Alejandro Fargosonini is the owner and winemaker at Châteauneuf-du-Fargosonini in Central Valley, CA. He has a background in film and music production. He holds an MFA in Creative Practice from Plymouth University, UK., and is currently working towards his PhD in Literary, Musical, and Visual Thought at The European Graduate School. He lives on 9 acres of old vine Grenache interplanted with over 100 varieties of hybrid and vinifera vines near Sequoia National Park.
Media Inquiries: fargosonini@gmail.com | https://www.chateauneuf.xyz/home
What’s the ONE THING most unique, authentic, & memorable about your brand?
Our culture is about reconnecting people to the present through what I call a Dionysian rewilding. The vines, the farming, and the wines are all part of that. In the vineyard, our vines grow up wild trees the way they evolved to do, producing naturally larger and smaller crops in alternating years. We embrace real vintages and reject the industrial idea that every wine should taste the same from the same five grapes.
We don’t use additives—just wood, steel, and amphora. Our wines are made with 100% stems and often long skin macerations, sometimes up to eight months. We also upcycle organic fruit from nearby farms that would otherwise be wasted, turning it into wines unlike anything else on the market.
We operate in the region where most U.S. grapes are grown, yet almost no one wants to claim its terroir. It’s known for perfect farming conditions but is treated as bulk wine country. To me, that’s the opportunity. The land costs a fraction of Napa or Sonoma, sits between major markets like LA and San Francisco, and is surrounded by the largest concentration of organic farms in the country, many discarding up to 40% of their crops. With conditions like that, how could we go anywhere else?
Describe how and what you’d do with your winemaking career or winery business if you were not constrained.
We have personally added over 100 varieties of grape vines to our vineyard, about half vinifera half native and hybrid vines. All generally tolerate heat well. I would like to plant thousands, and thousands of different fruits and vegetables. Adding an agriturismo, seasonal restaurant, small hotel or rentals, and a sauna and spa, we would have a perfect platform for our Archaeology of the Frivolous arts retreat to operate year-round. Right now it is only one weekend a year. So we are working on our dream, and it is attainable. Our dreams have a leftist, open-ended bent. We want to share the plant material with like-minded people who want to make unique wines, etc. We will also be hosting fermentation workshops and have residencies for artists and winemakers. Eventually, we’d like to give away a certain amount of the fresh and preserved food we grow to people locally who need it, and we have some wines coming out that support global issues that are important to us, like the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and Doctors Without Borders.
What is the One Wine most emblematic of your brand and/or winemaking style? Tell us its story.
Dick’s Jardin – a new wine which is made from 17 different fruits co-fermented and bottled fresh while fermenting, to reduce the risk of spoilage. This wine is from my friend Richard’s immaculate organic garden down the street. He gives away tons of fruit and has about 5 acres, which he maximizes for every season to make as much as possible. This was everything I picked into my truck in early September. He gave me everything that won’t be used. It has figs, multiple types of peaches, plums, nectarines, citrus, watermelon, muskmelon, canteloupe, hybrid and native American grapes and also the grape Italia, which has parentage of Muscat de Hamburg and adds an alpine quality. We fermented it on the skins, husks, pits, the whole mass, for 2 days then bottled it quickly, where it finished under crown cap.
The wine is crushable, zippy, great acid, lighter red wine with some delicious and alien tasting notes from watermelon rinds and figs. Our winemaking is largely improvisatory which really breaks us away from the pack. We are artists, and improvising comes naturally, but we also know some things to avoid and are always learning to maintain quality. This wine is emblematic of our brand because the fruit was going to be thrown away, and if you had it you would not think it was an upcycled fruit-heavy wine while you were being subdued into the pure Dionysian present. Stay tuned, this wine review is coming soon!
Bonus Question: What are your wholehearted convictions related to the wine business? Not about your wines!
I am a bit disgusted by big business in general in the USA and the world. The wine business is often run like (and by) hedge fund style billion dollar companies that have strategies for maximizing profit which are often extremely cynical, terrible for the environment and ignore the consumer, while being recast narratively as heroic and wise and forward looking. Over the last few years the big companies have been pivoting to getting grape juice and wine from Chile and other South American nations where it is extremely cheap, labor is cheap, etc. If they blend it properly in the USA with juice or wine from here, the laws have been rewritten to where they can put on the label that its from the USA and pay taxes on it like its from the USA, etc. I’ll focus on one of the major narratives these large companies currently pay people to write about in the wine press is that grape growers should be pulling out vines in California, no one is buying wine! But actually the big companies made even more wine in the last year, they are just getting it much cheaper from elsewhere. Frankly it’s insane when you learn about the truth and read the articles they pump out daily about California wine declining and dying etcetera. Some things are true, certain sales declining etc, but overall it’s the bulk wine companies bullying everyone for cheaper versions of the same juice from faraway lands which they can legally lie about being from here. It’s better to consume products that are made locally and by people you can go meet and get to know. You can come step on grapes, sing karaoke in my vineyard during harvest and start a band with me. I will teach you something about winemaking you didn’t know – even if you’re an expert, have you fermented damson plums? We will send you off with cuttings to make your own vineyard. For me it’s all about what Marx said: you need to seize the means of production. So we have our own vines, which we add to every year, we want to plant more and more and make our own wines by hand and foot ourselves, because the hedge fund class doesn’t care about you or the environment, in fact they’re the major player in the world destroying it with the help of the US Government who is easily bought off. They don’t care about upcycling organic fruits into beautiful delicious wines unless they think its a marketing tactic that will sell. Organic wine is forecast to grow 10% year over year. So they’re pivoting to that as well, hedging the next bet, and the definitions of wine without additives is all legally bamboozled as well.