Welcome to Hamel Family Wines. This truly is a family owned and operated winery, run by Pam and George Hamel, and I believe 3 of their children. The Hamel’s are fairly new to the game and have just completed building a state of the art wine making facility and tasting room on their 124 acre estate, just outside of Sonoma.
The wine tasting building is very modern in design and the interior offers a nice blend of wood, stone, and concrete, all tastefully furnished. The windows and doors are strategically placed to take advantage of the sweeping view of the estate and neighboring wineries like B.R. Cohn, whom by the way, has awesome live music throughout the summer and fall.
The genuine personalities of the Hamel family, beautiful tasting room, and panoramic views are in and of themselves enough to warrant a visit, however, the real gem to me is their exquisitely designed Reserve Room that just happens to be tucked away inside their incredible hillside wine caves. I have seen my share of wine caves, both in residential properties and at wineries, and I have to confess, these are possibly my favorite caves.
The air temperature stays fairly consistent within the caves, making it an ideal area to store and age the wine in oak barrels. The caves smell earthy and oaken with hints of red wine. Impressive seeing as how the caves are only a few months old. On hot days, these caves are the perfect place to retreat to for some vintner spelunking to keep cool. 
Shortly after entering the caves, you will find the Reserve Room. The walls and floors are clad in stone. The craftsmanship of the stone work impressively covers two storage room doors making them nearly unnoticeable while the 3 display niches within the room have intricately cut pieces of stone wrapping into them. It gives the feel of old world meets Lord of the Rings‘ middle earth; The dwarves of middle earth would be envious of the stone work in this room. The craftsmanship lends to the alluring intimate setting in here.
My favorite part of the caves, are the exposed earth walls at the end of the three tunnels. This is the natural dirt found while digging out the caves. Each layer of soil offering a different color and texture, looking as though it was painted or plastered to look like the planet Jupiter. They have deliberately placed special fermentation tanks in the alcove of each of these exposed earth walls, giving them the look of time machines off of a movie set.
It would seem that every winery in Napa and Sonoma has something special about it, or at least from my perspective they do. I love design and architecture, and honestly, it is what endears me to a place like this. I look for that bit of eye-candy that gives me pause to contemplate the how and why. This certainly does it for me at Hamel.
I will leave the wine reviews to the wine bloggers as that is really not my thing. From me you will get the exposed earth behind the scenes…or underground as it were, in this case.
Tangible View 