Sollevato Wines & Thanksgiving Wine Pairings

Summary

In this episode of The Sipping Point, Laurie Forster shares her top wine picks for Thanksgiving, including a white wine, a sparkling wine, and a red wine. Laurie Forster also interviews Nikki Lamberti, a former Disney employee turned wine educator and entrepreneur. They discuss Nikki's journey from the East Coast to Napa Valley, her passion for wine, and the creation of her own winery, Sollevato Wines. The conversation also delves into the tasting of Nikki's Sangiovese, the branding of her wine, and her podcast, Sip with Nikki, which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The episode highlights the joy of wine, the importance of community, and the excitement of pursuing one's passion.

Takeaways

• Nikki transitioned from a successful career at Disney to pursue her passion for wine.
• Her love for wine was cultivated during her travels with Disney Cruise Line.
• The name 'Sollevato' translates to 'joyful' in Italian, reflecting her journey.
• Nikki's first vintage was produced in 2019, marking the start of her winery.
• She emphasizes the importance of education in winemaking, attending UC Davis for a certificate.
• Nikki's Sangiovese is sourced from a specific vineyard known for its quality.
• Her podcast, Sip with Nikki, started as a way to engage with customers during COVID.
• Nikki's journey reflects the joy and community found in the world of wine.

Wines Tasted 

2021 Sollevato Sangiovese, Sonoma County

Use code PodListener for 10% off any purchase at Sollevato Wines

Transcript

Welcome to the Sipping Point Podcast. Join Laurie Forster, the wine coach, as she guides you through the world of wine, food, and so much more. Laurie brings a fresh and fun approach to the world of wine. So whether you're a seasoned wine lover or just getting started, this is the place to explore how to sip.

Savor and live your most delicious life. And now here's your host, Laurie Forster.  Happy almost Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is the day. And I'm so excited to share with you three wines that I'll be serving tomorrow. And they're so good. Still time for you to get out there and get some great pairings for a Thanksgiving feast if you celebrate.

But first and foremost, just wanted to thank you all for tuning in to The Sipping Point. I love sharing wine in a way that's fun and approachable. And as always, if you have ideas for topics, let me know. Or guests, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. And speaking of there are new ways to support the show.

If you find value in the show, if you love the show, tell someone else who loves wine, have them tune in. And you have an option now if you go to my blog and any of the show pages, you can support the show for as little as 3. You're going to get a digital copy of my book, The Sipping Point, which is a crash course in wine and some other really great benefits.

So if you find value in this, as you know, we're doing this sponsor and ad free for now, I'd love your support. And speaking of that, we have a great event that you can support and join me in on December 4th. It's a virtual bubbly bash for 2024. I'm going to introduce you to four of my favorite sparkling wines for the holidays and beyond.

It's virtual, so you can log in from anywhere in the world. Just go to the winecoach. com slash events. You can register there. I'll send you a list of wines. We'll all tune in via Zoom on December 4th at 7 p. m. and just have a great time toasting to 2024 in the coming of 2025.  In a little bit, I'm going to bring in my friend Nikki Lamberti of Solovato Wines.

We're going to have a lot of fun with her and her Sangia But I wanted to share with you three wines that I'm going to have on my Thanksgiving dinner, just to give you some ideas. Now, first off, if you love white wine, I love this Willem Gewürztraminer. It's from Alsace, which is a part of France, but this area used to be part of Germany.

That's why a lot of these wines are going to sound like they're from Germany, but it still is French from Alsace. It's a Gewürztraminer, which translated in German means Spicy grape. Gewürztraminer grape. I found this for about 18. It's got lots of really full exotic fruits, but a little spice note.

A lot of people say lychee when they taste it. Grocery books. I love this to offset the spices on the Thanksgiving table. And even that fruitiness to pair with some of the things that are little bit sweet as well. But this is dry. It is not. Sweet by any means. 18. Love that white. And even before you get to the meal, sometimes you just got to start it off with a sparkling wine.

This one's from Ramon Canals. It's a Spanish Cava. In Spain, Cava translate to cave. As in the caves, they store these sparkling wines in. They're made from the method that was created in champagne or what we call the traditional method, which means the bubbles in this bottle are created right in this bottle, not in a tank process, not in a carbonation process.

