Sparkling Moments in Wine
I have been asked lots of questions about owning a winery after spending so many years in the corporate world. Here are some of the stories of my journey into wine that have added sparkling moments to my life.
Where to Taste Sparkling Wines near Healdsburg
Discover Amista’s Collection of Distinctive Sparkling Wines…
…and how they came to be.
Exploring Sonoma’s Sparkling Wines: Amista’s Unique Collection of Bubbles
Today, when you want to taste distinctive sparkling wines in Sonoma County, the place to go is Amista Vineyards, home to a collection of seven sparkling wines. All are crafted from certified organic grapes grown in our estate vineyards. But it wasn’t always so.
When we launched Amista, we never imagined we would be the first winery in Dry Creek Valley to make a sparkling wine. In fact, making sparkling wine was the furthest thing from our minds, despite my love for sipping bubbles.
Rhône-Inspired Sparkling Wines of Amista
Our journey began with a happy accident, followed by an unexpected opportunity that led to the creation of our first Sparkling Syrah in 2008. As we became more excited about experimenting with unusual grape varieties and blends, our lineup grew. Most sparkling wines are traditionally made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. At Amista, however, we craft sparkling wines from Rhône varieties—including Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, and a GSM blend of all three—alongside two different Blanc de Blancs made from Chardonnay and a Chardonnay-based blend with a kiss of Grenache and Syrah.
Amista, Healdsburg’s Premier Grower Sparkling Wine House
Amista is now considered the premier “grower” sparkling wine house in Healdsburg. Like a grower Champagne house, we make our wines exclusively from grapes grown on our estate, allowing us to carefully oversee every stage of the growing process. From winter pruning to bud break, blossom, veraison, and finally harvest, we meticulously time our grape picking for sparkling wine at lower sugar levels to ensure balance and freshness.
Organic Sparkling Wines in Dry Creek Valley: A Taste of Amista’s Estate
A milestone in our sparkling wine journey is our commitment to organic farming. Our estate vineyards were certified organic by CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) in June 2024, making us the first sparkling producer in Sonoma County to craft exclusively from organically grown grapes. This means we use no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides.
All our bubbles are packaged in clear glass bottles to showcase their stunning colors—from the golden hues of Blanc de Blancs to the blush pink of Grenache and the bright cranberry of Sparkling Syrah. While many sparkling wines are bottled in green glass to protect them from harsh store lighting, our wines go directly from our winery to you, ensuring they remain pristine. We recommend storing them in a dark, cool place until ready for chilling and enjoyment.
Amistara: Celebrating 20 Years of Innovation in Sparkling Wine
Our newest sparkling wine was created to celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2024. It’s a Blanc de Blanc made from our Chardonnay grapes, but with a twist. Winemaker Ashley incorporated a small percentage of still Chardonnay fermented in our concrete egg into the final dosage, along with a restrained addition of sugar syrup, resulting in a dry, refreshing bubbly. We named it Amistara, meaning "to become friends" or "to bring together" in Spanish—a fitting tribute to 20 years of making wine and friends.
Innovation has always been at the heart of our sparkling wine journey. Some innovations arose from serendipity—turning mistakes into opportunities. Others came from recognizing an unexpected chance to create something new. Still others were deliberate, like our decision to craft a Blanc de Blanc from our estate-grown Chardonnay. Over time, we expanded to include sparkling rosés from our Rhône varieties and, ultimately, a GSM rosé blend.
Today, we offer a sparkling wine to match each of our still wines. At our annual dinner in the vineyard last year, we paired each course with two wines—one still and one sparkling of the same variety—allowing guests to explore which pairing they preferred with each dish.
The spirit of innovation will continue to guide us forward, ensuring that Amista remains a destination for distinctive, estate-grown sparkling (and still Rhône-style) wines in Dry Creek Valley.
Still Thirsty?
If you want to learn more, here is a curated list of resources.
Amista’s Organic Certification
How Sparkling Wine Began at Amista - Serendipity
Jan 30, 2025 at 8:00 AM
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From Rosé to Sparkling…
…and the lesson we learned from it.
Lessons That Will Shape Amista's Future: Seize the Opportunity
In my last post, I shared a lesson we’ve embraced at Amista that continues to guide us: being open to serendipity. Today, I want to share another story—the second step in our journey to making sparkling wine—and the lesson we learned from it.
From Rosé to Sparkling: A Journey Begins
Our first Rosé of Syrah was born out of a happy accident. At the time, we couldn’t have imagined that this unexpected success would eventually lead us to create our first sparkling wine.
Two years after that initial Rosé (we now make a half dozen) became a favorite, our winemaker, Chris, approached us with an intriguing proposal. He was teaching a class at the local junior college on the traditional method of making fine French Champagne. Chris asked if he could use some of the current vintage Rosé of Syrah for his students’ project. Naturally, we said yes, with one condition: we wanted to taste the finished product.
Sparkling Syrah: A Class Experiment
When we finally tasted the sparkling wine created by Chris and his students, we were amazed. It was delicious, vibrant, and utterly unique. We immediately knew we had to make more—not just for ourselves, but for our friends and community as well.
To make this dream a reality, we sent one barrel each of our 2007 and 2008 Rosé of Syrah to a custom crush winery that specialized in sparkling wines. This step was critical, as it’s where the second fermentation in the bottle—a hallmark of the traditional method—transforms still wine into sparkling wine.
