In Carneros, Ram's Gate seeks to set an example for sustainability

Winery's relaunch focuses on its care for the environment

Every winery yearns to find a magical mix of quality, sustainability and hospitality to succeed. It’s not easy. Winemakers have a passion for making wine, not for selling it. Sustainable has many meanings, and many consumers are skeptical of greenwashing. But as climate change continues to present farmers with severe challenges from drought to flooding, heat domes to winter kill and spring frosts, and of course the ever-increasing threat of wildfires, concern for “environmental stewardship” has become much more than a platitude — it’s an urgent necessity.

This is the second of two articles I wrote this year for The SOMM Journal about O’Neill Vintners and Distillers, a major California producer playing a leading role in promoting regenerative viticulture. I posted the first, about the “1 Block Challenge” in Paso Robles, here back in April. This piece on Ram’s Gate winery in Sonoma County ran in the June/July 2025 issue.

The kernel of real interest here is the part towards the end about agroforestry. It seems a little precious to me, but definitely worth exploring. Stay tuned …

Hospitality, sustainability and quality were showcased in late February at an event for Chicago sommeliers hosted by Sonoma County’s Ram’s Gate winery and the SOMM Journal. The event marked a relaunch of Ram’s Gate, the flagship of O’Neill Vintners and Distillers’ new luxury wine division.

Maeve Pesquera, executive vice president for luxury for O’Neill Vintners and Distillers, welcomed more than a dozen guests from Windy City restaurants and the wine trade to the luncheon at FIRE by the Alinea Group, a new concept by famed chef Grant Achatz featuring wood-fired hearth cooking. She introduced the Ram’s Gate team as “driving sustainability at scale” to strengthen the wine community to deal with climate change.

“What you’ll see with these wines is the same intensity of purpose we see right here in this kitchen (and) that you bring to your wine lists and to your consumers at your restaurants — it’s the same craft,” Pesquera said.

“When you drive to Sonoma from San Francisco, we’re the first winery you pass,” said Breck O’Neill, proprietor of Ram’s Gate and son of O’Neill Vintners and Distillers founder Jeff O’Neill. The winery, designed by architect Howard Backen, sits along the north shore of San Pablo Bay at a point where the Sonoma Coast, Sonoma Valley and Los Carneros American Viticultural Areas converge.

“Carneros means rams in Spanish, and we are at the gateway to Carneros,” O’Neill said. “So at Ram’s Gate, we welcome you to our world with hospitality, incredible wine and incredible food.”

Co-founded by Jeff O’Neill in 2011, Ram’s Gate came fully under his ownership in 2024 and was incorporated into the O’Neill Vintners and Distillers portfolio. The event at FIRE introduced the brand into the Chicago market, targeting restaurants and select high-end retail, with additional launch events planned for New York City, the Miami area and Texas later this year.

Winemaker Joe Nielsen, who has been at Ram’s Gate since 2017 and was recognized last year by Wine Spectator magazine as a rising star in California chardonnay, brought chardonnays from Sonoma Coast and Hyde Vineyard, as well as pinot noir from Sonoma Coast and a single-vineyard pinot noir from Bush Crispo Vineyard, a 4-acre site in the Russian River Valley that produces a mere 400-600 cases each vintage.

Nielsen said the winery’s location at the juxtaposition of three AVAs “means we can play to different expectations, and sometimes even defy expectation.”

These wines appealed to the guests. “My list is heavy on California, especially cabernets, but we have a lot of seafood on the menu, so there’s room for chardonnay and pinot noir,” said Diego Bermudez of Mastro’s Steakhouse on Dearborn Street.

Maria Montero, purchasing director for Smoque Steak in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, echoed this sentiment, stating, “We sell a lot of chardonnay. I’m looking for wines that taste above their price.”

For this event, guests enjoyed Ram’s Gate wines with an adventurous menu prepared by Chef Adair Cancasco and his crew at FIRE, including prawns smoked over juniper branches, halibut cured in kombu and steamed with celery, and even a “glowing log-scorched dairy” for dessert. To this writer, the most outstanding pairing was the Bush Crispo pinot noir with a spice-cured stewed beef cheek with Asian flavors.

General Manager David Kearns described the dining concept at FIRE as more “primitive” than the refined and inventive cuisine of Alinea. “With a focus on open flame and no control of temperatures, you are really beholden to the elements,” Kearns explained. “We wanted to create a menu using smoke and fire techniques in an unusual way.”