It takes more time. It takes more effort. It's more artisanal. And this sent me back only 23. It's crisp, lots of grapefruit to it. And it's just really a wonderful way to start. And you don't have to feel guilty about throwing a little OJ or grapefruit juice to create a mimosa if you're like me, because it's only 23. 

And then third up, I have always have to have a red wine on the table.  From Mosca del Taco. We have this Primitivo from Puglia, Italy and Primitivo is pretty much like Zinfandel, the grape that you may know from California, lots of jammy fruit. That's really going to be amazing to set off all the different flavors and spices.

on the Thanksgiving table. If you like a little bit of a lighter red then go Pinot Noir and you might want to throw a rosy in there too. I love rosé and it's great for Thanksgiving. Go to the Wine Coach app and wine picks. Find the tab for Rosé all day. And there's some great suggestions out there for that as well.

Okay. So let's get to the main event. My friend Nikki Lamberti is going to join us from Napa, California. She owns a boutique brand called Solabato and makes an amazing Sangiovese that we're going to taste together. But I love her story. She has 20 plus years of hospitality experience with the Disney company.

So she lived in Orlando, but after a trip to Napa with her mother, she fell in love with the area and just through caution to the wind in 2012, moved to Napa, met her husband there and just started in the wine industry. She is a certified wine professional and just a whole lot of fun. So let's welcome her to the show. 

Welcome to the show, Nikki Lamberti. I'm so excited that we finally got this together. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I know we've been talking about this for a while since, since we met, since our paths crossed and here we are two wine podcasters. I love that. And yes, we'll definitely have to get into that.

Talk about your podcast. We met just to orient everybody. We're both. wine educators, we're both wine people, and my husband and I took a trip out and stayed in St. Helena and visited a wonderful winery called Pride Mountain, and you were our guide, and we just hit it off. I had a cast on at the time, I don't know if you remember that.

You did, you did. I had broken my wrist, and you were, So wonderful. And we fell in love with the wines, of course, but we just really hit it off with you and then ended up spending another day drinking wine with you outside of the wine tasting. I'm crashing your vacation.  It was great. We got to meet your husband, Michael, which is awesome because when we get to talk about Solovato wines and your own winery, Michael's a big part of that.

So now. I'm, I'm glad I know the players as well. So I'm so glad you're here. I think what was that 2015, 2016, you were kind of in a temporary home.  I mean, it was definitely before COVID. Oh,  I don't think your, your house had been. Burned from a fire and you were staying, I think, in a That was 2017 when the fire happened.

Okay, you were kind of in that halfway place. Okay, it was probably 2018 when we met. Yep, while we were rebuilding here in Santa Rosa. Yeah. Lovely, and you took great care of us. We had a great time. And I'm just happy to have you here. So, you know, I believe you kind of were both Jersey girls. So you grew up on the East Coast.

You've had a long career with Disney. So I know that's so exciting and fascinating for people. Were you down working in Orlando before you got out to Napa Valley? Yeah, that's where I came from when I moved here. So I yeah, Jersey Girl went to Rutgers in New Brunswick. And when I was in college, I had done an internship with Disney at Disney World and got a little taste of it and just fell in love with it.

So after I graduated, literally 1998, moved to Orlando. That was the year the Disney Animal Kingdom Park opened. And I started working there at Animal Kingdom. And I was there for 15 years in Orlando working in hospitality, HR, recruitment, sales, all different capacities.  I love that. And you're so fun and you're so bubbly.

I think that is why we were drawn to you in the beginning. And I totally can see you in the Disney setting. But somewhere along Mickey and Minnie, you must have discovered this love of wine that kind of drew you from Disney World out to, you know, the world of, of grapes in Napa. So how did that transition? 

Yeah, so I always loved wine when I was working at Disney. I mean, being bubbly is, is a lot of work. So, you know, sometimes you do need a little downtime at the end of the day. But in all seriousness the last five years I was in Orlando was so 2007 to 2012, I was working on the Disney cruise line and I was getting to travel all over the world and spending time in Italy and France and Spain and visiting wineries and just really getting even more so than I was into food and wine.

