Sally Johnson Blum

The Climb

At St. Francis Winery & Vineyards in Sonoma County, California (1999–2007), Sally Johnson Blum moved from enologist to winemaker, a change that reflects time in the work and confidence earned through repetition. The job would have required close attention to fermentation, blending, and timing, along with the more difficult habit of reading fruit and vintage without forcing either into a fixed idea. In 2002–2002, she served as a harvest intern at St. Hallett Winery in Barossa Valley, Australia, adding another harvest under a different set of conditions. The placement widened the frame: same season, different hemisphere, different cellar culture. What carried through was the same attention to detail and responsiveness to the work as it unfolded. At Pride Mountain Vineyards in Napa Valley, California (2007–2022), Blum spent 15 years as winemaker, building long-form practice in a region where precision and reputation tend to travel together. The length of that tenure matters. It suggests a steady deepening of command rather than a quick pivot, with each season compounding the last. She then became director of winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, California (2022–2023), a role that carried a broader remit. From there, she moved to resident winemaker at Tamber Bey Vineyards in Calistoga, California (from 2023). Alongside that work, Sally is founder of SJB Winemaking (since 2023), resident winemaker of CourAvant wineries (since 2023), and co-founder of STEREOGRAPH Wines (since 2023). The structure of those roles points toward an increasingly independent practice, built from accumulated experience rather than reinvention.

Today

Her current work carries the throughline of Sonoma, Napa, and Calistoga into a more self-directed register. Sally is a Cabernet Sauvignon specialist, trained at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Davis, and working under her own name and label. The continuity is clear: each stop in the career adds another layer to the same technical vocabulary. That same refusal of simplification shows up in how she speaks. “I don’t like binary dichotomies. I think life is a lot more complex than that. So, I would never say women make better wine than men, for example.” It is the language of someone comfortable with nuance and unwilling to flatten the work into slogans.

Signature

Sally's signature wines include 2025 Napa Valley Chenin Blanc, 2024 Napa Valley X2 Red Wine, 2024 Chenin Blanc, 2023 Napa Valley Cab, and 2023 Oakville Cabernet. The range runs from Napa benchmarks to a broader stylistic spread, which suggests a winemaker working across familiar territory without narrowing the brief to a single expression.

In Their Words “I don’t like binary dichotomies. I think life is a lot more complex than that. So, I would never say women make better wine than men, for example.”

Recognition

Sally's honors include 100-point score from Robert Parker for Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (2012), Top 100 Wines of the World inclusion, and Top 10 Most Badass Women Winemakers (#3). Read together, those distinctions place her work in view of both critics and the trade, while her own stance stays tied to craft, context, and the long game.