A mechanical engineer who showed up to a single harvest in 2016 and never went back to his old career, Dan Marioni now makes some of Sonoma's most uncompromising natural wines.
Backstory
Dan Marioni is a fifth-generation Sonoma native who studied mechanical engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In 2016 he joined the historic Coturri Winery in Glen Ellen to learn harvest and stayed, making wine under the Sonoma Mtn Winery label with Nic Coturri. When that label wound down in 2019, Dan launched Marioni Wine.
The Region
Marioni Wine is based in Sonoma, California, drawing on estate and partner vineyards across Sonoma Valley and the surrounding area. The wines are crushed and vinified at Magnolia Wine Services in Sonoma.
Vineyards & Farming
Dan's philosophy is 'farming first, just grapes.' Vineyards are farmed organically with no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, hand-tended, and increasingly managed with regenerative practices that prioritize soil health and biodiversity.
Winemaking
He follows what he calls the Coturri Way: nothing added, nothing taken away. Fermentations run on native yeasts from the grape skins, reds are made with whole-cluster or partial whole-cluster fermentation, and the wines see only neutral French oak. There is no added yeast, nutrient, enzyme, tannin, acid, sugar or sulfur, and no fining or filtration.
The Wines
Releases such as Altar and Fields express single sites with no makeup. A signature detail: the labels are hand-made through linocut printmaking by Dan and his wife Jessie, a tattoo artist who designs the images Dan then carves.
