Inaugural Release

Terrizzi's - Giornata Wines

We are very excited to announce our first release of wines from Giornata winery. The journey in creating Giornata started with a dream to create wines from Italian grapes grown in California that earn the same respect that American winemakers have garnered from French varieties. My love for Italian wine started many years ago and stems from my lifelong love of Italian food and fascination with my Italian heritage.

After working for respected Zinfandel producer Rosenblum Cellars, I traveled to Italy to work with the famous Paolo DeMarchi at Isole e Olena in Tuscany. From this experience I gained a great deal of insight into Italian winemaking. I was also fortunate to spend a month traveling and visiting cellars from Tuscany to Sicily. During this trip I also reconnected with distant relatives in a small village in Sicily. My ancestors’ hometown was famous for wine since the dawn of the Roman Empire.

The road however has not always been kind. I have encountered doubt and skepticism along the way. At one point a few years back I almost gave up my quest when one of California’s most famous winemakers told me: “If you want to make nebbiolo move to Italy. You’ll never do it here.” A couple months later a meeting with Steve Clifton of Palmina winery refreshed my momentum.

In 2005 I married Stephanie, the love of my life, and a true vineyard guru. Her enthusiasm toward Italian wine was as powerful as mine and we spent our honeymoon visiting the top producers at their estates in Italy. We returned home full of new information including Stephy’s detailed vineyard sketchbook. This trip provided a revelation – grapes don’t know where they are planted. We work with the same grape vines (clonal material) that the best producers in Italy use, and the hills on the west side of Paso Robles look pretty much like the hills of the top vineyard sites in Italy. We had already confirmed that our soils matched up very well to the soils of the best sites in Italy (high pH, lots of calcarious rock).

So, with great enthusiasm, here are our first wines. These wines represent the beginning of the next chapter of our quest. They accomplish quite well what we set out to do. They definitely have the rich, ripe, delicious fruit that California is famous for, but they also have a foot in Italy. The wines possess a sort of intrigue and complexity that I find in the Italian wines that I love. Thank you for your interest in Giornata and our first release. We hope you enjoy these wines as much as we do.

Brian & Stephy Terrizzi