Chris Miller, the winemaker/owner behind the 2021 Adroît Nero D'Avola, used to be the Sommelier at Spago. Not the Spago To-Go Café in the main concourse of the Keokuk International Airport, but THE Spago, the flagship one in Beverly Hills, California. Chris didn’t let the celebrities and stars get in his eyeballs and distract him from the matters at hand: he was in charge of one of the top restaurant wine lists in the country. He had a gift for pairing the right wine with great food; sometimes it was a $75 Blaufränkisch from Austria’s Burgenland, other times it was a $17,000 bottle of Domaine Romanée-Conti from France’s Burgundy region. He earned his nearly impossible-to-obtain Master Sommelier certificate, and the wine list brought additional glamour to a restaurant that was already the most glamorous in town.

After 25 years on the floor as a sommelier, Miller hopped on his motorcycle and rode to the Monterey Bay area, where he founded Seabold Cellars, a winery focusing on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the top vineyards in the area. It was successful from the start, and now Chris has begun to explore “California’s underappreciated winegrowing regions and grape varieties,” making wine from grapes you’ve never heard of, grown in places you’ve never been. Like this Nero D'Avola, made from grapes farmed organically by the Shergill Vineyard in the Mokelumne River AVA (over by Lodi). Nero d’Avola is one of the primary grapes of Sicily and was initially brought to California in the 1800s by Italian immigrants who wanted to get a taste of the old country to their new home.