COVER STORY:
You need a scorecard to keep track of Don Sebastiani’s activity in the wine world. You want to talk about synthetic corks and screw caps? Sebastiani is a leader among American vintners offering alternative closures. You want to talk about oddball wine names that come out of left field? He pitches brands like Smoking Loon, Aquinas & Screw Kappa Napa — brands that keep scoring with both wine critics and buyers. Multiply Sebastiani’s wackiness by that of his two sons, Donny and August, and you get a final tally that’s off the charts.

To understand this team’s strategy, consider the three wines — all with screw caps — that make up the division of Sebastiani’s company called Three Loose Screws: There’s Mia’s Playground, named for Don’s college-age daughter; Fusée, which means“ rocket” in French; and Screw Kappa Napa, which jabs at pretentious Napa Valley wines. So how does this wacky creativity affect the averagewine drinker? Well, it keeps Sebastiani’s wines accessible— and low-priced.

“Price has become a badge to transfer status to a wine,” says Sebastiani. “The name ‘ Napa’ is shrouded in mystery to many people: Does it mean the land, the area, the grapes? Why should people pay $50 to find out what it means when you can try our Napa Valley-designated wines for $10?”

The name of his business, Don Sebastiani & Sons, sounds more like a construction company than a winery. But people in Sonoma County and around the world associate his name with wine. In 1904, Don’s immigrant grandfather Samuele started Sebastiani Vineyards, one of the earliest and best-known Sonoma wineries.

The juxtaposition of restless 21st - century innovation with respect for tradition embodies Sebastiani’s worldview. He is the first American vintner to use the ZORK closure, a recyclable device produced in Australia that combines an outer cap and a corklike device that lifts out with the familiar “pop” of tree-based cork — but without corkscrew.

As forward-thinking as he is, Sebastiani’s marketing department is still housed in building constructed in 1842, one of the oldest office buildings in California. The office sits across Sonoma’s town plaza from a historic theater founded by his father in 1933 and emblazoned with the Sebastiani name.

A LITTLE LOONY
From 1985 to 2001, Sebastiani ran the family winery, Sebastiani Vineyards, growing from two million cases a year to eight million cases. They produced mostly jug wine but also some quality varietal wines under the Sebastiani label. The family sold the bulk-wine business, and Don turned over the reins to his sister, Mary Anne Sebastiani Cuneo. Since launching Don and Sons in 2001, Don hasn’t radically downsized his business interests. With a total 2005 production of 900,000 cases, the big-volume Don and Sons brands are Smoking Loon and Pepperwood Grove. These wines, produced by the Family Division of the company, all feature synthetic corks. Smoking Loon has recently garnered praise, and the San Francisco Chronicle named Don and Sons one of the best budget brands in the world.

But instead of investing money in a winery with all the trappings — tasting room, gift shop, winery tour — Don instead follows the French model of the négociant who buys partially made wine and blends his own. Don, says son Donny, is a front-of-theshop kind of guy anyway, the ultimate marketer who is less interested in winemaking operations. But with two generations of Sonoma winegrowing connections behind them, the family is able to secure high-quality grape contracts.

Don established a winery of sorts, not adjacent to his Sonoma headquarters or facing the illustrious Highway 29 wine trail but in a Napa industrial park. The winery building houses a bottling line, wine storage and barrel-aging facilities. Another price-cutting measure involved simplifying the distribution of wines. Dissatisfied with the complex multi-tiered distribution system, Sebastiani launched a division called The Other Guys to distribute Don and Sons wines in California.

But when it came to hiring a winemaker, Don sought a well-seasoned one: Richard Bruno, formerly of Bonny Doon and Folie à Deux. This was a good thing, because, oddly enough, Don rarely drinks California wines. “I sip them on occasion, but for me, wine with meals means White Hermitage or Barolo.”

August’s beverage of choice is beer, and Donny doesn’t drink much wine either. All three defer to Bruno’s expertise. “If Richard says the wine smells like walnut shells, I agree. It’s like juries that are naturally swayed by the power of suggestion from lawyers,” says Don. Don knows about persuasion. He studied government at a Jesuit college and deferred entry into the family wine business until he’d spent three terms in the California legislature representing Sonoma. Yet, as much as he admires traditional European wines and winemaking methods, he eschews some of the old ways of judging wine. “I don’t think blind tastings work. If someone says, ‘This wine got 95 points from a respected wine
critic and is sourced from well-known vineyards,’ this recommendation can influence your perception and give guidance.”
Donny respectfully disagrees with his father. “You get a more pure sense of the wine tasting it blind. But if someone tells you in advance that the wine is a Hungarian‘ Pinotage,’ that can be helpful.”