So that was really the culmination. So during that time 2009,  my mom and I took a girls trip out here to Napa Valley for the first time. And that was when the big seed was planted. I just thought I was coming on vacation Little did I know that I would move here and totally change careers three years later.

But that first trip, my mom and I were just like, what is this place? We were just enamored with everything about it. And so you move on out to Napa Valley, you, you get a job at a fabulous winery where I met you. And then  that could just be like the dream come true for anyone. Yeah. But.  Had you already met Michael?

How does Michael come into the picture, your husband? Michael comes into the picture two years after I move here thanks to Tinder.  We both swiped right. Oh, that's right. Swiped right. I I was married in Orlando and that was part of the journey coming out here was kind of a restart and a restart. said, and very eat, pray, love moving out here by myself.

And very shortly after met Michael. So we've been together for about 10 years, but we met online. Michael's a nurse. He works in the emergency room. So his, his world and my world are quite different. But the one thing that we definitely have in common right from our first date is wine. And yeah, it's just.

And he's a great cook. Now, you know, my husband's a chef. Yes. So we both love men that know how to cook. We both have Michaels who cook. Yeah, we both have Michaels. That's perfect. So you're in your dream place. Yeah. Working at a great winery. You have this awesome man. What kind of gives you that confidence or, or that, you know, drive to say, this is really great, but I want to do my own winery.

And tell us a little bit about that. Cause I know we're gonna, we're gonna taste the Solovato Sangiovese here in a bit. Yeah. But yeah so moving out here. Yeah. I landed very quickly at pride mountain vineyards where I still work a couple days a week as a wine educator. I absolutely love it. I love the people.

I love the wines. I've always said I will work at pride even when I'm selling my own wine. And when I started saying that, it was such a far fetched, like, dream, like, there was really no plan in place to make that happen, but I somehow knew it was going to happen. But when I moved out here, I knew the transition to being on the hospitality side and doing wine tastings, like, that was pretty natural.

Because of my Disney background, but the goal was really to one day hold a bottle of wine and be able to say, I freaking made this. Right. I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I love to cook and I know how much joy cooking for people brings. I sound like a typical Jersey Italian girl right now.

Sorry. Stereotypes exist for a reason. And I also knew at that point how much joy wine was bringing me. It sounds super corny, but like I was having, I know I'm so I'm speaking, you know, to, to the right person here when I say like, I was starting to enjoy wines that were like bringing me to tears and just really having these wine moments.

So I thought, gosh, if I could do that one day, if I could make something that does that for someone else, I would love to do that. There was a little gap in education that needed to happen. So my undergrad from Rutgers is an environmental science, which I had the foundation, but enter UC Davis because every winemaker I met out here, I was like, Where'd you study?

Where'd you study? And everyone's like, UC Davis, UC Davis, whether undergrad or masters. And I was like, okay, well, I don't have time to like go back to school for a master's in undergrad. So, UC Davis has a winemaking certificate program that was fantastic and just really got to the grit of production, viticulture.

You know, wine flaws, how to fix things, chemistry, like all of that. So I finished that in 2018 and in 2019 we bought our first half a ton of grapes and said, game on. There you go. And so is that the first vintage you commercially sold was 2019? Yes, Michael and I had been making at home wine, you know, just getting grapes wherever we could and buckets and carboys in the living room just to start messing with it.

But really, like, the first official, like, purchasing and making wine for the purpose of selling it, doing it in a proper winery, yes, that was the 2019 vintage.  Wow. So, so Lovato, why the name? I get the, you, you and Michael are both Italian, I believe. I know you are. He is not, he cooks like he is, but Michael's family is Mexican heritage.

Okay. Yeah. So, gotcha. Yes. Yeah, my husband looks like he could be Italian as well, but he's German and Irish. Yes. Okay. Go figure. We, you just dunno. . Yeah,  . But, but it has a meaning in Italian. That's why you chose it. So what, what was the inspiration? Cause there, you know, you could have called it, you know, uh, Nikki Sanjeevase, but. 

