Charles Creek Vineyard was a

winery A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, ...

Sonoma, California Sonoma is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sonoma is one of the principal cities of California's Wine Country and the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA. Sonoma's p ...

that specialized in Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

and

dessert wine Dessert wines, sometimes called pudding wines in the United Kingdom, are sweet wines typically served with dessert. There is no simple definition of a dessert wine. In the UK, a dessert wine is considered to be any sweet wine drunk with a meal ...

History

Charles Creek was founded in January 2002 by husband and wife Bill & Gerry Brinton. A veteran of the beverage industry, Bill owned the Wiman Beverage Company since 1993. They chose to sell Wimans as their interest in wine making grew, selling it to Naked Juice in 2000. Owning property on

Sonoma Mountain Sonoma Mountain is a prominent landform within the Sonoma Mountains of southern Sonoma County, California. At an elevation of , Sonoma Mountain offers expansive views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoma Valley to the east. In fact ...

since 1984, the Brintons had been experimenting with

winemaking Winemaking or vinification is the production of wine, starting with the selection of the fruit, its fermentation into alcohol, and the bottling of the finished liquid. The history of wine-making stretches over millennia. The science of wine and ...

since their first planting of Chardonnay in 1992, and after the sale of Wiman they chose to move to Sonoma from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. After several experiments with Chardonnay and Merlot grapes, the Brintons decided to focus on working with regional grape growers and made their small vineyard into a solar farm. In 2002 they founded Charles Creek, which is named after the couple's son Charley and Bill's grandfather, Charles Deere Wiman. In November 2014 they shuttered the winery and tasting room, calling it a "bittersweet farewell."

Wine production

Charles Creek worked with a number of wine growers throughout Sonoma and Napa including: Merlot and Chardonnay growers Hyde Vineyard and Sangiacomo Vineyards and Cabernet Sauvignon growers Mountain Terraces Vineyard and Stage Coach Vineyard Not owning their own production facility, they worked with Sonoma Wine Company, a custom winery production facility. Charles Creek maintained their own barrels and inventory at Sonoma Wine, which the Brintons believed helped keep their costs down and their wine at a reasonable price point.

Tasting room

Charles Creek maintained a tasting room, art gallery and retail space on the square in downtown Sonoma. Two creatures paid special homage in the tasting room - the

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

- a

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

of the tasting room, a tribute to Bill's grandmother, who bore the nickname Owl, and a life-sized

cow Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

made entirely of wine corks.

References

External links

Bohemian Wine Tasting Room of the Week
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719085540/http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/07.05.06/swirl-0627.html , date=2011-07-19 Wineries in Sonoma County, California