By: Nan McCreary
For Italian wine lovers, the dream vacation would undoubtedly include a trip to Italy, a land of charming little villages and 21 different wine regions. But when international travel is out of reach, the next best thing is a visit to VJB Cellars in Kenwood, California, where you can experience a taste of Italy in the heart of beautiful Sonoma Valley.
“The vision of the founder, first-generation, Henry Belmonte, was to create a piazza like those in Italy,” said Lindsay McGorry, Vice President. “They wanted guests to feel like they had stepped into Italy when they walked through the gate to our property.”
Indeed, the VJB Cellars exemplifies the best of an Italian piazza, a “town square” where people can dine, drink and enjoy each other’s company. The property features a Tuscan-style villa with a tasting room and a barrel room, a deli and marketplace that offers imported Italian goods and a chocolate-gelato shop specializing in hand-crafted artisan chocolates and a dozen flavors of locally-made gelato.
The “little town within a little town” also has an outdoor kitchen that serves pizza, traditional sausage sandwiches and barbecued chicken and ribs. “We make many of our products in-house,” McGorry told The Grapevine Magazine. “For example, for our Margherita pizza, we make our own dough, sauce and mozzarella, and we grow our own basil. You can’t get any fresher than that.”
With stylish tables and chairs, guests can enjoy lunch with a bottle of wine in the outdoor open space or select from several tasting options led by the knowledgeable wine team. “It’s a lot of moving parts,” McGorry said. “You feel like you’ve actually come to Italy.
The history of this delightful gem can be traced back to Bonito, Italy, where Henry’s parents, Vittorio and Maria Belmonte, have their roots. Vittorio first picked grapes from the family vineyard when he was eight years old. There he developed an appreciation of the local wine varietals and their characteristics. Maria Belmonte learned to cook authentic southern Italian recipes from her mother and grandmother as a young girl. When Vittorio and Maria settled in Kenwood in 1976, they opened a family restaurant that featured her native Italian dishes. After receiving accolades from industry critics and the local community, the family opened a larger restaurant, Caffe Portofino, in downtown Santa Rosa. There, Maria worked tirelessly as executive chef, and Vittorio—with their two sons, Henry and Victor—ran the front of the house. Again, the restaurant earned rave reviews.
Henry and Victor, who grew up in the restaurant and continued to have a presence through high school and college, realized that they should be making their own wine to serve with their critically-acclaimed food. The brothers had their first harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in 1999, but before they could bottle that wine, tragedy struck: Victor died unexpectedly of a heart attack. To keep his memory alive—and his passion for wine—the family decided to plant a vineyard on their 12-acre property and open a tasting room. Henry created a label, VJB, named for Victor Joseph Belmonte, and the family began a new journey in the Sonoma Valley.
The Belmonte’s sold Caffe Portofino in 2002 and, in 2003, opened a 900-square-foot tasting room with five wines and an espresso bar. The wines were Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay because they were popular in California, and Italian varietals Barbera, Sangiovese and their flagship wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon-Sangiovese blend made in honor of Victor’s two favorite wines. They called the blend Dante, a name Victor had chosen for his yet-to-be first-born son. Today, nearly 20 years later, VJB Cellars still produces Dante.
What started in a tiny tasting room quickly evolved into a dream for something more for the Belmonte family. “Sonoma County is a food mecca,” McGorry said, “so they decided to bring back Maria’s delicious cuisine. They wanted a place where people could gather and enjoy life’s milestones—not necessarily in the restaurant industry.”
In 2010 they broke ground on their current tasting room and marketplace and planted two acres of Montepulciano and Aglianico. In the summer of 2012, VJB Cellars celebrated its grand opening, introducing the public to a “taste of Italy” with authentic Italian foods, a growing list of Italian wines and true Italian hospitality. Their “little town within a little town” quickly became a go-to destination in the Sonoma Valley.
In 2014 the Belmontes purchased nearby Wellington Cellars from father and son John and Peter Wellington, who had been operating the vineyard for over 20 years. “This was a fantastic transition from father to son to father to son,” McGorry said. “The Wellingtons knew the vineyard would be in good hands as a family operation.”
The sale came with a full production facility and tasting room, plus 21 acres of vineyards planted with a focus on French varieties, including Marsanne, Roussanne, Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Viognier and Bordeaux blends, as well as old-vine Zinfandel dating back to 1882. “The Old-Vine Zinfandels also include one dating to 1912 and another to 1924,” McGorry said. “These are a big draw for a lot of guests, who really enjoy sampling vineyards that are so old.”
When the Belmonte’s purchased Wellington Cellars—minus the inventory—they rebranded the wines, changed the style and limited production to small-lot, hand-crafted wines produced almost exclusively from the 24-acre estate. They now make wines for both labels at the winery: Annual production for VJB Cellars is 10,000 cases, and for Wellington Cellars, it’s 3000 cases. Wines are sold exclusively direct-to-consumer and from the wine clubs.
In 2020, the family acquired Kenwood Farms and Gardens, located across the street, which added 14 more acres to their vineyard holdings. The property includes a cottage, a barn with a bar and picturesque grounds with views of Sonoma County’s rolling vineyards. The space will enable the Belmonte family to host large events like weddings, retirement parties and corporate retreats.
Today, VJB Cellars produces 19 different wines, all Italian varietals except for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. “There’s a lot of Chardonnay, Cabernet, Pino Noir and Sauvignon Blanc up and down the valley, so we wanted to offer something different,” McGorry told The Grapevine Magazine. “Our wine list includes Aglianico, Negroamaro, Montepulciano Dolcetto and more, which gives guests an opportunity to come and learn something new.”
Vittorio Belmonte serves as proprietor and supervises the vineyard management and winemaking teams. Maria is executive chef and director of the market, La Cucina and the Red Rooster Pizza Kitchen. She also hosts cooking classes. Henry, the “Big Parmesan,” oversees all aspects of the winery, ensuring that visitors have an opportunity to experience the Italian heritage and traditions of the Belmonte family.
VJB Cellars refers to its wines as “Italian varieties with a California flair,” according to McGorry. “We make traditional Italian wines with the flavor profile you would find in Italy, yet with the fruit element that is typical of California.”
From the beginning, the Belmontes have approached winemaking as a combination of old-world tradition and new-world innovation. “Vittorio grew up immersed in wine with his father and his uncle in the basement of their home,” McGorry said. “He learned the traditional flavors, and he wanted to keep those traditions alive. Yet he was not afraid to put his own spin on the wines.”
For example, McGorry explained that the flagship Dante wine is a traditional Super Tuscan Blend, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese, but with the proportions reversed. While a Super Tuscan may usually be 85% Sangiovese and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, the Dante is 85% Cabernet and 15% Sangiovese, making the wine unique to VJB Cellars.
As the Belmonte’s look to the future, their only plans for growth are renovating the tasting room at Wellington Cellars and producing more wine there. While producing high-quality wines, the ultimate goal is to offer exceptional hospitality.
“We’re in a land of a thousand wineries in Napa and Sonoma. There are other family-owned wineries, and there are others that produce Italian wines. But at both wineries, we make hospitality our top priority. We try to give people an unparalleled experience so that when they go home, they think about their visit and join the wine club because they want to be reminded of that experience. They come back again and again and bring friends because of how they were treated. In sharing their heritage, the Belmontes want people to come as visitors and leave as family.”
