Dallas Parnigoni

Coming Up

Rhône-style cellar work at Alta Colina Winery in Paso Robles, California, is where Dallas Parnigoni landed in 2025, bringing a background built through vineyard labor, production work, and formal study. The focus there includes Old 900 Syrah, the estate Syrah described as 98% Syrah and 2% Viognier. The wines sit in a frame of site and structure, and Parnigoni’s path to them has been built the same way: by learning the ground beneath the work and the decisions that follow. Training at University of Kentucky and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, gave Parnigoni a base in both theory and production. The first work was on the ground at Brianza Gardens and Winery in Northern Kentucky, where the job meant clearing land, installing trellising, and planting five acres of vines on limestone and shale soils. That kind of start ties vineyard establishment to cellar responsibility from the outset, and it set the terms for the roles that followed. From there, production became broader at Val du Vino Winery and Integrity Wines in Sierra Foothills, with the work widening in scope while the technical base kept building. At Integrity Wines in Northern California, the move into assistant winemaker marked a deeper level of cellar decision-making. Each step added another layer to a career shaped by production realities, field work, and the push and pull between intent and site. In 2025, that path brought Parnigoni to Alta Colina Winery in Paso Robles AVA, California, where he became winemaker.

Where They Are Now

Since 2025, the title at the Paso Robles winery has been winemaker, and Parnigoni frames the work in terms that put ecology and varietal character ahead of intervention. “I have been challenged to incorporate and leverage the standing biological systems on earth, and the outcome has been wines that show a sense of place, honest to the varietals, ethos and land that we stand on.” The language points to a cellar approach that reads the vineyard, respects the grape, and lets the estate define the register. Precision also sits near the center of the work. “As a winemaker, I would love to have a full university-level analytical equipment (e.g., GC-MS, LC-MS, microbiology plating) to pursue deeper research in the cellar.” For Parnigoni, analysis is part of the craft, a way to study fermentation and final expression with more detail rather than more noise.

Signature

Dallas's signature wines include Old 900 Syrah. At Alta Colina Winery, it reads as a direct expression of the house style he is working inside now: Rhône-style, estate-led, and grounded in the same field-and-cellar discipline that shaped his earlier posts.

In Their Words “As a winemaker, I would love to have a full university-level analytical equipment (e.g., GC-MS, LC-MS, microbiology plating) to pursue deeper research in the cellar.”