I tasted notes of spice, nutmeg, chocolate, blackberry, blueberry, violets, herbs and currant. 2016 Cornerstone Cellars Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon – made with 100 percent mountain fruit, there is a reason this is known as the winery’s signature wine.It has a great acidity and lots of fruit. Kari talked about the component tasting involved in making this wine and “how making a blend is better than each of the parts.” I tasted lots of tropical notes, stone fruit, citrus and herbal notes. 2019 Cornerstone Cellars Farina Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc - this wine is fermented in a concrete egg, Acacia barrels, neutral French oak barrels and small stainless-steel barrels stirred by hand.We tasted four wines from Farina Vineyard in Sonoma Mountain AVA (Sonoma Valley) and vineyards that are well-known, but not named from Howell Mountain, Oakville Station and Rutherford. The winery focuses on limited production wines, showcasing what vineyards and appellations can do. Wines that are a reflection of the vineyard, the vintage and the variety.”Ĭornerstone Cellars has been making wine since its first Howell Mountain vintage in 1991. “We have an owner who allows us to produce great wines from great vineyards, and making the kind of wines that we want to drink. Kari talked about the unique approach that Cornerstone Cellars took when Michael Dragutsky embarked on a quest to deliver on the potential he saw in a select few of Napa Valley’s finest mountain and benchland Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards. ![]() She has also done winemaking and consulting work for boutique, small production wines like Lindstrom, Keever and Kelly Fleming and was named as a rising star in Napa Valley winemaking.Ģ016 Howell Mountain Cabernet, Courtesy of Cornerstone Cellars Kari first worked at Cornerstone Cellars as assistant winemaker under Celia Welch from 2000 to 2007 and then returned for her homecoming as head winemaker for Cornerstone Cellars in 2015. She was asked to join a startup in San Francisco and immediately accepted with an eye on buying her own winery in Napa or Sonoma with the anticipated gains. Like most start-ups, a lot of money was raised, a lot of promises were made and a lot of dreams were lost when the company failed to secure another round of funding.īy that time, she was making her own wine in her kitchen and garage in 2000, she began freelancing designing labels, brochures and other products for area wineries while earning degrees in viticulture and enology and in wine sales and marketing at Napa College. She planned to look for jobs in wine, but she found the opportunity to be mostly marketing focused. She moved to Chicago in the mid 1990s for a few years to be closer to family in Wisconsin. She planned to stay in Dallas for five years – that turned into 15. ![]() Salmon and Pinot were the first one that caused the epiphany. “I powered through the wines of the world.” “The need to figure out wine caused me to fall in love with wine,” she said. She invited people to bring bottles, take their own notes and themed the tastings. She decided to learn as much as she could about wine and she realized she was doing impromptu tastings with several bottles that would be more fun with more people (and maybe look a little less problematic if not done solo). As the owner of the agency, she would be automatically handed the wine list at lunches and dinners and expected to make the right selection. Wine came into the picture when she was doing a lot of entertaining for clients and was expected to know wine. That led to her starting her own agency in Dallas where she worked for big clients like Texas Instruments, Frito Lay, Dr Pepper and 7UP. Her initial thought, after college graduation in 1981, was that she was cold – very cold – and packed up her Z28 Camero with the goal of move from Wisconsin to anyplace warm that she could get a job using her marketing and design degree. ![]() Kari Auringer didn’t set out to use her creativity and craftsmanship to make wine at Cornerstone Cellars. ![]() Winemaker Kari Auringer, Courtesy of Cornerstone Cellars
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