The Story
The Polemonium Wines story has really just begun (July, 2023) but it is created from an idea that is several years old. We just needed the place for it to grow.
We’re a couple of Winemakers that have been in the business for a combined 30+ years. We’ve made or worked on a lot of wines across regions like Napa, Sonoma, Knights Valley, and in Australia and New Zealand. We have experience across tiers from commercial wines you see in the grocery store for $6 to small-lot Icon and cult wines with 100pt scores and made from some of the best vineyard sites in the country. We’ve worked on some the oldest, most familiar brands in the nation, to brand new family-owned start-ups.
The two of us came together to build this brand based on our shared philosophy of making the best quality, cleanest, and true-to-form wines that we can, no matter what the conditions and, on the belief that it’s the people that really make for the success of any venture.
This project is about showing would-be wine drinkers who may be intimidated by wine, and the seasoned wine aficionados both, the raw, dynamic, and inclusive side of wine. We get dirty in the cellars and in nature, we laugh a lot (and sometimes we cry too). We work hard, we play hard, and we love a shared experience
This is not just another bottle off the shelf, wine, this wine, is a real human connection from us to you.
Authentic and Quality Driven throughout
Every element of Polomonium Wines is authentic, hand-curated and, must be mutually agreed upon by both of us.
In winemaking, this means a high level of precision. It’s not just the type of grape or the region, it’s the soil type, the vineyard aspect (Ryan in particular loves a West-facing slope), the vineyard management (do we know them? Are they excellent farmers and, are they friends?). Style decisions like pick date, fermentation temp and vessel, natural adjustments for acid or sugar, these choices are all carefully weighed, debated and chosen. We not only choose the exact cooper and model of barrel and the percent impact, but we also hug each one of those barrels throughout the vintage (Taylor believes this is a critical step that cannot be missed)! We are low-impact, we don’t add concentrates or mouthfeel fillers or subject the wines to any harsh filtrations or stripping. Blending is a particularly careful process. We will work a blend a dozen times and take a week if that’s what needed or we’ll make the final decision on the first go if we nail the profile immediately. If a wine does not meet both of our approvals, it does not go to bottle. Simple as that. This, we will always promise. Quality first.
Every single photo on this website and in the socials is a photo taken by one of us in the place and at the time. Every video, reel, and playlist, we compose and edit ourselves. The website is a little rickety because, heck!, we built that too! There is no copy / paste found here, it’s all straight from the source
Lifestyle - Fitness, The outdoors, and wine???
The Lifestyle we showcase here and on the VLOG is the one we live. We love health and fitness as much as we love making wine. We both fill our lives with as much adventure as we can. Fitness is vital to both of us. Ryan owns and coaches at a CrossFit gym (he mostly reminds members that a squat is a perishable skill). Taylor’s passion for Yoga and trail running has led to regular reminders to her friends and family to, ‘do your yoga sesh and get those runs in so you don’t ‘calcify like a bunch of crabs’!’ We both maintain our fitness to always be ready for whatever crazy idea we come up with next!
‘Where, When, How, to drink wine.’ Wine is complicated. As a concept, it’s got thousands of years of history, there are countless varietals, regions, laws, thoughts & feelings on it, not to mention that wine itself is often referred to as ‘alive’ because even after it has been poured into the glass, it remains a constantly changing thing. Wine is also un-complicated. At its most basic, it’s simply… a drink, it’s food. In moderation, it helps to sustain us and it brings us joy.
For us, health is combination of physical and emotional fitness and of fueling our bodies and spirits with what they need. Everything in balance. We share it all, how we eat, how we prepare for those adventures, and where, when and how wine fits into that.
Meet your Winemakers
Ryan’s winemaking background began with a degree in winemaking from Fresno State and then in 2004 he began at R.H. Phillips managing barrels. He then travelled abroad to harvest in Australia before returning to R.H. Phillips again, but this time to run the harvest programs. He then spent a number of years first at the Ranch Winery managing the custom-work clients, then bottling for a local bottling center, until 2011 where he worked three years as the Luxury Winemaker at Asti Vineyards. Following Asti, he became the Associate Winemaker at Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma. In 2016, he first became G.M. of the Treasury-owned, Beringer St. Helena wine facility overseeing all programs, and then finally Senior Winemaker of the Beringer luxury portfolio. In 2023, building on a long-term dream of his to showcase the people behind the brand, he and Taylor began the Polemonium brand.
Ryan bow-hunts, fishes and can tie his own flies. He enjoys hucking his skis off snowy cliffs that are a lot bigger than they look, is an avid Crossfit cultist that enjoys picking up (very) heavy things and putting them down again and can cook better than your Italian grandmother any day of the week.
Taylor always had an interest in wine but didn’t think it could be a possibility so she originally got her degree in Plant Sciences at U.C. Davis studying plant genetics. Upon graduating and realizing she didn’t want to breed soybeans, she went ahead and got over herself and got a job in wine industry in 2015 in the lab at Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma. That lab experience led to the next lab, this time for a harvest in New Zealand making mind-boggling volumes of Sauvignon Blanc. With a tip from a friend and an off-colored joke, she took her next role in 2016 at Alpha Omega in Napa. There, working alongside one of the most dedicated winemaking teams she’s yet ever encountered and Jean Hoefliger, she learned all her foundational knowledge for top-tier quality-driven winemaking. In 2019, she and Jean began J.H. Wine Consulting, a start-up operation catering to a broad portfolio of clients. in 2021, she left JH and went to work on the Beringer brand with Ryan where they continued Ryan’s trajectory of improving the wine quality and together, they overhauled the Knights Valley program to emphasize the unique region. July 2023 brought another start-up, the Polemonium brand which is now actively in progress
Taylor kayaks with a yellow, ocean-kayak from the 80’s, climbs big, snowy mountains with ice axe and crampons (also from the 80’s… buy a new set already!!! There’s no cramp left in those crampons), prefers the knuckle-dragging snowboard, rock-climbing in the desert and bombing down steep trails on runs and yelling “mountain lion, back there!’ to un-suspecting hikers. She is also a slightly better baker than Ryan but will grudgingly admit he makes a better Parker House Roll.
What’s with the Name?
The Polemononium eximium is a plant that only grows above 12,000ft (3,660m) in the Eastern Sierra mountains. To see it, one must work very hard and go to it. Amongst enthusiasts, it is considered one of the finest wildflowers in the area and for good reason. When you’ve been hiking for over a day through rock and ice and before you even see the perfectly round, blue-purple ball of flowers you smell the sweet, heady almost jasmine-like fragrance … simply divine.
Despite the name being somewhat of a mouthful to say out loud, we’ve named the brand after this flower for two reasons.
The first is due to our mutual love of the outdoors and the freedom we find in our individual pursuits at elevation. The second is that putting the work in and finding such a reward at the high peaks … it’s not unlike winemaking. Both require skills, humility, determination, focus, passion and maybe more than a little ‘crazy’ but if you do it right, it is absolutely worthwhile
P.S. if you look closely at the label, the skyline depicted there is of the Eastern Sierra skyline with the Mt. Whitney massif featured at the left