Nielsen shared his approach to winemaking and sustainability. “At the core, we love freshness in our wines, and we achieve that by both better farming, more focused farming, and by pushing the envelope on what is acceptable acidity for standard classic wines of California,” he said. “And that means picking earlier than most people … as we try to find that Goldilocks of just enough richness and just enough acidity.”

Sonoma County’s sustainability initiative has seen 98 percent of its vineyards and wineries certified sustainable. Ram’s Gate began farming organically in 2020 and achieved organic certification last year through CCOF, California Certified Organic Farmers. He expressed dismay that more Sonoma County vineyards and farms were not pursuing organic certification, noting a “barrier of entry, because we assume it’s too difficult.”

O’Neill Vintners and Distillers has become a leader of regenerative viticulture in California. Caine Thompson, the parent company’s head of sustainability, explained that O’Neill’s Robert Hall winery in Paso Robles is one of 16 wineries worldwide currently (as of late February) holding the Regenerative Organic Certification since the certification debuted in late 2019. The parent company itself is ROC certified for its 140-acres of vineyards and Ram’s Gate is farming regeneratively and expects to be certified later this year.

Regenerative farming is “still relatively niche, but it’s one of the most exciting things happening in agriculture and wine at the moment,” Thompson told the guests. “You take all the principles of organic — no pesticides, insecticides or herbicides — and you start building soil on top of that. That means planting specific cover crops, so not keeping a naked soil. Traditional agriculture brings up the plow to till the land. Regenerative is no-till, to keep roots in the ground and not expose the soil to sun, wind and rain.” Tilling releases carbon from the soil into the atmosphere and over time results in a depleted topsoil, Thompson explained.

Regenerative farming also relies on animals, and Ram’s Gate employs sheep during the winter and spring, before bud break, to graze on the cover crop and weeds and fertilize the soil with their manure. This emphasis on soil health is complemented by a social fairness standard, which Thompson said sets regenerative apart from sustainable, organic and biodynamic methods. At Ram’s Gate, this means paying vineyard workers a fair wage and involving them in the decisions about caring for the vines.

“Living wages, ethical farming, nothing harmful being applied to the vineyards — that’s creating this pure, regenerative, holistic system,” Thompson said. “It’s one of the most exciting movements in the world of wine.”

And yet, they’re not stopping there. In the weeks following the Chicago event, Thompson and Neilsen began planting trees among the vine rows at Ram’s Gate’s estate vineyard in what Thompson described as California’s first experiment with agroforestry. As he explained the concept to the guests in Chicago, the idea is being put into practice in Bordeaux and Château Cheval Blanc and Château Palmer, and in Champagne at Ruinart and Bollinger.

“It’s the most crazy thing you’ll see,” he said, with about 50 trees per acre planted among the vine rows. “This isn’t random trees around the boundary of a vineyard. This is the intentional planting of ancient fruit tree varietals, bringing diversity back to the land in the vineyard row,” he added. “It adds shade, it stops the wind. It opens up crevices in the soil for the grapevine to get down deeper, and provides more diversity. It’s building life within the vineyards that has been removed for hundreds of years. This is what we refer to as building climate-smart vineyards for the future, to battle climate change and be at the forefront of protecting not just the land, but the style of wine.”

Montero, of Smoque Steak, was impressed with the wines and the presentation. “The ethos about doing the right thing, focusing on the hospitality and on the quality, even when it's difficult, totally aligns with our restaurant and our values in our space,” she said. “So on values alone, we really aligned. And these wines are exceptional versions of all these varietals and deliver a level of excellence and quality that is really noteworthy.”

Asked her impression of the wines, Marsha Wright, wine director for DineAmic Hospitality, which includes the Greek restaurant Lyra among its 17 concepts around Chicago, also pointed first to Ram’s Gate’s sustainability efforts.

“It’s wonderful what they’re doing with the agriculture and the ROC certification,” she said. “They’ve gone above and beyond to care about the land, because we’ve all come to this place in life where we need to give back to Mother Nature. The acidity and minerality of the chardonnays remind me a lot of some of the wines from Greece, and the pinot noirs are just extraordinary.”

Pesquera concluded the afternoon by stressing the importance of quality and sustainability in a time when the wine industry is facing tough headwinds.

“We’re resolute, and we believe in what you bring to life in your restaurants, which is a commitment to craft, quality, sustainability and doing the right thing for the sake of doing it, even when it’s exceptionally hard. That will always resonate with the people you’re sharing it with,” she said.

Correction: In the original posting, Ram’s Gate winemaker Joe Nielsen’s name was misspelled.