A family-owned, family operated Petaluma winery
Barber Cellars is a family winery dedicated to hand crafted, high quality wines made from their small, organically farmed vineyards. Lorraine Barber started making wine with her husband Michael in San Francisco in 2005. His background was in wine retail, hers was in construction, and both were still working their day jobs when they formed Barber Cellars in 2007 with the intent to start a wine brand.
There is a saying in this industry that goes: “In the wine business, you start with a large fortune to make a small fortune.” The Barbers started with no fortune at all, just a desire to hand craft unique, memorable, and honest California wines. Their first wines were from Dry Creek Valley fruit, crushed and fermented at a co-op winery in Suisun City close to San Francisco, which they hand sold on their lunch breaks while working their day jobs in the city. Fast forward many years of hard work, sweat, and toil. Now they farm 9 acres of smaller, remote vineyards around the Sonoma County town of Petaluma, making wine in their own winery and pouring wine in their downtown Petaluma tasting room.
Dry farmed, organic wines made by hand
The Barbers’ style of wine is more elegant and spice driven with brighter acidity and lower alcohol. Their goal is to create new world wines with old world sensibilities: food friendly wines of elegance and complexity that honestly showcase the differences of individual terroirs and individual vintages with fruit from small lots of their organic vineyards.
Every grape is hand picked and hand sorted. The wine is made without unnatural additions or manipulations and as little sulphur as possible. The red wines are fermented gently with two hand punch downs per day, aged in oak barrels, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. The white and rosé wines are fermented slowly in stainless steel, naturally clarified with colder temperatures, and bottled unfined.
Each wine is given a unique name on the label. The names are inspired by the individual expressions of the vineyards, and by the Barber family’s history. Browse through the wine selections to read about the origin of each name.