A wine - or rather a winery named HANNA

When I first came across this Sauvignon Blanc from the vineyard HANNA in the Russian River I was hooked. How can possible a wine or rather a vineyard exist with my name? I recall from visits to a winery back home in the Rheingau / Mosel region in Germany that a winemaker named special wines after his wife and his daughters. This is why I wanted to find out more! What was so special about this wine? I had not tasted it yet - purely it's label (and the prime positioning in Safeway) sparked my curiosity. 

HANNA is a small, quality-focused family winery with own vineyards in the Sonoma region with operations since 1985. The name HANNA is simply the last name of its founder Dr. Elias Hanna (and I was excited for a more interesting story behind this). The rest of the story is rather similar to other family wineries and vineyards in the area: Started small, focused on high-quality wines from distinctive vineyards in the region and is still family run. In fourth generation, Christine Hanna now is President and Owner.

However, HANNA sells more than just wine: Chris Hanna provides several recipes on the website obviously with matching wine pairings making it easier for wine novices to gain access to a perceived good food and wine pairing. Furthermore, HANNA provides events such as paint nights or tasting weekends to gather wine and art enthusiasts. And beyond that, HANNA offers "unforgettable" lunch, dinner and wedding packages. All these offers remind me about our discussion on the different actions Kingston Family Wineyards was considering to expand their income beyond pure grape / wine sales. 

Now it's just to find out whether the name and the impression the winery left on me matches my expectations for the 2016 Sauvignon Blanc! But it seems promising as it has won the 2017 White Sweepstake Award in the SF Chronicle Wine Competition, the largest wine competition of American wines. I wonder what influence wine competitions have on sales as just recently Trader Joe's has just recently added the HANNA 2016 Sauvignon Blanc to is wine offering marketing it as one of the best white wines...

Prost!

Sources:

http://www.hannawinery.com/

http://winejudging.com/