‘ WE ARE CITY GEEKS’
Don and Sons operates on the dual principles of quality and no pretense. This is reflected in the cheeky photo of Don and his sons dressed in mechanics’ overalls and fixing a tractor on the home page of the Three Loose Screws Web site. When you dig deeper into what makes the three tick, you appreciate how the Sebastiani eccentricity helped the company achieve success in only four years. A passion for sports bonds the family, and Don proudly rattles off his sons and daughter’s MVP and All Star awards. August easily sums up his dad’s other interests: “They revolve around perishables: wine, cigars, caviar. His Christmas presents always come in a basket wrapped with cellophane.”

Don confirms that he and his sons would look funny in cowboy hats in the vineyard.“ We are city geeks. I’m the worst; I would love to live in Greenwich Village.” All three live within a few blocks of Sonoma’s town plaza. Don rarely attends celebrity wine and food or charity events, yet he continues the Sebastiani tradition of community support by mentoring kids in a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program in San Francisco. At first glance, son Donny strikes you as an easygoing twentysomething guy. But when asked why he chose the name Aquinas for the company’s quality Napa Valley offering, the marketing graduate from Santa Clara University, a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, Calif., reveals his deeper side.

“ St. Thomas Aquinas knew that intangible things were tough to grasp,” he says.“ These days, many people find it hard to grasp all the mumbo jumbo associated with wine. Thomas Aquinas tried to take worldly facts — tangible things — and bring them into the faith. It’s like making a blessing, a tangible statement, about the intangible feelings one experiences while sharing wine and food at the table with family.”There is a tongue-in-cheek yet genuinely spiritual element in the way the three run their wine business. Donny speaks the most eloquently on the roots of wine. “Wine is a spiritual thing, the center of the service in so many religions. Breaking bread and sharing wine is the heritage of cultures throughout the world.”

Yet the label for Screw Kappa Napa depicts a corkscrew with wings, ostensibly a corkscrew“ angel” flying off to heaven. The advertising campaign emphasizes Life Beyond Cork and offers this explanation: “As an old tradition passes, a new one begins. Screw cap closures ensure each bottle of the finest Napa Valley fruit matures as the Great Winemaker above intended.”

THE YOUNG ONE IS THE OLD ONE
Don sets the strategic tone for the company while prodding his sons to spread their creative wings. Their good-humored banter highlights their creative differences. Donny calls Dad “organized, pragmatic, eclectic — and eccentric.” Don characterizes Donny as circumspect, a fellow who has always been old beyond his years. August thinks Donny is uncompromising, and Donny calls younger brother August a free spirit with a European sensibility. Dismissing the need to spend money on market focus groups, Don says, “We make wines that we like ourselves, and we learn by the seat of our pants. If there’s a style we don’t like, like off-dry, semisweet Riesling, we don’t make it.”When the trio sat down to find a name for the flagship wine for the Three Loose Screws division, August acknowledges that, perhaps as the youngest, the name Screw Kappa Napa came to him first. Don likes Screw Kappa Napa Cabernet Sauvignon and segues to a worldly comparison: “Making great wine is like making great cigars. Both must be in harmony. I like cigars when I know where the tobacco leaves come from. I don’t like cigars with too much overpowering structure or not enough complexity of
flavor derived from where the leaves are grown. That’s what I like about this Cabernet: It’s in harmony. It’s not overly tannic or overly fruity.”

Don humbly acknowledges that he is the best male cook in the family. Though he usually drinks Italian Barolo when he grills sausages or rabbit, he sometimes unscrews a bottle of Fusée Syrah. “This is a wine with a classy label that makes a nice impression on the back deck or balcony, and it’s not expensive. You can replace the cap and finish if off tomorrow.”
The wine descriptions that Don and Sons create are decidedly humorous and down to earth. Fusée Cabernet Sauvignon, they say, is “a blast from the past with aromas of licorice candy, granddad’s pipe tobacco and rich flavors of berry jam and molasses. Tastes great with those neat little cocktail franks in barbecue sauce or drive-in burgers and fries.”

