PETALUMA, CA — Barber Cellars and the Petaluma Cheese Shop will join the Barber Lee Spirits distillery at 120 Washington Street this summer, bringing the Barber family’s three businesses together in a new downtown collective. The unified space, called Taste Petaluma, fully opens to the public Tuesday, July 1, and will also feature the Nightcap Dessert Bar and hand-crafted confections from local chocolatier Mad Chocolates. Barber Lee Spirits is co-owned by Aaron Lee and master distiller Michael Barber.

Petaluma is bustling with an ever-growing number of wineries and wine businesses. Let’s take a quick tour, following Sonoma County’s advice to “start with Barber Cellars.”

We (Mike and Lorraine Barber) founded our Petaluma winery in 2007. We live right on the Petaluma town line, in the midst of a patch of small vineyards. You can see our most recently planted Chardonnay vines from our kitchen window. 

We dry farm the organic grapes for our wines in vineyards like this around town and throughout Sonoma County’s Petaluma Gap. Our highest elevation vineyard, home to our beautiful Zinfandel grapes, is a sturdy four-wheel drive up the side of Sonoma Mountain on the east side of town. (The vines love this rugged hillside; though at nearly 2000 feet elevation, it’s a bit challenging for us humans.) Petaluma is also home to our crush pad where we hand-sort our grapes, create and age our wines, and bottle them.