No Shortcuts

My family's commitment to craftsmanship

“There are no shortcuts when it comes to making world-class wines. It requires great vineyards. It demands a committed, passionate winemaking team. And it calls for an investment in craftsmanship. We’ve gathered it all here at Rodney Strong. No Shortcuts. It’s my family’s commitment.” - Tom Klein, Proprietor

Growing Fine Wine

Matching the right grape with the right soil

Winemaking starts in the vineyards and balanced vineyards lead to beautifully balanced wines. When considering a site, our winemakers must consider various factors that include soil type, depth, drainage, mineral content, organic matter, soil chemistry, and aspect to the sun. Each of our vineyard sites in Sonoma County has its own geographical makeup, which is what makes the portfolio at Rodney Strong so diverse.
A Matter of Taste

Experience drives our intuitive winegrowing

No measurement or lab tool can be trusted outright to make a decision as crucial as harvest time; it must be done, literally, by taste. Pick too early and risk hard tannins, puckering acidity, and green flavors; pick too late, and risk overly high alcohols, deficient acidity, and raisin-like fruit character. Only the knowledge learned from experience can judge what flavors will ultimately result after fermentation. It is amongst the most critical variables in making fine wine.
Artisanal Winemaking

Our Steadfast Pursuit & Commitment to Excellence

Working closely with Rod Strong until his retirement in 1995, Winemaker Emeritus Rick Sayre led winemaking for almost four decades at Rodney Strong. Rick passed the baton in 2018 to current Director of Winemaking Justin Seidenfeld, who today leads the passionate winemaking team that creates critically acclaimed wines vintage after vintage with an eye towards the future. That future is led by innovative new products like ROWEN Wine Company, the 15-year passion project on our remote and rugged Cooley Ranch Vineyard.

Bold & Full-bodied Red Wines

Bordeaux Varieties with a Sense of Place

When red wine grapes arrive at the winery, the grapes are separated from their stems in a machine called a destemmer, and then directed to a stainless steel fermenting tank. The skins, seeds, pulp and juice all ferment together, the juice gaining all of its color and much of its character from the skins. The fermentation temperatures are kept warm to facilitate flavor and color extraction, and the tanks are pumped over twice daily to further enhance this process. Within a couple of weeks, the primary fermentation is complete, and the wines are drained and gently pressed off their skins and seeds. The wines are then sent to small barrels, where secondary malolactic fermentation will be encouraged in every barrel.

Blending & Aging

Barrel aging for complexity, concentration, and grace

Throughout every wine’s time at the winery, it is constantly under assessment by the winemaking team. Even the lightest and freshest styles of white wine benefit from at least some aging time. Wines that are barrel aged soften, concentrate, and pick up a broad array of complexity depending on the age, toast level, wood source, and barrel maker. As each lot ages, the winemakers systematically taste every tank and barrel to evaluate the wine’s progress. It is then up to the winemaking team to assemble the lots into harmonious unity, anything from combining different varieties, blending one variety from within an appellation, or highlighting a single vineyard from lots representing just one specific vineyard sites. This is done entirely by taste, and represents the culmination of innate ability and years of winemaking experience.