Well, I, uh, initially wanted to do Lamberti, which is my last name, but there is actually a Lamberti wines from Northern Italy. And so when we were talking with a lawyer and trademark and all that, they were like, it could be problematic. So I was like, that's fine. Um, Michael probably was okay with it not being my maiden name, you know, Lamberti on the on the label. 

So, We knew we wanted something in Italian. We had many different ideas. Every time we plugged something into Google Translate that we thought was good,  like, we had just gone through the fire and we were rebuilding our home. So we're like, what is from the ashes in Italian? And it's like 19 words and very complicated.

And I was like, okay, that's not going to work. So a friend of ours, a dear friend of mine actually came up with the word and was just kind of searching about like joy. And so, so Lovato loosely translates to joyful, uplifted, and I really love the secondary definition of it, which is relieved and no longer worried,  which after going through the trauma of losing our home and then rebuilding and getting settled again, that's kind of where we were when we started this project.

So I was like, that's perfect. Plus it's very easy to read. It's very phonetic. Like you really can't mess it up when you see it on the label. But yeah, that's the story. Awesome. So let's go ahead. We have the 2021 vintage or at least I do. I think you do as well. So let's go ahead and taste and kind of get into the wine itself.

And then I know we have some plenty more things to talk about. This is so exciting for me to have you  tasting my wine. I'm like, ah, I'm honored. Well, I ordered, I don't know if it was your first vintage, but I know I ordered from you before and had it shipped here to Maryland. So I, and I truly enjoyed that.

I'm a huge Italian wine fan. And I love that you're making Sangiovese, something just a little bit different than you might expect from Napa Valley. Are, are there certain areas that you're sourcing from that are just known for great Sangiovese?  People are like, is California known for great Sangiovese?

It is, but in very specific areas. And yes, by the way, thank you for being one of our first customers when you ordered our wine. That meant so much. Oh, was I? Yeah, well, one of the first, yeah. Yeah, the reason we make Sangiovese, and I get asked this question all the time, I work at a winery where we're cab, cab, cab, I live in Sonoma County, which is pino, pino, pino.

People are like, why do you make Sangiovese? And the answer is because we love to drink it. We drink a lot of, whether it's true Sangiovese from Italy, whether, you know, Chianti. We've spent time there all throughout the Tuscany region. But then we quickly started chasing Sangiovese here in Napa and Sonoma.

So any winery that makes it, which is not a lot, we would go and try it to kind of see what was the expression of this Italian grape in California. Um, Ramazotti is our grower, Joe and Travis Ramazotti. They are in Sonoma County in Dry Creek. Every year, that's who we purchased from the same exact vineyard site.

We started drinking their Sangiovese years ago. We're in their wine club. So we knew it was good fruit. And we said, if we get this project going, this is the fruit that we want. Wow. I just, the nose off the bat is beautiful. You have a nice mix of, of the red fruits and. I think a little bit of oak in there, or at least a little bit of warmth that I'm getting on the nose.

And I love, I took a quick sip before you, sorry. Do it. I've sipped this wine a million times. Go ahead.  I love that you just get even more intensity of the fruit when you take that sip, but then it's just so smooth and rounded. There are some tannins there that's going to make this able to pair with some meats and some, you know, cheeses and things that have fats, you know, your animal proteins, but it's So balanced that not one of these things is sticking out over the other, which to me is something I love about European wines, right?

You know, that they're not over the top tannin or over the top alcohol or any, you know,  just smacking you in the face. I like a little bit more elegance in that. That's kind of what I'm getting here. But wow. Let's hear it from the winemaker. You keep talking.  Again, just very surreal to hear you speak about my wine.

It's amazing. Thank you so much. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's a hundred percent Sangiovese from one single vineyard. And yes, it was aged in oak, but it's all neutral French oak. So there's no new oak on this. And it's interesting because as I've gone along, this was the third vintage, right? We just did our sixth vintage in 2024 again, same grape, same wine.

I've, I've got it pulling back and even more. Refined and even more subtle with like earlier picking and lower alcohol like as I've just kind of learned and experienced what it is when it starts to age. I'm so happy with this vintage but even the more recent ones even more so for that reason.

