About

Huron Mountain Winery takes its name from a rugged area of northern Michigan, west of Marquette and bordering on Lake Superior. From our first vintage in 2004, Huron Mountain Winery has focused on making small batch Cabernet Sauvignon from some of the best vineyards in the Napa American Viticultural Area. Our first barrel of Stagecoach Vineyard Cabernet was made in the Dogpatch district in San Francisco and earned a Double Gold at the prestigious Indy International Wine Competition. A couple of moves later, we are now located in Napa, California and continue to devote our efforts to make age-worthy and interesting wines.

All of our commercial wines are sold “direct to consumer” through our mailing list. Follow the link below to stay informed about the wines and availability.

As a trip to Napa to be hands on with the wine making process is not something that many people can schedule, we offer hands on participation at our crush and press events in Michigan. This is where we make non-commercial wines and evaluate different yeasts, blends, and fermentation styles. For those subscribers in and around Southeast Michigan, please sign up for the crush and press list as well.

Richard Baron

Richard Baron

The intersection of art and science has had a particular interest since I learned how to do black and white photo processing on the yearbook staff. Or, as I embarrassingly told a friend and her brother during a darkroom tour, “I started developing in high school.” Winemaking followed as part of a wild foods independent study, and thanks to an open-minded school principal and parents. The elderberry was good, the apple not so much.

Fast forward to law school where as one of my many jobs, I worked in the wine department at the now defunct Knapp’s Department store. With very little in discretionary funds available, it was a huge plus to be paid to go to “double blind” wine tasting as part of the buyers group. Two decades later, I discovered a startup winemaking facility in San Francisco where I could bring in Napa Cabernet and make my own wine on a production scale.

Today, our facility is in Napa where we make limited production barrel quantities of Cabernet Sauvignon. Since 2004 we have been buying grapes from some of the best vineyards, including Stagecoach and To-Kalon for our limited release Cabernets. It is fascinating and rewarding to see the wine in the bottle become much more than the individual varietals that make up the final blend. So many variables influence the flavor profile, from vineyard, varietal, clone, harvest date, irrigation (or not), yeast selection, fermentation temperature, barrel choices, and blending. As to the last point, after all is said and done, a percent or difference in the addition of Merlot or Petit Verdot (one of my favorites) has a huge amount of influence on the manner in which the wines express themselves.

Patrick Saboe

Patrick Saboe

Patrick’s love for wine began while working in the restaurant industry in his hometown of Charleston, SC. During his ten-year tenure at the nationally renowned Slightly North of Broad, Patrick had the opportunity to try numerous wines from all over the world. Patrick went back to school to focus on chemistry and biology, and was accepted to University of California Davis’ (UCD) Viticulture and Enology program receiving his B.S. degree in 2002. In 2000, Patrick began his foray into the California wine world by working for Robert Sinskey Vineyards while attending UCD. During this time, he also assisted Dr. Andy Walker in the UCD vineyards, for two years helping in the Pierce’s Disease Resistance Rootstock Breeding Program. Upon graduating from UCD, Patrick worked as the Harvest Enologist for Hanna Winery before becoming the Assistant Winemaker at Keller Estate.

He began working with the Huron Mountain Winery in 2010 on our Cabernet Sauvignon program. In his 18+ years of winemaking, Patrick has focused primarily on Bordeaux varietals, although he has made wine from over thirty different varietals throughout California. He shares our winemaking philosophy: exceptional wines are made from exceptional fruit with exceptional care. Consequently, he collaborates closely with the growers whose grapes end up in the Huron Mountain bottle. He lives in Petaluma, California with his wife and three children.