Drew Nenow is the winemaker for Onx Wines in Paso Robles, CA. Though raised in San Diego, Drew Nenow spent his formative years in Napa Valley, immersed in vineyard life alongside his father, a winemaker, and family members at Behrens Family Winery. Drew became friends with renowned vintners like Francoise Peschon and Mike Hirby, and this early exposure laid the foundation for a career in fine winemaking.
After earning a degree in Enology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Drew honed his craft at Turley Wine Cellars under Ehren Jordan and Tegan Passalacqua. In 2015, he joined ONX Wines as Assistant Winemaker, helping grow the brand from a garage startup to a respected name in Paso Robles.
In 2017, Drew co-founded Nenow Family Wines with his sister and their spouses, focusing on Rhône-inspired wines. He expanded again in 2025, launching Kiler Canyon Vineyard in the Willow Creek District, where he crafts small-lot, terroir-driven wines that highlight the region’s unique character. Drew brings a blend of tradition, creativity, and precision to every bottle – rooted in family, shaped by experience, and driven by a deep love for the land. Media Inquiries: Jenny Freck jenny@onxwines.com | https://onxwines.com/
What’s the ONE THING most unique, authentic, & memorable about your brand?
When I first interviewed with ONX, we met on the back porch of the owner’s house, as we did not have a winery facility at the time and had been relying on local custom crush facilities for making the wine. Just around the corner in the owner’s garage were cubicles, which was where my first desk was. It truly had a “start-up” feeling. But looking out over the vineyard estate in the Templeton Gap, seeing the 18 different grape varieties being grown there, it was apparent to me that ONX was a place to learn, grow, and foster creativity. As a young, aspiring winemaker, the ability to explore the fringes of wine blending and truly work with a winery from the ground up was both exciting and humbling at the same time. Fast forward ten years and the dream of having our own winemaking facility has come to fruition and we still continue to lean into the creativity that making wine in Paso Robles allows. And in a full circle moment for us, we even now offer custom crush services to other local wineries!
Describe how and what you’d do with your winemaking career or winery business if you were not constrained.
As I mentioned, I have no constraints when it comes to winemaking and the creativity thereof. So my answer here would be much more business-oriented. In a wine consumer culture so fixated on varietal wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, my dream would be to build ONX up to a national presence and bring more attention to the world of blended wines. The artistry, the creativity, and the balance that can be achieved through blending, I believe to be underappreciated in our wine culture, and I believe would open people’s eyes to a world of wine consumerism that they never knew existed. Additionally, given the resources, I would invest in our ONX at Home virtual wine tasting program that was born out of the pandemic, offering guided wine tastings online; Expanding our reach and making more people aware of this unique opportunity to experience wine country from the comfort of their own home! For a boutique winery like ourselves, getting recognized on the broader market and store shelves often feels like an impossible task, but going straight to the consumer, telling your own story, and making wine more accessible sounds like a win-win for all.
What is the One Wine most emblematic of your brand and/or winemaking style? Tell us its story.
It’s so hard to choose just one! However, If I have to choose one it would be our Mad Crush red blend. Mad Crush is a spin on the classic GSM (Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre) that you so frequently see in the Rhone world. We instead swap the S for a T and do a blend of Grenache, Tempranillo, and Mourvèdre. On one hand, it is not uncommon to see Garnacha and Tempranillo together in places like Rioja, or Grenache and Mourvèdre together in the Rhone, but the three together are a Paso match made in heaven. Grenache provides the base aromatics and flavors that everything else is built-upon. Tempranillo, having many of the same dry red fruit features of Grenache, fits in seamlessly while providing ample amounts of gritty structure that both make the wine ageable and very food friendly. And lastly, just as it is in the classic GSM’s of the world, Mourvedre is the binder that provides mid-palate tannin and depth. Read this GMT wine review and a bonus note of interest.
Bonus Question: Why Winemaking?
For me, winemaking had always been an obvious career choice since I was in middle school. As a child, I had the luxury of growing up around wineries, winemakers, and vineyards in the Napa valley. My Aunt and Uncle, who were formerly restaurant owners in Humbolt County California, got bit by the winemaking bug in the 1980’s. So much so that they sold their little French restaurant in Arcata and uprooted their lives to St. Helena to start a wine brand called Behrens & Hitchcock. Their hard work and passion for winemaking lead to a great deal of success (however as extremely humble people they would chalk the success up to good timing and great people in support), and soon thereafter my father started working the harvest season with them every Fall. My dad had worked for IBM as a computer technician since his early 20’s, and the passion and love that I saw in him with this second calling was extremely impressionable on me, now a young teenager. It was at that time, at the ripe age of 12 years old, that I decided winemaking was what I wanted to do with my life, and I’ve never looked back since.