Yeah, there's definitely tannin so. We believe and again, I only can taste back to my 2019s right now, but definitely some age ability. And it's been really fun with the little teeny library that we have. Cause the first vintage was one barrel, 286 bottles. Like, you don't can't hold back that much, but when we do for a special occasion, pull out a 2019 just to see how it's aging, I think this is going to have a lot of, a lot of time in the bottle.

And we love it with pizza. Yes. And then you'll be able to. Let's sell some verticals. That would be nice. That's the goal. Yep. Now it might have to be a 20, 21, 22 because we've increased production a little bit every year. I mean, we're a huge winery now. Like our 2023 was eight barrels. I mean, that's 200 cases, GLauriea.

Like we're ginormous. Well,  that's impressive. That's impressive. 200 cases versus 200 bottles. I mean, that's progress. Yes. That's fabulous. It is. Slowly but surely. The the emblem on here, on your label, what does that mean to you? Just so, so we get it straight from the founder. Yeah. A couple different things.

We had a wonderful team. I gotta give a shout out to Hobie, Justin, and Jodi from SensePoint and Tucker Creative. They're our, our friends that helped us with branding and the packaging and the design and all of that. And it really is supposed to be like light rating and radiating out. From a center point.

And people have said like, Oh, it looks like a record. If you look at the concentric circles, not only in the copper circle, but like on the whole label itself, people have said, Oh, is it supposed to be like a record? And I'm like, you know, I didn't think of that, but cool. We love music. Thank you.  The, the light and the joy kind of radiating out from a center point.

What do you think is your goal as far as the winery is concerned? I know we talked about, you know, 200 bottles. 200 cases. I, I mean, how, how big are we planning? How big are we planning to grow this?  Since you're good at manifesting. So let's put it out there. I'm good at making shit up. Can I say that?

Making stuff up as I go, right? Building the plane while I fly it. Like I'm the master of that in everything that I do. But the goal is to make enough, and I'm not going to put a number on it, but But right now it's all been just through our website, right? Direct to consumer. As we say, there's not enough for it to even be a local restaurant, much less any type of distribution.

And I don't want it to be on every store shelf and every total wine. That's not the goal. But the goal is to make enough that we can have some really nice strategic restaurant placements, special Italian restaurants in Jersey here in Sonoma County. I'm going to Disney world next week. There's some places where I'm meeting with people to try to get it on some of my favorite restaurants and wine bars that Disney.

So that's, the goal is just to make enough to sustain that. And then we, part of the, uh, increase in production for the 2023, those eight barrels. We will hopefully always make Sangiovese, that's the flagship, but we've added Grenache and Petit Sourap. Oh, that's exciting. And this month we are bottling our first ever blend, like a super Tuscan style blend from 2022.

I've got one barrel of that, mostly Sangiovese, a little bit of Cab. So we're, we're actually going to have a portfolio, which means hopefully we can eventually have a wine club, right? It's hard to have a wine club when you have one product.  There's really no club to that. So that's the goal too, is just to have, um, enough diversity of, of, uh, portfolio and different wines where we can have some type of a wine club.

Very, very cool. And of course, give out your website. I don't think we've said it yet, but you absolutely, people are intrigued at this point. They want to go to your website. So, where should folks go so they can take a look at this Sangiovese? Yeah, Solovato Wines. So, Solovato is S O L L E. V A T O, pretty simple.

SolovatoWines. com, and we can ship to most states in the U. S. Okay, very cool. Now, just while we're sipping our Sangiovese, which is delicious, folks, give it a try. There's only 200 cases, so don't wait, because when she's out, she's out, till next vintage, I believe,  is released. But I know you're obviously here on the Sipping Point podcast, but I know you have your own podcast, So let's talk about that.

When did you get started and, you know, tell us a little bit about Sip with Nikki and what you do there. So funny story about that. I mean, I've always been kind of a public speaker and a presenter. I'm, I'm not shy as most people could tell very quickly. But during COVID, when everything shut down here in California, and I was working at Pride Mountain Vineyards very quickly when we realized that we're going to be closed for a while, I went to the team at Pride and I said, Hey, I'm not shy.

