R2 Wine Company

Our mission is to create wines for you that not only are great expressions of their place of origin but also simply taste great! We currently produce our Black Pine Pinot Noir, Rhapsody en Blu Rhone Red blend, Big Bend Chardonnay and Vin Blancs Rhone White Wine blend. In addition we produce wines of very limited quantity that we feel are distinctive enough to warrant offering them to our tasting room and wine club members to enjoy. Having spent over 40 years in the restaurant business, Roger Roessler found himself with a natural and growing attraction to wines and winemaking. Over the years, his restaurants went through many changes, including an increased emphasis on fine wines. One of those restaurants was the Swiss Hotel, located on the plaza in Sonoma, and while working on that project in the 1990s, he found himself drawn to make a permanent home in the wine country. In the heart of wine country it wasn’t long before his idea of making wine became a reality. During the years from 2000 to 2011, crafting single vineyard and appellation blended Pinot Noir became a new passion. Also during that period, Roger began to think of a new vision and direction: create truly great value wines that expressed the characteristics of place as well as their varietal character. Now the Pinot Noir he loves so much has been joined by a handful of other wines. Richard Roessler’s interest in wine started as a wine consumer and eventually led to home winemaking with fruit wines from his native Midwest. As his appreciation for California red wines grew, so did his interest in making premium wines from the West Coast. His first California wine was a 1981 Cabernet Sauvignon, made from a barrel of crushed grapes shipped to his business office in St Louis. The barrel sat in the temperature-controlled shipping area until the fermentation was completed. From then on, he was hooked! Richard’s business career led him to Southern California, where his company was headquartered. Since he was closer to many West Coast wineries, he began making many more trips to the Sonoma area to meet up with Roger and his friends. When Roger suggested the concept of making some great wine with the Roessler name in 1999, it generated a lot of excitement. In 2003, he formally retired from his company and made the move to Sonoma. Since then he’s been an integral part of the winemaking team. Drew Huffine comes to R2 Wine Company having worked with some of the top Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producers in Northern California's wine country including Kosta Browne, Copain, Donum Estate, Auteur, DuMol, Eric Kent wines and most recently as the winemaker for Tuck Beckstoffer Wines. Drew says that he started his adult life as a "would-be academic" but halfway through his studies working toward a doctorate in modern poetry, he realized that a life in the cellar was calling to him much more than the stacks of half-graded student essays staring at him each Sunday. Ignoring common sense, Drew dropped out of graduate school and in 2007 took a job with his friend Kent Humphrey at Eric Kent Wines. Countless long days and longer nights later on two continents, he calls it the best decision of his life. Drew works hard to let the vineyard and the vintage determine what the final wine will be -- he believes that crafting wines from special vineyards is more about what he doesn't do than what he does. The goal is always to craft distinct, ageworthy and authentic wines.