Dan O’Brien discovered Sonoma, it was by accident.
“I didn’t know it was a town. I thought it was only a county,” he said.
That was several years ago. Now, Sonoma is not only his home, it is also his focus for the wines he makes under his label, Gail Wines. O’Brien’s wines not only carry his mother’s name, there are elements of her in the design of the label, and remembrances of her in his home.
“My mom was the glue of the family,” O’Brien said. “I wanted to do a loving tribute to commemorate her.” His mother died suddenly in 2007 at the age of 51.
A tiny hummingbird floats at the top of the wine label, a spirit animal of sorts, one O’Brien said is a messenger telling a loved one they have made it to the “other side.” The New England palette of the label is another nod to his mother who painted with watercolors.
When O’Brien, 40, and his two brothers, Patrick and Casey – who are involved in Gail Wines, too – were grown, their mother left her job as a school secretary to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees and became a teacher and director of special education for a school district in his home state of Rhode Island.
O’Brien left for California shortly after Gail’s death.
The family dining room table followed him and now fills a space in his kitchen, and keeps her in his heart with memories of her by his side helping him with homework or sharing a family meal.
O’Brien spent 10 years as a sommelier in Boston, and has a love and appreciation for all types of wines, he said, but there’s something special to him about Sonoma Valley, and that’s why all of his wines are made of grapes from Sonoma County.
Gail Wines are gaining recognition now. In November, wine writer and critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Esther Mobley, called O’Brien’s wines “thrilling.”
Informally trained as a winemaker, O’Brien has a pedigree beyond his sommelier experience worthy of the wine he is producing.
He was chief operations officer at Larkmead Vineyards in Calistoga where he gained hands-on experience in the vineyard under the tutelage of Dan Petroski, who was named the Chronicle’s Winemaker of the Year in 2017.
He met Petroski in 2009 at Cavallo Point where O’Brien was the wine director. O’Brien learned how to run a winery during the more than three years he was at Long Meadow Ranch in St. Helena, and was the managing partner at Cultivar Wines in Rutherford.
O’Brien searches nooks and crannies in Sonoma to find varietals “no one is making here,” he said. He makes nine different wines, all single-vineyard, producing about 1,500 cases annually.
Using a “traditional” approach to winemaking and natural yeasts, he coaxes layers of flavor from the berries he sources from some well-known names in the wine industry. For example, he buys chenin blanc grapes grown on Warm Springs Road in Kenwood from Erich Bradley who owns the vineyard. Bradley is the winemaker for Repris on Moon Mountain, Pangloss, which has a tasting room on the Plaza in downtown Sonoma, and Sojourn Cellars, with a tasting salon just off the Plaza. Bradley is also the vice president of Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers.
From the Chuy Vineyard on Nuns Canyon Road, O’Brien produces a chardonnay, and from the Pickberry Vineyard he makes a merlot.
“Ironically, my mom would plant herbs in a Pickberry Vineyard Ravenswood wine box,” O’Brien said.
The whites are all single fermentation in the barrel and the best of those go into the Gail label, the rest goes to his second label, Doris, named for a beloved great aunt.
His portfolio reflects varietals he likes at price points that are reasonable. “I’m trying to over-deliver,” he said.
The Doris label produces a white table wine and a red table wine, and the Gail label, in addition to those already mentioned includes a pinot grigio, barbera, cabernet franc, and cabernet sauvignon.
Contact Anne at anne.ernst@sonomanews.com.
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