OUR PHILOSOPHY
We have made many wines in the past, but ultimately, Syrah is the focus.
Wine is really made in the vineyard—so our focus is on working with great vineyards like Rim Rock and Bien Nacido, and in supporting new sites for cool climate syrah like the Patterson Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills. In the winery, we use relatively low-intervention, traditional methods: native yeasts, low sulfur, and stem inclusion at fermentation to give transparency to the wines and to develop wines that have exuberant, lively aromatics.
The bakery is a smaller part of the family business, but no less ambitious. We farm heirloom grain like Sonora, Rouge de Bordeaux, and Abruzzi Rye. In the bakery, we center our bread program around freshly milled flour. We also make red and white wine vinegar from our own wine, and prepared whole-grain mustard from our own local mustard seed.
WHO WE ARE
Sashi Moorman (pictured top) makes the wines for Piedrasassi. He is a winemaker through his consulting group, Provignage, where he leads a team of winemakers in California and Oregon. Sashi is also the winemaker and directing partner of Domaine de la Cote and Evening Land Vineyards, and a managing partner in Sandhi Wines.
Melissa Sorongon (pictured left) is the baker and miller of Piedrasassi bread. She also makes the vinegar and mustard for the bakery, and can be found selling all the Piedrasassi goods at the Saturday farmers’ market in Santa Barbara. She is currently on the board of the Santa Barbara Certified Farmers’ Market, a network of several certified farmers’ markets in Santa Barbara County.
Sashi and Melissa manage the daily operations of Piedrasassi.
Peter Pastan founded the Obelisk restaurant and Two Amys Pizzeria, both in Washington, DC. He has a few obsessions: salt cod, anchovies, and dry aged beef from local dairy cows.
Peter’s obsession at Piedrasassi is the vin santo project, our passito sangiovese which we hope to release this year after more than ten years of work.
Amy Pastan is an independent writer, editor and book producer based in Washington DC. She has written books on Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Farm Securities Administration photographers, and the First Ladies of the United States.
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