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15 Questions with Donelan Winemaker David Milner

Winemaker David Milner is responsible for the entire winemaking process, from viticulture and production to facility management. He’s the captain of our team at the winery, knows every vineyard like the back of his hand, and builds great relationships with farmers, owners, and even customers who happen to catch him during a tasting. With harvest approaching, David’s schedule is busier than ever, but we were able to sit down with him for a fun interview. Dive into “15 Questions with David Milner” to discover more about his fears, role models, hectic schedule, and much more.

1. What do you think it takes to be a top winemaker in California?

Like anything, to be a top person in one field requires a lot of work, attention to detail, and an attitude of no compromise. Making sure ownership and the team are on the same wavelength with the same goals is huge. For winemaking particularly, control of farming is extremely important.

 

2. What do you think you do that’s different or special compared to other vineyards of our size?

With the amount of time, focus, and investment we have in the vineyard and the winery… we definitely punch above our weight. In the vineyard, we have advanced systems like a dedicated weather station and soil moisture probes, which let us get very exact with how we farm. For example, we can pinpoint exactly how much to water the vines. Not too little, not too much. That precision then reduces waste which is wonderful for environmental and financial reasons.

At the winery, we’ve invested highly in our lab capabilities and equipment, much more than what you’d typically see for a winery our size. We have a Thermo Fisher mass spectrophotometer which is a fully automated machine we use to run analyses on wine samples. You’d usually see that kind of machine at a winery 4x our size.

The most important is our human capital. Our team has the knowledge and the ability to do most things ourselves. We love to learn and we love keeping things in-house. Most people would outsource the things we do because it’s labor-intensive and highly skilled labor at that. For example, removing barrel heads is a difficult and uncommon skill. Most wineries will hire a cooper to come in and do that kind of thing (also known as cooperage), but I know how to do it and I’ve taught members of our team to do it too. Investing in human capital is important and makes your whole operation special.

3. Making great wine is often compared to being a great chef…understanding ingredients and flavors to bring together something special. What’s your approach to that?

We have an unconventional approach to blending. Majority of winemakers will sit down and approach a blend once or twice within the same period of time. We do what I’ve coined “sequential blending”. We’ll look at a blend and do it over and over again basically the entire time it’s in barrel. We always taste blind. We always taste 4-5 permutations of the blend at one time. Then we vote on it.

It’s an extensive process but wine is constantly evolving, right? So to get the ideal blend, why wouldn’t we taste test and sample as many times as possible? Keeping up with the pace of the wine while it’s in barrel will make for the best blend possible going into the bottle. 

 

4. Describe a day in your life throughout the year:

Winter: Winter is dormant season so there’s not much going on in the vineyard. During this time we’re moreso looking after wines from previous harvests; testing, monitoring, pulling samples, and running analysis. We’ll do quite a bit of blending sessions during winter. Basically winter is for catching up on harvest work that needs to be finished from the previous year.

Spring: Spring is bottling season. This is when we’re physically putting the blends together by pumping them out of barrel and into tank, then getting them into their bottles. It’s a lot of logistics; careful measuring and moving wine, ordering glass and corks, and bringing in bottling crews. We’ll also be monitoring growth in the vineyard and tracking phenological events like bud break or flowering, which kick off the growing season for the year. 

Summer: Summer is a marathon leading up to the start of harvest, and then it turns into a sprint. During this time I’m in the car a lot. I drive out to all of our vineyards all over Sonoma County to do crop estimates, do any final pruning of the canopies, and pick fruit to sample back at the lab. It’s extreme prep time, making sure every vine is moving at the pace we want for harvest.

Fall: Fall starts in mid-September and is peak harvest at that time. Sometimes I’ll be in my car at 4-5 in the morning and most days we’re working 11-12 hours. It’s not all just picking fruit. We have to babysit it for a while after it’s made it to the winery. Pinot, for example, is notorious for dropping its sugar in the middle of the night, so sometimes I’ll stay the night at the winery or come back at midnight to pump over or punch down some tanks. By the end of October, the last of the fruit is typically in the winery but we’re actively still doing draining, pressing, and monitoring the fruit we’ve picked.

 

5. When is your favorite season?

I like harvest but usually, my favorite part is towards the end when the late-season grapes like Grenache and Mourvedre are trickling in and there’s not much of a rush. I find it relaxing and calming and it really feels like fall outside. Our harvest interns all know their jobs by then and everyone is having a good time, riffing, and working very efficiently. It’s the most fun time for me.

6. What’s the craziest harvest schedule you’ve ever worked?

Last year (2023) was pretty crazy but 2018 was probably longer. I worked like 82 days straight in 2018.

