The Huron Mountain Winery was founded in 2004 as a means to creating great wine from some very interesting vineyards. All of our production wine is now being made in Sonoma. The winemaking team is lead by Kian Tavakoli an award winning Napa winemaker with a vitcultural degree from U.C. Davis and winemaking experience at Clos du Val where he ran their reserve bottling program, Opus One and Crushpad. Creative input is provided by Rich Baron who began winemaking in high school with both understanding parents and an open minded principal in the early 1970’s. Wine-related experience continued through retail wine sales and numerous double-blind trade tastings and continued with post-graduate journeys to Napa, Sonoma and working to locate some of the more interesting wines in the Sierra Foothills and other locations in the country.
Commercially-available wine is made at the Napa winery using some of the finest fruit from prime California vineyards. As you can see on our Past Vintages listing, we’ve consistently made Cabernet Sauvignon from Stagecoach Vineyard in the Atlas Peak AVA in Napa, CA. Other Cabernet Sauvignon selections have included To Kalon (Oakville), Inkgrade (Howell Mountain) and Coombsville now Tourmaline (Coombsville) vineyards in addition to Pinot Noir from La Encantada vineyard (Sta. Rita Hills).
In contrast to the primary wines available to the trade in the 1970’s and 1980’s, continued viticultural research efforts have expanded the wine grape growing regions of the United States from the prime climate areas into cool and cold weather regions. Our experimental vineyard in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan focuses on some of the innovative varietals developed by the University of Minnesota and other viticulturists such as the now deceased, Elmer Swenson. Our non-commercial research winery is located outside of California and we make smaller lots of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon from Odessey Vineyard (Atlas Peak), Beckstoffer Vinyards, Georges III (Rutherford), Nova Vineyard Zinfandel, Petit Verdot, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Mouvedre, barrel-fermented Chardonnay as well as some of the intersting new varietals such as St. Pepin (germanic-style white), Frontenac (a robust red), Marquette (cold weather with pinot noir breeding). This gives us the opportunity to evaluate the sensory characteristics of different style barrels, special yeasts and other winemaking techniques in handcrafted lots.