Some wineries make great wine. At Bedrock Wine Co., they also make great winemakers. This week we sit down with the next class out of Bedrock U, Allison Badar and Casey Barton, two of the key players behind Bedrock, who somehow found time between harvests and tending ancient vineyards to build brands of their own. They both took non-linear paths to the wine business, but based on their own wines and their work at Bedrock, they’re clearly here to stay. Allison’s Intertidal Wines are beautifully focused: Carignan from the legendary Evangelho Vineyard, one of California’s most iconic old-vine sites, and Riesling from the remarkably rare old vines of La Jolla del Norte Vineyard in St. Helena. Allison takes us on her journey from professional dancer to raising her pet snail on the backroads of California. Casey’s path to wine also took some twists and turns, from deep-diving into ampelography instead of studying for her college finals and obsessing over wine maps of the world on oil company time, to pounding the pavement with a distributor and ultimately finding herself tending some of California’s most historic vineyards. Fittingly, Helia Wine Company digs old-vine Zinfandel. She’s farming Sonoma’s historic Puccini Vineyard, scythe and all, and putting her own stamp on California’s legacy. So crack open your textbooks and a bottle from some old vines, because class is in session and the next generation of Bedrock U has arrived. [Ep 433]