 

7. What keeps you up at night?

The things that I can’t control. Is that tank of Pinot going to get up to 98 degrees and kill all the yeast? During a heat wave, is the fruit going to melt on the vine? Did I get the bird netting up too late? Is my HVAC going down in the winery? Will I wake up to a wildfire?

 

8. How do you help friends appreciate wine?

I just try to keep it fun. There’s a lot of pretentiousness and uppitiness revolving around wine. We are making very special top-tier wine at Donelan but at the end of the day, it’s fermented grapes. I’ll figure out what my friends like to drink and pull some different wines I think they’d love. I like to share wines from all over the world and expose people to different things. 

 

9. Does farming/winemaking run in your family?

Not really. My maternal grandparents are Sicilian so there was some at-home winemaking going on back in the day but nothing serious. I’m the first of my family.

10. When it comes to winemaking or farming, do you have a role model or someone in the industry you look up to?

Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards or Bob Travers of Mayacamas. Aside from making phenomenal wines, they pretty much dedicated themselves to a life’s project. Nowadays it’s normal for a winemaker to change jobs every couple of years. It’s an older school mentality to set out to build a legacy around a singular estate. I really admire that. It takes sacrifice and time. I admire all family-owned businesses that have a vision for producing great wines, like the Schramsbergs. They’ve been making some of the best American sparkling wine since the 60s.

Outside of wine, Alice Waters is someone who inspires me. Her mission was to educate people about the finer things in life and she really is responsible for the whole slow food, farm-to-table movement. She was sourcing all of her ingredients from a self-grown garden, which was novel at the time. Now all kinds of people have returned to gardening again and are growing their own food. I really love to do vegetable gardening and canning at home. I also have plum trees, apples, and lemons I tend to. That’s one of my biggest hobbies. 

I’m a big American whisky drinker. Harlen Wheatley is the Head Distiller at Buffalo Trace Distillery. He started there during the “dark era” of brown liquor when sales were nothing and they had a mission to produce the best spirits in the industry. Now they’re one of the preeminent whisky producers in the world. They do it by making sure their inputs are the best. The best grain, best barrels, best practices, best team. It’s a whole systems approach which is what I try to emulate here at Donelan. 

 

11. What music do you play at the winery during harvest?

One of the most fun parts of harvest is having interns at the winery. Donelan is a very small team so we look forward to expanding our crew during harvest with young people interested in wine, and they’re often from interesting parts of America or even other countries.

We have a great sound system at the winery. I even brought in my personal vintage JBL speakers. Music is important during harvest because it sets the tone for the day, usually pretty early when we need high energy and high morale. I like letting the interns take it over so that we listen to all kinds of music tastes. We also like to come up with random funny thematic words for playlists. Something we’ll do every year is pick a chip flavor (like “sour cream and onion”) as a playlist name to see what Spotify’s algorithm comes up with. We have fun with it.

 

12. What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in the vineyard?

Tripp Donelan and I saw a bobcat up at Obsidian once, and they’re hard animals to come by. At Allen Vineyard, there’s an osprey with a nest and it’s always flying around screaming at me. Then, down the road from Allen is the old single-lane Wohler Bridge that crosses the Russian River. Last year I saw an eagle on the bridge and he was dancing and jumping around a fish he’d killed. That was pretty cool to watch.

13. What are your favorite Donelan wine and food pairings?

I love the Rosé with any sort of sashimi. Our Nancie Chardonnay is also such a versatile wine. That’s probably what I drink the most of. You can easily drink it by itself but I love it with chicken piccata. Then in the winter, Obsidian Syrah with Bouillabaisse is so comforting and delicious. 

 

14. Most difficult Donelan wine to make?

Cuvée Keltie Syrah is challenging to put together because you’re working with wines that have quite a bit of structure and tannin. There’s a fine balance to achieve with Keltie and not go overboard with the tannin. But that’s also the appeal of Keltie and why it scores well. It just toes the line.

 

15. What’s something you’d love our customers to know?

I think many people don’t realize that here in the New World there’s a huge divide between winemaking and grape growing. A lot of winemakers don’t have the skills to grow grapes. A lot of grape growers don’t have the skills to make wine. The farmers and the wineries have different goals, so there’s naturally a disconnect.

But when you’re farming the grapes you’re making your own wine with, it’s a whole different story. I consider us wine-growers at Donelan. The purpose of what we do in the vineyard is to make an unparalleled experience in the bottle. That’s where we spend our time and we go the extra mile. If there’s something we can do in the vineyard that will make the wine even a quarter of a percent better, I’m willing to do it.