Living Wine

Meet the winemakers

Gideon Beinstock

Darek Trowbridge

Megan Bell

Dani Rozman

Gideon Beinstock Clos Saron

Gideon Beinstock founded Clos Saron, in Oregon House, California in 1999. Clos Saron is a small vineyard/winery in the Sierra Foothills of California, specializing in naturally grown and made wines: Pinot Noir, Syrah, and "nontraditional" blends. Gideon’s work is based on many other-than-commercial reasons: love of wine (especially the kind that is not afraid of clearly stating ‘who it is’ in terms of terroir), and love of outdoor work (especially viticulture).Gideon’s wines have built a reputation and following over the years and inspired many young winemakers. Considered one of the masters and early natural winemakers in California, Gideon has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, Wine Spectator, and The New Yorker.

Megan Bell Margins Wine

Megan Bell is a winemaker living and working in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Prior to settling on the central coast of California, Megan received her BS in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis in 2012 and apprenticed in wineries and vineyards in Napa, the Livermore Valley, the Willamette Valley, Central Otago (NZ), and the Loire Valley (France).Megan’s company, Margins Wine, produces low-intervention wines using grapes from underrepresented regions, vineyards, and varietals. Margins is part of the growing movement in California to make wines from vineyards farmed organically or in organic conversion using minimal additives during the winemaking process, thereby showcasing the vineyards the grapes came from. Margins draws attention to vineyards and varietals throughout northern and central California that find themselves on the margins without the recognition they deserve.Part of the Margins mission has been to work with small growers to transition their vineyards from conventional to organic farming by providing guidance as well as assurance that the grapes will have a home. Megan believes that if she worked solely with organic vineyards, she would not be using her role in the industry to its full potential to enact agricultural change.

Dani Rozman
La Onda

Dani Rozman’s La Onda is a small project dedicated to making living wines of distinctive character. Wines taste alive when they come from vines surrounded by life, terroir that speaks loudly and winemaking that doesn’t get in the way. La Onda embraces the beautiful and painstaking nature of patiently growing wine from start to finish.Dani currently farms four acres of own-rooted vines in the Sierra Foothills, split between two slopes at 1,900 and 2,500 ft elevation. The vineyards are wild, a true collection of vines, granite, red clay, insects, bees, herbs, flowers, berries, thistles and hungry animals. The farming is chemical free, without irrigation, without tillage and demands tons of work by hand and hand tools. Grapes are harvested by making several passes through the same vineyard sections over the course of weeks, slowly building fermentations with ripe grapes.A few wines are produced from these vineyards and an additional four from other organic and/or biodynamic vineyards farmed by friends. The winemaking is very simple: all the wines are either foot-stomped and left to ferment, foot-stomped then pressed or immediately pressed whole-cluster. There is no de-stemming, no additives and juice/wine is almost always moved by gravity flow rather than by pump. Wines are left to age in barrel for as long as they need and then bottled unfined/unfiltered before further bottle aging.

Darek Trowbridge Old World Winery

Pastoral winemaker and proprietor, Darek Trowbridge, has 20+ years of hands-on experience in the art and science of vineyard management, grape production, and natural winemaking. His passion is inviting nature into his winemaking. His processes are simple and direct and eliminates the need for any manufactured (man-made) chemicals. This process involves effort and shepherding but not manipulation.Old World Winery is a small, family owned and operated winery. Using grapes from his 100-year-old, sustainable, and organic vineyards, Darek creates “natural wines” that reflect his family history and the traditional winemaking (old world) practices in Sonoma County.In 2021, Darek founded a new B Company, Carbon Soil Management, in which he works with a team of managers and farmers to produce, distribute, and promote the widespread use -- in vineyards, ranchlands, and crop farms -- of his innovative carbon sequestering mulch (with Mycorrhizal Fungi soil amendment), in order to make a greater impact through reducing atmospheric CO2 levels.