Jennifer Reichardt

Before Raft Wines, Jennifer Reichardt’s work was already shaped by Sonoma County, California, where she was born and raised and where family labor taught her how food, craft, and the people around both are held together. Her place in Sonoma County Poultry / Liberty Ducks is part of that lineage, and it continues to inform how she works now. Today, Jennifer Reichardt moves between duck farming and winemaking without treating either as secondary. As a duck farm worker of Sonoma County Poultry / Liberty Ducks and the cofounder and winemaker of Raft Wines since 2016, she works in two modes that share the same demands: attention, discipline, and a clear sense of what the end use requires. Raft Wines, since 2016, has been Jennifer Reichardt’s other working ground: cofounder and winemaker in a project that extends the directness of the family business into wine. The work is built for the people who will open it, bring it to a table, or carry it to a picnic; its context is not separate from its making. In Reichardt’s hands, the bottle is meant to move through ordinary hospitality, poured, shared, and discussed, rather than sit apart from the life around it. Raft carries forward the same practical trust and producer-to-customer continuity that define Sonoma County Poultry / Liberty Ducks. The duck farm work remains part of the structure. At Sonoma County Poultry / Liberty Ducks, Reichardt stays tied to the labor that first defined her understanding of process and responsibility, and that connection gives her career its balance between farm, cellar, and the people who receive the finished work. Jennifer's signature dishes include The Whole Duck and Raft Wines. “Because we have always sold directly to our customers and have never used distributors, we have strong relationships with a lot of chefs.” “Once we decided to do it, we made a very long list of those that we wanted to include. Everyone was so supportive.” The point is not ornament; it is proximity, between maker and customer, farm and table, bottle and occasion. That practical orientation is the through-line. Family business taught Jennifer Reichardt to know who the work is for, and Raft Wines carries that lesson into wine meant for shared meals and informal gatherings, where the distance between producer and guest stays intentionally short.