Our Story

I am guessing it all started when I was attending the University of California, Santa Barbara back in the mid 70’s studying engineering.  At the time, my parents were living in Berkeley, California and my father was working in San Francisco.  He took the bus to work and when he came home, his last stop was in front of the Kermit Lynch Wine Shop in Berkeley.  Just a bit about Kermit Lynch.  He was raised in San Luis Obispo, but his name has become synonymous with French and Italian wines.  In 1972, with a $5,000 loan and maybe a bit of imagination, this writer/musician opened Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants with thirty-five cases of wine stacked on the floor.  Attracted by the “Old World” wine cultures of Europe, Kermit became a retailer, distributor, and national importer of authentic wines that expressed their terroir including the likes of Super Tuscans and Great Burgundies when others were focused on Gallo Hearty Burgundy.  My father would drag home some great wines from Kermit Lynch and stash them in his makeshift cellar.  My parents were not serious wine collectors, they just loved wine.

When my brother Jeff and I would come home for the holidays from school, we would sneak down into my father’s cellar and pull wines out before going back to school.  When my father caught on, we just pulled the wines the day before and stashed them down the street under a bush and then headed to school.  He never knew, but I suspect he did.

After graduating from UC Santa Barbara, my brother started Coastal Vineyard Care, a farm management company focused on growing high caliber wine grapes in the South Central Coast of California and I started my Sparkling Winery, which at the time was called Newton & Newton, as a result of attending the Domain Chandon winery in Napa Valley with my father. 

That is where I think the idea of wine and making wine stuck with the two of us.  Me on winemaking and my brother on grape growing.

We produced our first Sparkling Wine in 1983 using Oregon Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, and in 1990 started making Sauvignon Blanc for cash flow (and really good stuff) and then reds in 2004.

In 1986, I met my wife Donna DiStefano and we married in 1987. I decided to make a still wine in her honor and that is where DiStefano wines came from.

In 2018, my friend and colleague Mark Nesheim, distiller and owner of JP Trodden Bourbon had me taste a Vermouth called Carpano, Antica Formula that was outstanding.  Before that, all I knew about Vermouth was the one that our father bought for cocktails, and after opening to have a cocktail, put it in that small cabinet above the stove. After a year or two, he couldn’t understand why it tasted so awful.  But that Carpano Vermouth inspired me to spend a year developing a recipe for Vermouth and then create three of my own: a Dry White for Martinis, a Red for Manhattan’s and a Bitter for Negroni style cocktails.  There are more than twenty-one botanicals, herbs and spice in these Vermouths.

As of 2023, I am now focused on making small lots of high caliber Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc as well as continuing to make Sparkling Wine and Vermouths.