Fusée’s sleek label, a black rocket on a white background, takes direct aim at the recent surge of wildly colored inexpensive wines from Australia that usually are designated with animal names. At $7 a bottle, Fusée and most other Don and Sons wines are extremely competitive with Australian wines. The five Fusée varietals, from Chardonnay to Syrah and White Zinfandel, blend grapes from several California wine regions. But several other brands, with smaller case production, such as Mia’s Playground from Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, are sourced carefully from specific vineyards and wine country regions.

IS THE SOUTH GOING SCREWY?
Don and his sons are confident that the company will grow 35 to 40 percent in the next year. And they view the Southeast as an emerging market. At Tavern on the Summit in Birmingham, Ala., managing partner Sam Fallow keeps a large inventory of Smoking Loon and Pepperwood Grove on hand to satisfy customers who like to pair the wines with the restaurant’s traditional American food.

“ We don’t want to confuse people or make it hard for them to enjoy wine,” Fallow says. “Our list contains only brands from California, Australia or South Africa. Our specialty is prime rib, and Smoking Loon Merlot complements it well at only $24 a bottle. The wine has a full body but is not over-the-top fruity. The Cabernet is also a great pairing; it’s young but balanced and designed to drink now.”

As for the Don and Sons screw cap, people sometimes look surprised because they haven’t seen it before, Fallow says, but no one has turned back a bottle. If anything, the screw cap tends to start a conversation about the wine-bottle closures of the future.

“The screw cap does take something away from the presentation at the table,” Fallow admits. “Guests are accustomed to the staff popping the cork and sniffing it for taint. Watching someone twist off the cap just isn’t the same experience for the diner. But we share what we’ve learned: The screw cap improves storage and seals the wine better.”

In North Atlanta at POP’s! Wine & Spirits, Nathan Popky sells cases of Pepperwood Grove, Smoking Loon, Aquinas, Mia’s Playground and Screw Kappa Napa, all for under $20 (and most for under $10). When people realize the wines are made by Sebastiani, they remember the name’s reputation for quality, says Popky, president of POP’S! “It’s one of those names like Mondavi that everyone knows. Sebastiani is synonymous with good wine, but we have to talk about it since the name is not prominent on the label. We also sell Sebastiani Vineyards wine. But the competition for Don and Sons wines is definitely from Australia.”

What’s the customer reaction to screw caps so far? Customers love Screw Kappa Napa, Popky says, but it’s somewhat of a mixed reaction dependent on price level. “The jury is out on whether consumers would readily accept a screw cap with a wine meant to be laid down to age, like Sebastiani Vineyards Cherryblock Cabernet Sauvignon, which we sell for about $65. Since most people buy wine to consume right away, the overall perception is that screw caps are okay.”

A LEAP OF FAITH
Just when you thought you knew the brands and understood the differences among the three divisions of Don and Sons, the company goes and launches more wines with more playful names. Le Bon Vin de Napa Valley (Good Wine from Napa Valley) is another French-named wine from a third-generation Italian winemaking family. Known as LBV, the wine sports the new ZORK closure and sells for under $10. The latest Don and Sons release is Used Automobile Parts (UAP), an ironic name for a wine made by a family of scholars who are not mechanically inclined and who claim not to be riffing on the name of the Napa Auto Parts chain. UAP’s tiny production with ZORK closures (300 cases) will be the first higher-priced Don and Sons wine, in the range of $30 to $50.

As for the youngest Sebastiani, 19-year-old Mia is not yet sure whether she’ll join the family business, although her photo is on the label of Mia’s Playground. She is currently studying — you might have guessed it — philosophy. Perhaps it’s not a good idea to rely on cold, hard data to predict the future of Don and Sons. But is it realistic to believe that these Sebastianis can continually capture the imagination of legions of wine lovers with more affordable, creatively named wines? As both Donny and St. Thomas Aquinas might say, maybe it’s best to take it on faith.

Deborah Grossman is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist who enjoys writing about people
and places that celebrate wine and food. Besides dining at restaurants with intriguing
wine lists, she likes to travel with her husband and cook with her grandchildren. She grew
up in Wilmington, Del., watching Philadelphia Eagles games.

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