Woooohoooo! Please help us welcome back one of our favorite humans and former Bay Grape team members ever, Ms. Samantha Bauer! We’ll be pouring Sam’s Mantha Wine Co. wines all day (and all month long), but Sam will be IN SHOP from 3-6pm! C’mon by and chill with us!!
It’s hard to keep our story of Samantha Bauer and Mantha Wine Co. concise. That’s because the Mantha label is, in a way, so personal. Sam literally first got into wine because she was a neighbor of our Oakland shop. In her own words, “I was working as a geologist and living a block away from Bay Grape. I got hooked after I attended a tasting of Jura wines, where someone had brought rocks and fossils from the vineyard, and it was the first time that the connection between wine and terroir ever clicked. I couldn't believe that the composition of the earth could affect the way a wine tasted so much and, well, the rest is really history.”
Sam came to work for us in Oakland. She was one of our most curious, loyal, brilliant and infectiously joyous employees ever. We sponsored her Court of Master Sommeliers exams; we sent her to Oregon Pinot Camp. There, she met regenerative farming guru Mimi Casteel at Bethel Heights in Oregon. She went to work harvest with Mimi, left our nest for a bit, got connected to Aaron and Cara Mockrish at Frenchtown Farms in the Sierra Foothills, and we roped her back into opening and managing our Napa shop before we "lost her" for good to the siren song of farming vines in North Yuba. Ah, but that’s the thing—we didn’t lose her at all, because in early 2023 she launched her own label, Mantha Wine Co., and now we get to feature it!
Sam’s mission at Mantha Wine Co. is to foster the connection between nature/the land and the resulting wines as much as possible. As a geologist, she nerds out hard-core on what makes the rocks in the vineyards she works with so special—and how that gets conveyed in her finished wines (look at her labels, which feature cross-sections of the rocks shown under microscope!). Her farming is very Masanobu Fukuoka-inspired, meaning, as she explains, “it’s wild and as integrated into the existing ecology as much as possible. There are all sorts of critters and friends that live in and around the vineyard, which are welcome because it is their home, too.” Her winemaking is simple: Pick perfect fruit, keep the winery pristinely clean to allow very low sulfur additions, don’t add or take anything away; stay out of the way and let the terroir shine.
This is the inaugural release of the tiny-but-mighty Mantha Wine Co., and for a “rookie,” the wines are shockingly supreme. We’re humbled to get to show them off and lift up Sam after all she’s done for our shops and community.
Saturday Tasting Flight details:
* 3 featured wines available by the glass or flight, ranging $20-35/flight.
* Flights are themed based on a different grape, region, style, or another common tie.
* The Bay Grape team shares stories, educational tidbits, and pieces of wisdom about each wine and the common theme to bolster your tasting experience.
* No reservations needed; drop in anytime Saturday from 12-10 pm to taste and chill.