In 2009, we debuted our first Sparkling Syrah at our Sparkling Holidays party. It was a momentous occasion, marked by Mike’s celebratory sabrage—opening the bottle with a saber—a tradition that continues to this day.
The Lesson: Seize the Opportunity
This experience taught us a simple but profound lesson: seize the opportunity. Making sparkling wine wasn’t on our radar when Chris approached us with his idea. Yet the class project revealed an unexpected opportunity, one we couldn’t ignore.
Yes, creating a sparkling wine is far more complicated and expensive than making a still wine. But thanks to Chris’s expertise and the emergence of a local winery specializing in sparkling production, we saw a way to make it work. Partnering with a custom crush operation made the process viable. And, of course, I love bubbles and couldn’t resist the idea of making our Rosé of Syrah sparkle!
Seizing opportunities has become a cornerstone of our journey toward becoming a sparkling winery. I’ll admit, Mike was naturally better at this than I was. He had a knack for jumping in with both feet, while I preferred to research and deliberate before making a move. But whenever I’ve allowed myself to take the leap, it’s always been worthwhile.
Embracing the Future
As we continue to grow and evolve, the lesson of seizing opportunities remains at the heart of what we do. It’s a reminder to embrace the unexpected and pursue the possibilities that spark joy and excitement. Who knows what opportunities will come next? One thing is certain: we’ll be ready to seize them.
Still Thirsty?
Enjoy a bottle of Sparkling Syrah, or...
If you want to learn more, here is a curated list of resources.
How to Properly Saber Champagne
How Sparkling Wine Began at Amista
Serendipity: A Lesson Learned…
…to help guide our third decade
As we begin not only a new year but step across the threshold into our third decade, it is the perfect time to review our vision for Amista and how it will play out in the future. Most people know that my late husband and co-founder, Mike, and I created Amista largely through a series of unplanned opportunities and happy accidents.
What most people don’t know is that we crafted a vision for Amista at its very beginning. We reviewed it every few years to examine its relevance. We have made refinements along the way, although it has remained fundamentally the same. I am gratified that it has stood the test of time.
The centerpiece of our vision is what I call our core purpose. It is essentially the promise we make to our customers. Here is ours:
Amista Vineyards crafts distinctive wines and exceptional experiences – to make your everyday moments special and your special moments extraordinary.
The last two decades have been an exhilarating journey of opportunities, setbacks, surprises, and a lot of lessons learned. What I know from my previous work in leadership is that often the most growth and learning comes from two key types of experience: tackling things you are doing for the first time and dealing with adversity.
There have been plenty of firsts – from making our first wine, running a small business, building a winery, making sparkling wines, going solar, to achieving organic certification. And there has also been adversity in various shapes and sizes such as the two-year delay in getting a permit to build our winery, the theft of half of our Mourvèdre grapes one night during harvest, an extra seven tons of grapes picked and crushed that weren’t in the plan, evacuations for fires, and COVID shutdowns.
Both the firsts and the crises seemed daunting at the time. But they also generated energy that propelled creative solutions and decisive action. At those times, the importance of having a commitment to a clear purpose was vital. That and a good dose of humor! Once the first was accomplished or the crisis was dealt with, the final gift was the gift of learning. There is only so much you can learn from a book, a class, or from another person. The deepest learning comes from experience.
Becoming Healdsburg’s Sparkling Wine House
Becoming the first sparkling winery in Healdsburg wasn’t part of our plan. Today, Amista is known as the sparkling wine house in Dry Creek Valley, offering a half dozen different sparkling wines, a sparkling wine club and a sparkling wine tasting flight. The spark that eventually led us to making our first sparkling wine was a happy accident—one that also provided an important lesson that will continue to guide us in the future.
Be Open to Serendipity
Embracing serendipity means recognizing that accidents and unexpected happenings present opportunities. Here is one example that led to the creation of a new wine and, eventually, our sparkling wine program.
In September 2005, we decided to try harvesting our Syrah by machine. Mike was in the vineyard at night (machine harvesting is typically done at night when it’s cool) supervising the pick. He was enthralled watching the machine go up and down the rows and got so excited that he kept asking the operator to pick more rows. He didn’t want to stop.
The next morning, he was still reveling over his midnight pick when he got a call from someone at the winery. They told him he had 10 tons of Syrah grapes in a 10-ton fermentation tank, and when the wine started fermenting, it was going to bubble over, go all over the floor, and he was going to have to clean it up.
He swiftly moved into action and had 200 gallons moved from the tank to neutral barrels. Neutral barrels have been used in prior years and impart no oak to the wine. His idea was that once the Syrah in the tank was fermented and moved to barrels, he would combine it with the juice he had removed.
In early January of 2006, we went down to the winery with our winemaker, Chris Wills, to taste all the wine in barrels. We decided to taste the wine that had been removed to avoid the spillover. It had spent very little time on the skins, so it was a rosé rather than a red wine. We tasted it. It was fantastic. We decided on the spot to keep it separate from the other Syrah and bottle it as our first Rosé of Syrah. This was step number one in the serendipity that would lead to our first sparkling wine.
As we move into Amista’s third decade, I’m inspired by the lessons of the past to embrace the opportunities ahead. This year, we’ll focus on how our vision continues to evolve and share more stories about the moments that shape us. Here’s to serendipity and the journey ahead!