Winemaker
Brian Maloney
- Discipline
- Winemaker
- Based in
- Sonoma, California, United States
i. Biography
In Sonoma, the work is about places that hold memory in the bones: old stone cellars, harvest moving in bins and dust, and wine finding its way back into rooms that had sat unused for years. Brian Maloney’s career sits inside that kind of continuity, where the job is to make practical decisions that keep winery history active rather than archived.
Coming Up
Technical training at the University of California, Davis gave Brian Maloney a framework built on rigor, method, and the discipline winemaking asks for long after school ends. The cellar side of the work has been matched by stewardship: returning season after season, reading fruit, and carrying production forward without unnecessary flourish. Since 2003, Brian has served as Vice President of Winemaking for DeLoach Vineyards and Buena Vista Winery, a role that places him within two connected houses of wine.
Where They Are Now
At that level, the title means harvest calls, cellar decisions, and day-to-day attention to production at both wineries. It also means working within the legacy of a place whose original Champagne cellars had been silent for decades. The job is not ceremonial; it is seasonal, hands-on, and exacting, shaped by the ongoing requirement to keep a winery’s past from becoming only a story. "I'm overseeing the wine making for a blase collection here in Salem at delosh as well as Buena Vista and uh other sundry projects that John Charles Bossier has me uh has me working on." The quote reads like cellar speech rather than public polish: direct, operational, and fixed on what needs to be watched over. That same plainness runs through the return of wine production to Buena Vista’s original Champagne cellars in 2012, where restoration meant use, not display. The space became active again, folded back into the working machinery of winemaking.
Signature
Brian Maloney's signature wines include 2014 Forgotten Vines Zinfandel and 2013 Maboroshi Vineyard Pinot Noir. Both reflect the same priorities that shape the broader work: attention to place, timing, and the patience required to draw something articulate from a vineyard and its season.
Honors
The dated milestones attached to Brian Maloney’s career are the 2003 harvest at DeLoach, the 2011 leadership of the return to Buena Vista’s original Champagne cellars, and the 2012 resumption of winemaking there after more than 30 years unused. Taken together, they mark a career built less on spectacle than on continuity—on the steady return of craft to spaces that were waiting for it.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Brian
What is Brian Maloney's current role?
As of 2026, Brian Maloney is Vice President of Winemaking.
Where did Brian Maloney train or study?
Brian Maloney trained at University of California, Davis.
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