Winery Spotlight Wine Tasting
Bravium
St. Helena, California
October 2024
Join us for a wine tasting event featuring Bravium Wines from California! We will be sharing their five wines below; to reserve a spot and attend the wine tasting, please contact your local participating WineStyles store, or reserve your tickets on their local Eventbrite. Please join us!
Wines Tasted:
- Bravium Russian River Valley, Chardonnay, 91 pts.
- Bravium Anderson Valley, Chardonnay, 90 pts
- Bravium Wiley Vineyards, Rosé of Pinot Noir, 92 pts.
- Bravium Anderson Valley, Pinot Noir, 93 pts.
- Bravium, Wiley Vineyards, Anderson Valley, Pinot Noir, 92 pts.
About Bravium Winery:
Bravium Winery, founded by winemaker Derek Rohlffs, crafts terroir-driven Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from cool-climate vineyards in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley and Mendocino’s Anderson Valley. Rohlffs embraces a minimalist winemaking philosophy, allowing the land to shine through his wines with minimal intervention. His wines emphasize a sense of place, balancing nuance, structure, and aging potential. To learn more on their website, click here.
About Derek Rohlffs:
Of Cherokee descent, winemaker Derek Rohlffs was gifted the name “Winter Hawk” as a young boy. Intuitively connected to the land—Cherokee means “those who live in the mountains”—Derek has always felt a mysterious pull to nature, even as a child. To hear him tell it, the vineyard is his destiny. He doesn’t view his path to winemaking as a conscious choice, but more of an undercurrent that quietly ushered him to where he belongs.
Today, Derek welcomes the sight of hawks circling over the vineyards and swooping down to the earth around him. A single hawk’s feather fittingly graces the Bravium label, echoing the power, elegance, and vitality of the wines—and of Derek’s Cherokee roots.
A graduate of the trailblazing Environmental Studies program at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Derek also took coursework in the world-renowned winemaking program at the University of California at Davis. His far-reaching travels have afforded in-depth visits to the wine regions of France, Italy, and Australia.
But his most impactful influence may have been a retrospective tasting he experienced at Mayacamas Vineyards during his first visit to Napa Valley. Those wines captivated Derek in untold ways, and he resolved then to become a winemaker. He later crossed paths with the acclaimed winemakers at Rhys Vineyards, who steered Derek toward cool-climate, mountainside fruit.
Photos and Information © Bravium – All Rights Reserved.
WineStyles Tasting Station 