Meet Morgan Twain-Peterson MW

Morgan was the first baby born in the town of Sonoma in 1981. His parents, Joel Peterson and Kate Twain, were both employees at the local hospital but opted for a home birth at their small bungalow on Andrieux Street. After Mom did some serious work, Dad made a clean catch, tied up the umbilical cord and Morgan’s life was off to the races. Back in those days, Joel’s main job was running the bacteriology lab at Sonoma Valley Hospital. However, as a second job he also worked at a small passion project called Ravenswood Winery, a job for which he was steadily not making money while working out of a small building along the big curve on Broadway Street. Morgan fondly remembers spending much of his time after school and on weekends exploring the winery and surrounding vineyards and creeks. Both Kate and Joel were (and still are!) intrepid and engaged individuals and huge importance was placed in the household on reading, learning for the joy of it, cooking and baking, gardening, hiking and skiing. It was a common family dinner where Joel would want to talk about a new piece he was reading in Scientific American and audible groans would come from Morgan and older sister Caitilin. Morgan was exposed to wine and wine tasting at an early age. In David Darlington’s “Angel’s Visits,” it is noted that “Morgan, at the age of five, could distinguish between Merlot and Zinfandel.” Morgan began making small lots of Pinot Noir at 5 from fruit given to him by the Sangiacomo family. After Joel opened up a few different examples of Pinot Noir Morgan was motivated by the best wines of Domaine Dujac. He began experimenting with whole cluster fermentation, different types of French oak, and various ripeness points. Vino Bambino Pinot Noir, as the wine came to be known, was made from 1986 to 2001 and has been featured on the wine lists of Craft, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Hill (which featured the original 1986), Delmonico’s, Aureole, and Mesa Grill. Though always enamored with the wine industry, Morgan bypassed a traditional Viticulture and Enology degree and instead attended Vassar College and Columbia University focusing on his other loves of History and Political Science. At the same time Morgan worked as a wine buyer for a small shop in the Upper East Side of Manhattan called Pet Wines. It was there that he met Chris Cottrell with whom, after many long retail hours spent together, he became fast friends. After graduate school, Morgan decided to come back to California to more fully immerse himself in the wine industry. In 2005 he worked harvest at Ravenswood Winery, followed by a stint in Australia’s McLaren Vale, where he worked at the Hardy’s Tintara facility along with some precious days alongside Drew and Rae Noon at Noon Wine Cellars. From there he made the trip to Bordeaux, where he spent the 2006 vintage in the cellars of Chateau Lynch-Bages.

Bedrock Wine Co. was started in 2007 out of a friend’s tiny winery on the outskirts of the town of Sonoma. The facility, even smaller than the one his father used to launch Ravenswood, was literally a converted chicken coop and goat paddock. Fruit was hand pitch-forked into a small Zambelli destemmer and fermented outside under the sun and stars in one-, two- and three-ton redwood fermenters. The ceilings were so low that a forklift could not be used, and all barrels were hand stacked inside (Morgan’s chiropractor says “thank you” for this). The first fruit came mainly from the family’s Bedrock Vineyard but small amounts of old vines from Teldeschi Ranch and several Syrah sites were made as well. In somewhat dubious timing, the first wines were released 10 days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event which reinforced Morgan’s strong feeling that wine should be economically accessible to as many people as possible. In subsequent years, through both perspiration and serendipity, several amazing vineyards were added to the Bedrock portfolio. In addition, Morgan started Under the Wire with his old friend Chris, who he had conned into becoming his partner-in-crime and finances at Bedrock. A decade plus after that first vintage, Bedrock has the opportunity to work with some of the best vineyards across the state of California. In addition to this, Morgan and Bedrock have received high critical acclaim. The wines have been featured in almost every major news publication in the country including the New York Times, L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Articles have also appeared in Food and Wine, Decanter, Town and Country, SF Magazine, Sonoma Magazine and more. The wine from the family’s Bedrock Vineyard, Bedrock Heritage Wine, has been featured four times in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 List, with the 2016 vintage being named the 9th best wine in the world. In addition, the winery has received a score of 90 points or higher from the same publication over 100 times and in 2019 Morgan and his father, Joel, were featured on the cover. In 2014, Morgan, alongside friend Tegan Passalacqua, was named the San Francisco Chronicle Co-Winemaker of the Year by Jon Bonné. And, just in case his head wasn’t big enough, Robert Parker stated, after giving the winery its first two 100-point scores that “Everybody should recognize the incredible speed at which Morgan Twain-Peterson has built his Bedrock Wine Co. into a world-class performer.” In 2017 Morgan passed the Master of Wine examination, becoming one of just forty-five MWs residing in the United States and one of two California winemakers with the qualification. Despite this success, Morgan is happiest when pruning, walking his vineyards during the growing season, obsessing over biological control and cover crops, blending and muttering while tasting through barrels or spending hours in his truck between vineyards listening to podcasts, books on tape, and annoying friends with trivia about John Prine and Waylon Jennings. He has also been known to throw a good dinner party, largely thanks to Kayte, Morgan’s wife and long-time proofreader of Bedrock release letters. In October of 2020, Morgan and Kayte welcomed their son Joel Howard (JP) into the family. JP has not yet made his first wine, but he’s got a few years to break his dad’s record of youngest winemaker in the Bedrock family.