Sonoma Winery Opens a Path for Young Winemakers

Obsidian Wine Co. in Sonoma County is trying to solve one of California wine’s most persistent problems: how to help young winemakers get started when the cost of making wine has become a barrier before they can even sell a bottle.

The winery’s Rabbit Hole Entrepreneur Program gives one emerging producer a year discounted custom crush services, access to equipment and hands-on mentorship. It also lets participants do the winemaking themselves, from crushing grapes to bottling, instead of turning the work over entirely to an in-house team. For founders trying to launch small brands with limited capital, that control can matter as much as the savings.

Justin Michelle Ward Trabue was the first recipient after she spent months in 2021 looking for a place in Napa Valley to make wine for her new label, Ward Four Wines. She had won a $25,000 grant, but the price of custom crush services in Napa was so high that the money would have been consumed by production alone. She still would have needed to pay for grapes, trucking and packaging materials. When she moved her search to Sonoma, she found Obsidian and a program that fit what she needed.

Arpad Molnar, Obsidian’s co-founder, said the idea grew out of a basic problem in the industry. New winemakers may have ideas and energy, he said, but they often lack cellar space, capital and community. “That access is the bottleneck,” he said.

The program was developed by Casey Graybehl, Obsidian’s production director, who had launched his own side project at the winery years earlier. He said the Rabbit Hole name comes from Obsidian’s experimental line of wines, which includes sparkling Petite Sirah and low-alcohol piquettes. The incubator has drawn winemakers who want to try unusual styles or work with grapes in ways that are harder to support at larger facilities.

Trabue said she received about half off what other wineries had quoted her for her first year of custom crush services. She worked with grapes including Muscat, Mourvèdre, Barbera and Viognier. She said she wanted to keep close control over the process because she did not want to hand off her fruit and hope someone else would make the decisions she wanted.

Melani Vargas, who received the program’s 2025 slot for her brand Squish Cellars, made a skin-contact Viognier as her first wine. She and her partner, Deniro Keck, started the label together. Vargas said she found Obsidian after following Trabue on Instagram and seeing how involved Trabue was in making her own wines.

Obsidian’s setup is unusual because it works at very small scale. Many custom crush facilities are built for much larger clients and do not want to devote staff time and tank space to one-ton lots. Graybehl said that kind of work takes nearly as much effort as handling a much larger client, which makes it hard for many wineries to justify.

He said he tries to be available as a mentor in a way that is increasingly rare in California’s more commercial wine regions. The program has become especially valuable for people without family ties or industry connections. Blair Feng, the 2024 recipient and co-founder of Leap of Grapes Wines, said the support felt different because Obsidian staff went out of their way to help rather than treating smaller clients as an inconvenience.

There have been four Rabbit Hole entrepreneurs so far. All have been BIPOC winemakers, though Molnar said that was not part of the original design. The program has also taken on added significance because Black ownership remains rare in U.S. wine; Wine & Spirits magazine reported that as of 2020, less than 1% of U.S. wineries had a Black owner or winemaker.

Applicants must have licenses, permits and insurance in place or be working toward them, and they must plan to produce no more than five tons of wine, or about 300 cases. If they stay beyond the first year, Obsidian keeps offering a subsidized rate.

The winery is now accepting applications for its fifth vintage, but Graybehl said interest has been softer than usual. He thinks that reflects the broader strain on the wine business, where rising costs and weak demand have made it harder for new labels to launch at all.

Molnar said he hopes other wineries will adopt similar programs because he sees them as one way to address a structural problem in the industry while helping bring new voices into wine production.