Lindsay and I have shared a love for wine since we first met in Glasgow, Scotland. I emigrated from Scotland in 2003 and Lindsay and I continued to explore and enjoy wine throughout California after we married. In 2011 we decided try making wine ourselves, starting in our garage, and fell in love with the process. We continued to make wine in our garage for several years, using food-grade buckets for fermenters, a hand-crank Marchisio wine press, and a by-hand Portuguese Floor corker to produce our wine.
In 2016, we had the opportunity to move to Sonoma Wine County. At that time, we committed to improving our skills and wine-making knowledge with the hope of one day opening our own, small winery. 14 months later, in October 2017, we lost our home, and much of our small vineyard, to the wildfires that swept Sonoma that year. Shortly thereafter, we decided to throw caution to the wind and use some of our insurance money and savings to start our winery dream. We quickly set about sourcing grapes, finding a production facility, and bringing on a consulting winemaker to help us navigate it all. In June 2019 we released our first vintage of Hamilton Family Wines!
During the Covid pandemic, we had the opportunity to take over a small tasting room in Kenwood, CA. After several challenges and setbacks we finally opened our doors in April 2022. Our winemaking philosophy is to start with great fruit and try not to get in the way. Our wines are very terrior-driven, native fermented, minimally-processed but made with close attention to detail. The experience and the wines have been extremely well received and we're excited to be part of the Wine Routes family!
