Steve Matthiasson

The Climb

Training at Whittier College (1991) sits behind the vineyard practice, but the through-line is field discipline under changing conditions. Bike messenger work in San Francisco gave Steve Matthiasson a trade built on timing, route-reading, repetition, and fast adjustment. Those habits carry into agriculture, where the pace is slower but the consequences are just as direct. Vineyard management at Four Seasons AG Consulting in Modesto placed the work in its daily frame: weather, soil, pests, labor, timing, and the cost of each decision. Collaborative technical work followed as collaborator and co-author, Lodi Winegrower's Workbook: a self-assessment of Integrated Vineyard Practices at Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission in Lodi-Woodbridge, California (from 1999), where sustainability was handled as a working method rather than a claim. Research viticulture at R.H. Phillips Winery in Yolo County, California added the scientific register while keeping the subject in the field. Sustainable Winegrowing depends on shared standards, practical language, and repeated measurement. Co-author work at California Code of Sustainable Winegrowing placed Steve Matthiasson within that effort to define responsible farming in usable terms. The same applied-viticulture concerns run through Past President at Association of Applied Integrated Pest Management Ecologists, Former Chair, Viticulture Committee at California Enological Research Association, director at Napa County Farm Bureau in Napa County, California, Board Member at Applied Ecologists Foundation, and review committee member at American Vineyard Foundation. The practice is farmer-technician work: systems, ecology, measurement, and taste treated as connected parts of the same job. Consulting tests vineyard judgment across sites, clients, seasons, and constraints. As viticultural consultant of Various wineries including Araujo, Dalla Valle, Spottswoode, David Arthur, Chappellet, and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars (since 1995), Steve Matthiasson has worked inside that long discipline. Co-founder work at Matthiasson Family Vineyards (since 2003) gives the farming principles a direct label expression, while co-chair of 280 Project keeps the practice engaged with broader questions of land, access, cultivation, and winegrowing’s future.

Today

Viticultural consulting in Napa Valley, USA, remains field-first work. For Steve Matthiasson, regenerative organic viticulture is not an add-on to cellar style; it is the operating premise for how the fruit is grown and how the wine is asked to carry freshness, balance, and place.

Signature

1995 Muscat of Hamburg and Higgs Boson Pinot Noir. A signature bottling, in this context, is not a fixed formula. It is a record of farming choices, picking decisions, and varietal curiosity. The 1995 Muscat of Hamburg and Higgs Boson Pinot Noir mark that range in Steve Matthiasson’s work: aromatic lift, texture, tension, and a willingness to work outside the most familiar California lanes while keeping balance and agricultural integrity as the through-line.

In Their Words “Regenerative farming is something that is near and dear to our heart. It’s something that we have been working with our whole careers. We weren’t a winery that got into organic farming; we were organic farming nuts that got into wine.” “We approach grape growing like organic farmers, so we love to explore different heirloom grape varieties. We make 10-15 different varieties every single year.”

Recognition

Steve's honors include Food & Wine's Drinks Visionaries (2025), Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Professional nominee (2014), and Winemaker of the Year. Recognition here attaches to a trade position as much as to individual bottles. In Steve Matthiasson’s work, California winegrowing is kept close to the questions that working vineyards answer first: how fruit is grown, what knowledge supports the farming, and how ecological practice can register in taste. The vineyard remains the center of the craft, with science, labor, ecology, and the finished glass treated as one continuous system.