So if there's something you guys want me to do, like a live stream, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, whatever I'm volunteering, I'll figure out the technology. And I was texting my parents as everything was shutting down. I said, Hey, they're telling us to shelter in place. We have to shelter in place. And I abbreviated it to SIP and I was like, oh,  shelter in place is sip.

I was like, we need to do something with that. So SIP with Nikki came from that. It was a Facebook live stream every Friday on the Pride Mountain Vineyards Facebook page. And the first one, it was like me and my kitchen and the Pride family would drop off bottles on my doorstep. 'cause we were all quarantined.

They said, Hey, talk about this wine my, and I was like, okay. You know, eight minutes of me standing in my kitchen. We did that for about four months. Every Friday I had a huge following. We sold a lot of wine and it was just a great way to engage with our customers. When COVID ended and everything got back to quote normal, I asked the, my team at pride, I said, Hey, are we going to do anything with that sip with Nikki?

Or can I have like the name? I want to do the website. They're like, go for it. You can have it. It was just a COVID thing. So. That's where it was born. And first it was just a website where I did some blogs and some tutorials. I always knew I wanted to do a podcast, but as I'm sure, you know, Laurie, just getting over the hump of like the tech and like, how do you do it?

And how do you commit to every week or every two weeks or whatever your frequency is? It just took a while to finally do it. But I did last year and now it's weekly episodes and not unlike. The format that you and I are doing here, some episodes are interviewing people from the wine world, hopefully you are going to reciprocate.

I would love to. Chefs I just interviewed the owner of Arista Winery, Mark McWilliams, talked about like his family and what it's like to own a winery out here. But it's also got a, a, a, a food, wine and travel element too, because that's where all this came from was travel. So, yeah, it, it alternates between longer interviews and then sometimes just a short tutorial where I'm saying like, okay, this is Beaujolais, what do you need to know about it?

Why do you need to be buying it? That was just this week. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're getting close to the nouveau. We are. Next week. This could be another conversation for another day, but I would love your thoughts on that whole thing. Yes. I know. Well, some years they're good. Some years it's kind of like, I don't know.

But. I still think it's fun because it's just an expression of the vintage. It's not serious. A lot of people look down their nose on Beaujolais Nouveau, but it's not supposed to be serious. It's not supposed to be age worthy. It's supposed to be just a sign of what this year was like and, and just a sneak peek, I guess.

at the raw fruit, the, the raw wine. That's the way I think of it. We have a winery here in Maryland that's doing a nouveau this year, which I think is quite interesting just, you know, for their first taste of the harvest. So I don't know, you and I are, I think, of the same mindset There and your story about sip with Nikki, I did wind down Wednesdays, which we did every week for 10 weeks while we were all at home.

That's what we had, you know, a crew with me that every week we got together and tasted in it sort of what kept. Us sane and I say us because they said it kept them sane and it kept me sane too and it gave me a purpose You know to do something and now it's fun to bring that to my podcast too. Yeah same.

Oh my gosh I love talking with you. I could do like two hours easily and But I'm, I'm sure, you know, people are already almost to their work at this point.  And they're sitting in the parking lot. They're sitting in the driveway. I can't go in the house. We're making them late for work because this was so much fun.

But definitely check out sip with Nikki. She's got great stuff. Even like how to drink great at Disney world and Epcot and really fun. Your latest one about how to taste wine. It never gets old. The more you learn about tasting, it's always great. So Nikki Lamberti, thank you so much for coming on The Sipping Point.

And this was so awesome. We'll have to do it again. Thank you so much. Cheers. Awesome. Cheers. That was amazing. And I hope you will go visit sollevatowines.com. If you go to thewinecoach. com, click podcast for the show pages or on my blog, either way, and I'll have a link to her website. I'm so thankful for you tuning in.

And if you are celebrating Thanksgiving, I'm wishing you and yours the very best. And next week we'll be talking wine and cheese. And I know so many of you love cheese just like I do. So make sure you subscribe to The Sipping Point on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And until next week. Cheers.  Thanks for joining us on the Sipping Point podcast. We hope you enjoyed this fun and flavorful look at the world of wine, food, and beyond. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with your fellow wine lovers. Until next time, keep on sipping!