Foppiano Vineyards

Petite Sirah at the estate bench

Petite Sirah sets the first decision. Nova Perrill , Winemaker at Foppiano Vineyards in Healdsburg, works at a Russian River Valley estate where that grape carries the clearest line through the cellar. Perrill’s own path gives the role its shape: ecology training at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, then assistant winemaking and viticultural work at Mount Eden Vineyards, then broader cellar responsibility. It pairs vineyard fluency with cellar judgment. Fruit does not enter the winery as a clean abstraction; it arrives with the season in it, and Perrill’s training sits at that join.

At Foppiano, the station is tied to a property founded in 1896, the oldest continually operated winery in Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley. Perrill’s appointment as Director of Winemaking at Foppiano Vineyards in 2015 gives the Healdsburg work a dated marker, and Petite Sirah gives it a center of gravity. The role belongs to a career that moved by increments of responsibility rather than display, from Cal Poly’s land-based discipline through assistant work and into director-level oversight. The throughline is structure, not ornament.

A 170 acre estate at the northern edge

The estate sits on 170 acres at the northern tip of the Russian River Valley AVA, on Pleasanton Loam soil, with cooling coastal breezes moving through the vines. Those facts matter before any cellar decision. Foppiano’s production is small estate production, with a sustainable philosophy and a portfolio that includes Petite Sirah, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. The flagship remains Petite Sirah, the variety most closely tied to the house and to Perrill’s own signature.

The craft here is not published as a sequence of fermentation temperatures, barrel regimes, or extraction schedules, so the measurable ground is the estate itself: the founding date, the acreage, the AVA, the soil, the varieties under Perrill’s care. Still red wine is the center of the program. The discipline is in keeping a firm variety articulate without making it heavy for its own sake. Petite Sirah rewards patience with tannin, timing, and balance; it also punishes a loose hand. Perrill’s background in ecology and viticulture gives that work a practical frame.

The tasting room and the river air

The room at Foppiano is quiet, with a modern tasting room set inside a family estate that still keeps its rustic edges. Outside, vineyard views and picnic areas carry the pace of the place; the cooling river breezes are part of the texture, not a decorative note. This is not a cellar built around spectacle. It is a working estate with a long memory, a counter, a view across the vines, and the old Sonoma County habit of letting the bottle answer slowly.

That restraint suits Perrill’s work. Petite Sirah asks for time on the tools, and the place gives it a fitting register: classic, scenic, and close to the vineyard rows that determine the wine before the fruit reaches the cellar. The house returns to the concrete thing, the Foppiano Petite Sirah.