Chef Dustin Valette

Six Winemakers, One Table

12 Minute read

07 Aug 2026

Ari Bendersky

Writer

Copy link

Chef Dustin Valette built his nine-bottle Sonoma portfolio with independent winemakers and a simple goal: getting more people to drink wine with dinner.

At eight years old, Dustin Valette stood on a step stool in his family’s Healdsburg, California, kitchen, cracking eggs for omelets while his parents set the table for dinner. There was bread, food simmering on the stove, and, without exception, a bottle of wine.

“It was always, ‘Here’s what we’re having for dinner, here’s what we’re going to drink with it,’” Valette recalled. “We didn’t always have amazing wines, but we always had a pairing.”

Only years later, after working in restaurants led by chefs including Thomas Keller and Charlie Palmer, did Valette realize that not every family ate this way.

In 2008, after building a career around food and wine, Valette began experimenting with winemaking in his garage.

“It was good,” he said of those early efforts. “We made it for fun. We never tried to sell it.”

Valette soon recognized that his skills were sharper in the kitchen than in the cellar and turned to experienced winemakers for help. In 2016, eight years after his garage experiments began, Valette Wines launched with 75 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon.

The small-production Sonoma County label grew alongside Valette’s three Healdsburg restaurants: Valette, The Matheson, and Roof 106. The restaurants also continue his family’s long history in the town. Valette opened in 2015 where his great-grandfather, Honoré Valette, once operated Home Bakery, while The Matheson and its rooftop restaurant, Roof 106, opened in 2021 at the site of Honoré’s Snowflake Bakery.

Four generations later, the family remains a fixture in Healdsburg. Dustin’s father, Bob “Pops” Valette, still wanders the dining rooms with a glass of Pinot Noir in hand. The restaurants gave Valette Wines its first audience.

For the wines themselves, Valette initially turned to two prominent winemakers: Jesse Katz, founder of Aperture Cellars and Devil Proof Vineyards, to make the Cabernet Sauvignon, and Bob Cabral, who spent 17 years as winemaker at Williams Selyem, to make Pinot Noir.

The portfolio expanded to include two distinct Chardonnays, one made by Tom Rochioli, a third-generation farmer and the winemaker at Rochioli Vineyards, and another by David Ramey, founder of Ramey Wine Cellars. Michael Browne, co-founder of Kosta Browne Winery and now proprietor of CIRQ and CHEV, added a Pinot Noir beginning with the 2022 vintage. Most recently, Sonoma winemaker Erica Stancliff, co-founder and winemaker of Trombetta Family Wines, took responsibility for Valette’s rosé of Pinot Noir.

The structure is unusual: six winemakers with independent projects produce wines under a single chef-led label, each overseeing specific bottlings.

How the Collaborations Work

Valette tastes with the winemakers before blending, considering how each wine will pair with food. The sessions may be informal and often involve friends, but his input helps shape the final bottlings rather than simply selecting finished wines to carry his label.

“These aren’t white-label wines,” he said. “These aren’t wines we just slap a label on.”

For the 2023 Ramey Chardonnay, Valette recalled tasting numerous barrels with Ramey and Cameron Frey, president of winemaking at Ramey Wine Cellars. They adjusted the balance between concrete-egg-fermented Chardonnay and wine fermented in stainless steel while dialing back new oak in favor of two-year-old French barrels to create a rounder, more food-friendly wine.

“Having Dave Ramey over your shoulder, with the insight he has and the ability for us to do these partnership wines, is astonishing,” Valette said. “It’s something we’re proud of and honored to be able to tell the Ramey story and get people excited about food and wine.”

Browne, a longtime friend of Valette’s, was initially reluctant to make wine for the label. His hesitation was not about the friendship; he generally made wine only for his own projects. But when Browne realized he had more wine from the 2022 vintage than he could bottle under his own labels, he called Valette.

“We had some extra wine and I said, ‘Hey Dustin, you want to check this stuff out?’” Browne recalled. “He comes in and tastes it with me and he loved it.”

What began as a small bottling made from surplus wine has grown to 450 cases for the 2024 vintage.

“If my name’s on it and his name is on it, it’s got to be the best,” Browne said. “There’s no messing around. It’s on par with CIRQ and CHEV. There’s absolutely no doubt.”

The arrangement remains an exception for Browne.

“Dustin is my only client. I have no other clients,” Browne said. “I’m not making wine for anybody else, but I knew it would be fun with Dustin.”

Beyond Healdsburg

The Valette portfolio now totals roughly 2,500 cases annually across nine bottlings: two Chardonnays, three Pinot Noirs, a Sauvignon Blanc, a rosé, a grower Champagne, and a Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Skellenger Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, made by Katz with fruit from Oakville, received 100-point scores from critic Owen Bargreen for both the 2021 and 2022 vintages. Asked where he hoped the label would be in three years, however, Valette declined to set a target.

“I have no idea,” Valette said. “We’ll see where the world takes us.”

For most of its first decade, sales were concentrated at Valette’s restaurants and through the label’s website, with limited placements at other Wine Country restaurants, including The French Laundry.

In January 2026, Valette Wines entered an exclusive statewide distribution agreement with Regal Wine Company, the Sonoma County distributor founded by Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke. The agreement has expanded the label’s availability in the Bay Area and Southern California. Separately, relationships formed through Valette’s participation in the Naples Winter Wine Festival have helped the wines secure limited placements in Florida.

The restaurants remain central to the label’s growth. Together, the three serve roughly 15,000 guests each month, giving Valette a substantial audience for the wines and the winemakers behind them.

“There’s going to be somebody who walks in tonight who has never heard of Dave Ramey, never heard of Michael Browne,” Valette said. “They came here to have a beer or a vodka soda. My job is to get them excited about trying just a little half glass of wine.”

Ramey, who has spent nearly half a century in the wine industry and lives in Healdsburg, had a blunter response.

“How can vodka soda be delicious?” he asked. “They’re both odorless, colorless, and flavorless.”

At a time of declining industry sales and shifting drinking habits, wine is accounting for a growing share of beverage revenue at Valette’s restaurants. That share increased in 2025 and is on pace to rise again in 2026. Whether a chef-led label built around independent winemakers can replicate its Healdsburg success elsewhere remains uncertain. Valette’s immediate goal is smaller: persuading one more guest to try wine with dinner.

“Wine slows people down in a good way,” Browne said. “You get home, you make dinner, you crack a bottle of wine. And then the cell phones go away and you’re sitting around really enjoying the meal.”

That eight-year-old kid on the step stool just thought this was how dinner worked. Three restaurants and six winemakers later, Valette is still trying to convince the rest of us he was right.