Aum Cellars
Since our beginning, Aum Cellars has always been 100% estate grown, synthetic free and family run. Aum Cellars is beyond sustainable, organic and even biodynamic. Aum Cellars uses the word “primordial” when describing the cleanest, healthiest and most pure way to farm and make wine.
Primordial farming is a “soil first” approach for Aum farming. With our deep understanding of ecology and systematic biology, Aum farming focuses on maintaining a healthy diversity of soil microbes within the soil. Healthy soils make healthy vines. A healthy vine will mature each grape with a perfect balance of soft skins and brown seeds for soft tannins and deeper, longer textures. Balanced maturity also means the sugar content in the pulp isn’t as high as most California wines, helping to maintain proper amounts of acidity to promote age worthiness.
Primordial winemaking is also a focus on maintaining a healthy diversity of microbes and probiotics in every bottle. Aum cellars captures the true terroir of our estate vineyards by being noninterventionist with our winemaking. We ferment using the wild, indigenous yeasts as a tool to increase wine complexity and do not filter our wines to help increase the texture and richness of our wines. We also don’t fine our wines, because most fining agents use animal proteins like fish bladder, cow hoof or pig skins. We allow time, gravity and respect to the gravitational pull of the lunar phases to assist in the settling and fining of our wines, which naturally make all of our wines vegan. Vegan wines apparently pair much better with red meats according to the top culinary chefs throughout the world who consider vegan wines to be more culinary in nature, especially when pairing wild game.
Aum Cellars goal is to continue to make better wines each year. Our farming and winemaking is considered a sacred practice with the intention to manifest the cleanest, healthiest most pure wine available.
Contact us directly for a private wine dinner at a local Napa Valley restaurant for an incredible experience or to have our delicious wines sent directly to you.
About Probiotic Wines
There is a saying “You are what you eat or drink”, in reality, “You are what you assimilate”. Every person has what is called a “gut ecology”, the healthier and more diverse the gut ecology, the healthier the digestion process, the healthier the digestion process the more diverse assimilation of health will be imparted on the individual.
Many studies have found that red wine promotes not only heart health, but also significantly increases levels of gut probiotics, including bifidobacteria, enterococcus, prevotella and bacteroides. Probiotics are essential to digestive health. Probiotics also lower cholesterol, inhibit cancer, boost immunity and protect against numerous other systemic conditions.
Aum Cellars focuses on the diversity and health of probiotics in all of our wines. We add extra probiotics to our wines during secondary fermentation to ensure every glass has a healthy and vast diversity of probiotics to promote health in every bottle.
About The Vintner
Pete Hoffmann was born and raised in Rancho Cucamonga, Southern California. He literally grew up surrounded by the vineyards of that historic area, Guasti Vineyards, at one time the largest vineyard in the world. 5,000 acres of head trained mission grapes all for sacramental wines. Pete played and hunted in these vineyards that had been abandoned by the mid-70’s due to Pierces Disease, a disease that was killing vines in the vineyards, and the economics of the time favored mini malls and tract homes. Perhaps it was his early relationship with the grapes that somehow brought him into the wine business
Pete moved North, first to UC Santa Barbara with the intention of becoming a marine biologist. Thinking he would study oceanography, however after his first and only semester at UCSB, the cold and wet weather mixed with too many seasick voyages to count, Pete started to second guess if the life of a marine biologist was what he was supposed to do. Towards the end of his first semester, Pete gave a friend a ride up to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and it was love at first sight, the vineyards reminded him of home and the warm dry air was where Pete knew he belonged. Going back to his vineyard roots, he decided to switch schools and transfer to Cal Poly SLO to study Ecology and Systematic Biology as an undergrad and Viticulture for his graduate studies.
In his early professional years, Pete worked in vineyard management growing grapes for some of the top wineries along the California coast such as Meridian, Beringer, Sutter Home, Firestone Winery, Au Bon Climate, Sine Qua Non, Ojai Valley Winery, Foxen, Landmark, Melville and many other amazing wineries.
After ten years farming on the Central California coast, Pete got the random phone call he was truly destined for. The phone call was from Andy Beckstoffer, the largest land owner in the Napa Valley. A couple weeks and interviews later, Pete was headed to the Napa Valley, farming for over 48 different Napa Valley wineries in some of the best vineyards in the world like Tokalon vineyards and growing for the top wineries in the Napa Valley, like Silver Oak, Stags Leap Wine Cellars, Caymus, Mondavi, Beringer, Far Niente, Opus One, Lewis Cellars, Screaming Eagle Harlan and the world class biodynamic vineyard and winery Benziger Family.
Today, after 20 years’ devotion to his craft, Pete is also very proud to be an Instructor of Viticulture at the Napa Valley College where he inspires new students of the time honored traditions of producing ultra-premium, small lot, soil first, fine wines. A passionate Bordeaux obsessed vintner, Pete Hoffmann offers the brand Aum, which reflects a time when wine and nature were still wedded by the dynamic forces of the soil, blended with the natural rhythms of nature. Aum wines are uniquely crafted to merge with kefir grains during secondary fermentation to provide probiotic, culinary wines, offering nutritional sustenance for the mind, body, and soul.
Aum
Aum Cellars
www.aumcellars.com
(707) 266-8803
Marketing/Sales & Events: Tina Hoffmann
email: tina@aumcellars.com
(707) 225-1754